DATA IN THE SPOTLIGHT
The Internal Revenue Service depends on the voluntary compliance of taxpayers, enabling it to collect over $5 trillion in gross revenues in FY2024. To reinforce the fair and effective collection of revenue and promote compliance, the IRS enforces the country’s tax laws through civil audits and criminal investigations.
Data highlights:
Related documents and reporting:
Enforcement capacity
- 1/8/2026: Push to Audit Private Equity and Venture Capital Falters Under Trump (NYT)
- 9/15/2025: IRS Attorney Exodus Gives Companies a Leg Up in Court Cases (Bloomberg Tax)
- 3/28/2025: The IRS unit that audits billionaires has lost 38% of its employees since January, new data shows (ICIJ)
- 3/3/2025: After mass firings, the IRS is poised to close audits of wealthy taxpayers, agents say (ICIJ)
Attempted politicization of tax enforcement
- 10/15/2025: Trump Team Plans IRS Overhaul to Enable Pursuit of Left-Leaning Groups (WSJ)
- 5/3/2025: Trump Officials Explore Ways of Challenging Tax-Exempt Status of Nonprofits (WSJ)
- 5/2/2025: Harvard Signals It Will Resist Trump’s Efforts to Revoke Tax-Exempt Status (NYT)
- 4/17/2025: Trump Appointee Asked IRS to Review Audit of MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell
- 4/16/2025: Trump Administration Asks IRS to Start Process to Revoke Harvard’s Tax-Exempt Status (WSJ)
Analysis and commentary
- 11/2025: Separating Myths and Facts about the IRS’s Mishandling of 501(c)(4) Applications in the Early 2010s (Tax Law Center)
- 5/12/2025: The Fiscal Impact of IRS Staffing Cuts (CAP)
- 4/25/2025: Why Trump’s Efforts To Revoke Tax-Exemptions Are So Dangerous (TPC)
- 3/6/2025: A hamstrung IRS is a gift to rich tax cheats and a headache for honest taxpayers (Brookings)
- 11/8/2024: A Welfare Analysis of Tax Audits Across the Income Distribution (Quarterly Journal of Economics)
- 9/26/2024: Measuring and Mitigating Racial Disparities in Tax Audits (Quarterly Journal of Economics)
- 5/30/2019: It’s Getting Worse: The IRS Now Audits Poor Americans at About the Same Rate as the Top 1% (ProPublica)
- 4/1/2019: Where in The U.S. Are You Most Likely to Be Audited by the IRS? (ProPublica)
You can also download a spreadsheet with the full list of available data, including the range of years for which data is available.
The IRS Spotlight © 2025 by The Brookings Institution is licensed under CC BY 4.0