Tax Analysts Releases Article Revealing the IRS's Failure to Audit Any High-Value Electing Large Partnerships for Seven Years

FALLS CHURCH, Va., April 29, 2014 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tax Analysts, the nonprofit provider of federal, state, and international tax news and analysis, yesterday released an article revealing information found in a preliminary Government Accountability Office report stating that the IRS failed to audit any high-value electing large partnerships for seven years. The report also includes evidence confirming Tax Analysts' reporting revealing that the IRS's audit coverage of large partnerships is very low.

The article, written by contributing editor Amy S. Elliott, details the IRS's failure to complete any audits of high-asset electing large partnerships, compares the audit statistics of large partnerships to comparably sized corporations, and discusses the steps the IRS is taking to increase its audit coverage of large partnerships.

"Over the seven-year period spanning fiscal 2007 to fiscal 2013, the IRS didn't complete a single audit of a large partnership that elected into the simplified electing large partnership audit rules that Congress put in place in 1997," Elliott writes.

To provide a sense of how poor the audit coverage is for large partnerships, Elliott compares the audit statistics for large partnerships to the statistics of comparably sized corporations. The comparison reveals that the average IRS audit hours charged for large partnerships was 268, versus 581 hours for comparable corporations, and that the average additional tax revenue netted was $0 per hour for large partnerships versus $8,549 per hour for corporations.

"Beyond the IRS's poor partnership audit numbers, the GAO report also revealed steps that the IRS is taking to improve its audit coverage of large partnerships, including an initiative to identify large partnerships," writes Elliott.

As part of its public education mission, Tax Analysts seeks to establish transparency in the tax laws and more dialogue between tax authorities and taxpayers. Through these and other efforts, Tax Analysts works to ensure that the tax laws are applied fairly and equally to taxpayers across the country.

Read the article at TaxAnalysts.com.

For more information or to speak with Elliott, please contact Shaima Cardillo at 703-531-4852 or shaima_cardillo@tax.org, or Shannon David at 703-531-4835 or Shannon_david@tax.org.

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