[mhalle]

I would assume that there is at least some constant personnel or time cost per audit that the IRS incurs. I would also assume that even with recently increased funding, the IRS only the capacity to audit a small sampling of the taxpayer base.

In that case, from a revenue recovery point of view, going after the highest income / highest discrepancy taxpayers produces the greatest return on investment, with some randomness involved to keep everyone on their toes.

[prepend]

There’s lots of “automated audits” where a letter is just generated and sent out.

It’s like being able to spam offenders of EITC to spend 25 cents to collect a few grand with a 99.99% collection rate. Versus spending hundreds of hours on a complex audit that may or may not yield any fines and has like 25/75 win rate.