Auditing the Taxman

Last week the Internal Revenue Service reported that it performed 50 percent fewer tax audits in 2000 than it had the year before. (The chance of a return being audited last year was less than 1 in 200; in 1996 it was 1 in 60.) It also said that 44 percent of its audits were of returns filed by poor people requesting special tax credits. In 1997, Slate’s Jacob Weisberg defused Republican myths about the IRS’s heavy-handedness. To read the article, click here.