TAX FILE

The Internal Revenue Service has begun 50,000 intensive audits that it calls the National Research Program. The agency will use the results to identify areas of deliberate or inadvertent lack of compliance, both to improve taxpayer education and focus IRS resources better. The agency insists the process will be far different from the line-by-line Taxpayer Compliance Management Program “audits from hell” that it conducted in past decades. Information on many taxpayers will be verified through third-party records or phone interviews. Only a small number will have to produce detailed documentation, and even those unlucky taxpayers won't have to do so for every item.