U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel will be speaking at the IRS campus in Austin, Texas, to highlight new achievements made possible by the Inflation Reduction Act. Their focus will be on efforts to ensure wealthy individuals pay their fair share of taxes, enhance taxpayer services through the Digital First Initiative, and modernize key technology systems.
Ensuring High-Income Taxpayers Pay What They Owe
In February 2024, the IRS launched an initiative to target 125,000 high-income individuals who haven’t filed taxes since 2017. These cases involve taxpayers who earned between $400,000 and over $1 million, according to third-party data like W-2s and 1099s, but have not filed returns. Before the Inflation Reduction Act, the IRS’s ability to pursue these non-filers was limited due to budget and staffing issues. Thanks to new funding, the IRS can now prioritize this core responsibility. In just the first six months of this initiative, nearly 21,000 of these individuals have filed their returns, contributing $172 million in taxes.
In fall 2023, another initiative was launched to target high-income individuals who owe substantial tax debt. The IRS, with additional resources from the Inflation Reduction Act, has assigned senior staff to these cases, focusing on those earning over $1 million with recognized tax debt exceeding $250,000. After successfully recovering $38 million from over 175 wealthy individuals last year, the IRS expanded the program to pursue 1,600 more high-income taxpayers. So far, nearly 80% of these millionaires have made payments, leading to the recovery of over $1.1 billion, with an extra $100 million added since July.
