In a statement last week, the IRS blamed a decline in some performance measures, including a drop in auditcoverage and collections, on an 8% decline in its workforce since 2010, plus a doubling of the staff it has assigned to fight identity theft refund fraud.
Only 1 out of every 503 individual returns filed got a face-to-face examination in fiscal 2010 (a 4 percent increase in coverage over fiscal year 2009), while 1 of every 110 returns got an audit by mail (a more than 8 percent increase over fiscal year2009).