Staff cuts hit IRS

Shrinking staff takes a toll on the IRS’s criminal investigations. According to the fiscal year 2016 annual report from the Criminal Investigation (CI) unit, staffing levels for special agents have decreased by 19.1%, and professional staff declined 21.7% over the last five years due to budget cutbacks. As a result, between 2012 and 2016, CI’s prosecution authorizations went down from 2,664 in 2012 to 2,217 in 2016. Nonetheless, CI’s work resulted in 2,699 sentencings of tax criminals in 2016.