IRS recovers nearly $5B in proceeds from tax fraud, criminal financing

Recently enacted Internal Revenue Service initiatives recovered $4.7 billion in funds from illegal schemes and criminal practices, officials said in a Thursday statement. The department noted that it identified over $9 billion in total fraud within the last year.

Nearly $3 billion came from IRS investigations into financial crimes like drug trafficking, cybercrime, and terror financing, according to the department. Proceeds from criminal and civil cases based on whistleblower tips accounted for $475 million, the department added. IRS officials also recovered over $1.3 billion from high-income individuals for tax evasion or unpaid tax debt. Of that figure, about $292 million came from over 28,000 individuals who did not file tax returns since 2017, but with an annual income of between $400,000 and $1 million. The IRS said that about $120 million of the total amount recovered from non-filers was obtained within the last three months. 

How does the IRS find these people? The department said it identified tax evaders using third-party information from W-2 and 1099 forms. The department also attributed an increase in funding as reasons for its successful investigations into tax evaders. The agency cited an example in which an undercover officer posed as a terrorist to catch someone intentionally sending funds to Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham.