Yellen said in a speech in Austin that in 2019, the top one percent of wealthy Americans owed more than one-fifth of all unpaid taxes, “leaving ordinary Americans to shoulder the burden.”.
“To fix this, we’ve channeled IRS funding toward significant investments to combat tax evasion," she said.
In 2023 and 2024 the IRS launched a series of initiatives aimed at pursuing high-wealth individuals who have failed to pay their tax debts.
The IRS said the campaign is focused on taxpayers with more than $1 million in income and more than $250,000 in recognized tax debt.
And in the first six months of a new February 2024 initiative, the IRS collected $172 million from 21,000 wealthy taxpayers who have not filed tax returns since 2017.
The National Taxpayer Advocate, the independent IRS watchdog, issued a 2023 annual report stating that the IRS employs roughly 681 armed agents.
While the program included 12 participating states in the 2024 tax filing season, more states have joined in for the 2025 tax season, including Maryland, Oregon, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Connecticut, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Maine. »
