Internal Revenue Service

A mobile billboard calling for higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy depicts an image of billionaire businessman Jeff Bezos, near the U.S. Capitol on May 17, 2021 in Washington, DC.Drew Angerer | Getty ImagesA new billionaire was created on average about every 30 hours during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a new report by Oxfam, a global charity focused on eliminating poverty.Now, 573 more people around the world can claim billionaire status compared to 2020 when the pandemic began, for a current total of 2,668…

WASHINGTON—Top U.S. officials who oversee the Internal Revenue Service are expressing growing dismay with a year-old D.C. mystery: how confidential information about the nation’s wealthiest and highest-income taxpayers—including Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk —became public.Extensive disclosures to news organization ProPublica made public the tax figures of many of the most well-known ultrawealthy Americans, showing their incomes, payments and tax strategies. There…

alfexe | iStock | Getty ImagesFilers won't be affected by the IRS decision to destroy data for millions of taxpayers, the agency said in a statement Thursday.The IRS tossed an estimated 30 million so-called paper-filed information returns in March 2021, according to an audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.The news has sparked anger in the tax community, many of whom worry about the agency's ability to verify returns, triggering more error notices especially with limited ways to reach the IRS.More…

courtneyk | E+ | Getty ImagesAn audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration revealed the IRS has tossed data for millions of payers, sparking anger from the tax community.The material, known as paper-filed information returns in accounting parlance, are sent yearly by employers and financial institutions, and cover taxable activity, such as W-2 forms, with copies sent to taxpayers and the IRS.The continued inability to process backlogs of paper-filed tax returns contributed to management's decision to…

Tom Werner | DigitalVision | Getty ImagesThe IRS may have the ability to automate nearly half of tax returns, according to a working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research.The agency could correctly auto-fill an estimated 62 million to 73 million returns with information it already has, covering 41% to 48% of taxpayers, researchers from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Minneapolis Federal Reserve and Dartmouth College found."Our results suggest that pre-populated returns would be accurate for a…