The U.S. government said Friday it has collected $1.3 billion from wealthy taxpayers since the second half of 2023 as part of an effort to ensure high-income earners pay their taxes.
According to excerpts of a speech Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is scheduled to deliver in Texas, the rate of audits of billionaires fell by 80% between 2010 and 2018.
“Under the previous administration, the rate of audits of higher-income taxpayers went down while the rate of audits of taxpayers earning less than $200,000 increased,” Yellen added in prepared remarks, referring to the administration of former President Donald Trump.
As the November presidential election approaches, tax policy has become increasingly popular.
Both Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and her Republican rival Trump have sought to win taxpayer support with proposals to ease the financial burden on taxpayers.
Harris, who is also the current Vice President of the U.S. administration, is also promoting higher taxes on the wealthy.
These proposals are in addition to current efforts to collect unpaid taxes.
“In 2019, it is estimated that the top 1 percent of Americans paid more than one-fifth of their outstanding taxes, leaving ordinary Americans to shoulder the burden,” Yellen said in her speech.
The U.S. Treasury Department said Friday that about 80% of 1,600 billionaires have paid their taxes since authorities began their efforts in the second half of 2023 to pursue high-income earners who haven’t paid allowed taxes.
This represented a recovery of over $1.1 billion.
A separate effort launched in early 2024 to pursue high-income earners who hadn’t filed taxes since 2017 resulted in a separate $172 million in refunded taxes, the Treasury Department said.
The new special issue features a Wall Street legend getting a dramatic makeover, tales of cryptocurrency shenanigans and badly behaved poultry royalty.
Read the story.
https://fortune.com/2024/09/06/treasury-irs-recovered-billion-unpaid-taxes-wealthy-late-2023/
