IRS May Restrict Real-Time Audit Program to Public Companies

The IRS is considering further changes to its popular real-time auditing program for large corporations, including restricting the program to public companies.

“Public corporations give the greatest transparency to us,” said Gloria Sullivan, director of the Western Compliance Practice Area in the IRS’s Large Business and International division.

Public companies are required to disclose more information than their private counterparts, including making regular filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, she said Oct. 4 following a panel at an American Bar Association tax section meeting in San Francisco.

• More transparency equates to less risk for the IRS when dealing with companies as part of the Compliance Assurance Program, or CAP. Under the program, businesses work with a team of IRS auditors to ensure they comply with the tax code in the current year instead of getting audited years later.
• Sullivan said there are somewhere between 160 to 180 companies in the program. The IRS in a Sept. 12 news release announced it will begin accepting new applicants for 2020.
• She said 18 new companies expressed early interest in joining the program.