[perpetualpatzer]

> We're not there, though.

I suspect that's true, but you don't actually know that from this dataset. Some portion of the cost is born by the auditee to respond/defend against the audit and passed on to shareholders/employees/customers.

If the response costs are great with respect to the IRS's audit costs, the government could quite profitably add auditors, but have a negative overall impact on end citizens.