IRS Identifying Virus-Hit Areas Before Taking Enforcement Action

The IRS is using coronavirus case trends and unemployment numbers to inform how aggressively to pursue people who are delinquent with their taxes.

The pandemic continues to pummel the U.S. with new cases rising in some areas and unemployment claims still exceeding 1 million per week.

• The IRS recently added publicly available Covid-19 and unemployment data to a new tool providing a statistical geographic analysis of the agency’s resources and employees overlaid with available tax collection work, said Darren Guillot, deputy commissioner for collection and operations support for the IRS’s Small Business and Self-Employed Division.
• That information is ...