Tax Fraud Enforcement-IRS Suggests Local Police

The Obama Administration and the Department of Treasury are continuing their aggressive efforts to catch tax evaders. One strategy they are considering is a collaboration between the IRS and local law enforcement agencies to help catch people committing tax fraud, tax evasion and identity theft crimes. Canada Free Press journalist Jim Kouri wrote an article entitled IRS may draft cops to catch tax cheats, official tells Senate to report on this IRS announcement by deputy IRS commissioner, Steven Miller to congressional Senators on the Finance Committee.

Miller stated to the Committee that the IRS was serious about curbing increases in tax fraud, tax evasion and identity theft and is seeking the cooperation from local police agencies to help enforce tax laws and share tax return information. Normally, tax information is strictly confidential, however, the IRS is interested in lifting some confidentiality so that city and state police departments can share targeted and suspicious tax files.

Not surprisingly, the law enforcement community is less than enthusiastic. With budget cutbacks meaning doing more with less, the idea of policemen collecting back taxes for the federal government, even in solid tax fraud cases, has some comparing this new program to “state police tactics.” Irony was not lost with law enforcement officials commenting on the fact that the Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, who has a dubious past regarding taxes, was able to avoid punishment.

Armed with statistics, IRS spokesman Miller supported recent IRS enforcement efforts by supplying the following data:

Identity theft contributes to most of all refund fraud.
The IRS has identified and prevented over $14 billion in fraudulent refunds from being issued as tax refunds in 2011.
The IRS has identified more than 460,000 taxpayers since 2008 that have been affected by identity theft.

The Government will continue to find creative ways to collect taxes, especially as the economy struggles along. The Obama Administration’s request for additional IRS funds more than likely represents collection efforts that will not only increase in size but also in scale; perhaps to a police station near you. Taxpayers in trouble will need tax relief now more than ever.

If you have tax debt, don’t wait for the IRS to contact you; act now! Get expert tax advice from a Certified Tax Resolution Specialist or a tax attorney to resolve your tax matters quickly and before the IRS becomes more powerful and expensive to deal with.

Read a previous blog post regarding increased funding for IRS enforcement. Stay tuned for more helpful and informative tax information on the Tax Resolution University blog.

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