Friday April 13 4:22 AM ET
Report: IRS Not Pursuing 1 Million Tax Delinquents

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The Internal Revenue Service has virtually stopped pursuing more than one million tax delinquents and has sharply curtailed other kinds of enforcement, The New York Times reported in its online edition Friday.

The IRS has reduced staff by a sixth since 1992 and its mission has shifted to customer service, the paper said.

More than a third of the three million Americans who are behind on paying their taxes have had their cases sent to an inactive file, since the IRS decided in June 1999 not to try to collect
their debts, the paper said, citing internal IRS documents.

For just last year, the decision effectively wrote off $2.5 billion in taxes owed by 668,018 taxpayers, the documents were reported as showing. In 1998, by contrast, just 98 taxpayers had their cases sent to the inactive file, the paper said.

The IRS defined the cases -- some involving as much as tens of thousands of dollars -- as too small to be worth going after, given its current resources, David Mader, IRS assistant deputy commissioner, was reported as saying Thursday.

Since 1992, IRS enforcement actions have fallen by two-thirds for audits and by 99 percent for seizures of property to pay back taxes, the paper said.

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