The US Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Criminal Investigation (CI) division has uncovered nearly US$10 billion in tax fraud for fiscal year 2018, four times more than last year.
The unit identified US$9.7 billion in tax fraud in 2018, up from US$2.5 billion in 2017, due to its use of data analytics tools. The team also discovered US$10.4 billion in other financial crimes, a sharp increase from the US$1.1 billion identified in fiscal year 2017.
According to the CI division’s fiscal 2018 annual report, it achieved one of the highest crime conviction rates of all the US federal law enforcement agencies, at 91.7%. Three quarters of the cases involved federal tax crimes, Government Executive reported.
Earlier this year, the US, UK, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands formed a Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement group to share data, intelligence, technology, and methods to fight offshore tax crime.
Don Fort, the CI division’s head, said in a statement: “We prioritised the use of data in our investigations in fiscal 2018. The future for CI must involve leveraging the vast amount of data we have to help drive case selection and make us more efficient in the critical work that we do.”
Jeffrey Neiman, a partner at Marcus Neiman & Rashbaum, told Bloomberg that the IRS’s emphasis on using data “should terrify those who play games with their taxes”, adding it was the most effective way for it to conduct enforcement activity after years of budget cuts.
“We know that corporate America has become geniuses at going through customer data to make them more efficient in marketing. Just imagine if the IRS was half as efficient with their own data,” Neiman said. “We’re going to be dealing with a completely different animal.”
Emma Woollacott is a freelance business journalist. Her work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including the Guardian, the Times, Forbes and the BBC.
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The US Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Criminal Investigation (CI) division has uncovered nearly US$10 billion in tax fraud for fiscal year 2018, four times more than last year.
The unit identified US$9.7 billion in tax fraud in 2018, up from US$2.5 billion in 2017, due to its use of data analytics tools. The team also discovered US$10.4 billion in other financial crimes, a sharp increase from the US$1.1 billion identified in fiscal year 2017.
According to the CI division’s fiscal 2018 annual report, it achieved one of the highest crime conviction rates of all the US federal law enforcement agencies, at 91.7%. Three quarters of the cases involved federal tax crimes, Government Executive reported.
Earlier this year, the US, UK, Canada, Australia and the Netherlands formed a Joint Chiefs of Global Tax Enforcement group to share data, intelligence, technology, and methods to fight offshore tax crime.
Don Fort, the CI division’s head, said in a statement: “We prioritised the use of data in our investigations in fiscal 2018. The future for CI must involve leveraging the vast amount of data we have to help drive case selection and make us more efficient in the critical work that we do.”
Jeffrey Neiman, a partner at Marcus Neiman & Rashbaum, told Bloomberg that the IRS’s emphasis on using data “should terrify those who play games with their taxes”, adding it was the most effective way for it to conduct enforcement activity after years of budget cuts.
“We know that corporate America has become geniuses at going through customer data to make them more efficient in marketing. Just imagine if the IRS was half as efficient with their own data,” Neiman said. “We’re going to be dealing with a completely different animal.”
Emma Woollacott is a freelance business journalist. Her work has appeared in a wide range of publications, including the Guardian, the Times, Forbes and the BBC.
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Louisiana Dept of Revenue cracks down on payroll tax evaders
France recovers billions in tax fraud and evasion crackdown
China cracks down on celebrity tax evasion
