Employment Tax Cases Largest Part of IRS’s Criminal Portfolio

Employment tax has become the IRS Criminal Investigation Division’s largest program area, according to the division’s leader.

“It now exceeds the amount of investigative time we spend on identity theft, refund crimes, bad return preparers, and questionable refund scams combined,” division chief Don Fort said Friday at a tax conference in Washington.

• That’s in large part because of the algorithm the division has developed in partnership with the agency’s Research, Applied Analytics and Statistics Division, Fort said, adding that it’s one of his proudest achievements.
• The algorithm has identified more cases than the division could ever work criminally. “We’ll ...