The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has admitted that Black Tax Payers are more like to face scrutiny and investigations than their White compatriots. Commissioner of the IRS Daniel Werfel made the said admission in a letter addressed to the US Senate.
“While there is a need for further research, our initial findings support the conclusion that Black taxpayers may be audited at higher rates than would be expected given their share of the population,” Werfel informed the Senate.
According to a study conducted by the Sandford University, University of Michigan and the Treasury Department conducted in January, black taxpayers are 3 to 5 times more like to be audited than white taxpayers.
The Commissioner added that the Service is in the process of taking corrective measures to rectify this discrimination.
“We are dedicating significant resources to quickly evaluating the extent to which IRS’s exam priorities and automated processes, and the data available to the IRS for use in exam selection, contribute to this disparity,” he said.
Audit algorithms of the IRS are reported to be faulty and the cause of an inherent inbuilt discrimination in the database model.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Rob Wyden criticizing the IRS.
“The racial discrimination that has plagued American society for centuries routinely shows up in algorithms that governments and private organizations put in place, even when those algorithms are intended to be race-neutral,” Wyden said.
