{
  "id": "1996-june-erratic-enforcement-found",
  "slug": "1996-june-erratic-enforcement-found",
  "url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1996-june-erratic-enforcement-found.html",
  "year": 1996,
  "month": "June",
  "monthNum": 6,
  "headline": "Erratic enforcement found",
  "kicker": "IRS prosecution checked",
  "author_name": "John Sullivan",
  "author_title": "NICAR staff",
  "affiliation": "NICAR",
  "summary": "An investigation into IRS prosecution data reveals significant geographic disparities in tax fraud prosecutions, with some regions like Roanoke, Virginia experiencing dramatically higher prosecution rates than others, raising questions about the consistency and fairness of IRS enforcement practices.",
  "keywords": [
    "IRS",
    "prosecution",
    "disparities"
  ],
  "topics": [
    "Business & Economy",
    "Investigative Methods",
    "Government & Politics"
  ],
  "technologies": [
    "Internet"
  ],
  "full_text": "Sleepy Roanoke Virginia has never been associated with rampant tax fraud. But if you happen to live there, you are 57 times as likely to be recommended for prosecution by the IRS than if you lived in New Mexico. The likelihood of prosecution in Pittsburgh is 29 times greater than that of all of Idaho, according to \"Where the IRS Aims the Prosecution Ax,\" a recent New York Times article by David Cay Johnston. Johnston documented capricious IRS prosecution after examining Justice Department data on 4,542 cases in which the IRS sought prosecution in 1994. The data, which was stripped of taxpayers' names, was made available to reporters on the Internet by Susan Long and David Burnham, co-directors of the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University.\n\nJohnston says the data raises some serious questions about the disparity in the way the IRS pursues tax cases, such as the case of Albert Taggi of Scarsdale, N.Y., who took a \"voluntary\" buyout from AT&T Corp. in 1985 along with 11 other engineers and middle managers.\n\nAccording to Johnston, the 12 involved, all residents of New York, filed for refunds of income taxes on the buyout and got varying results: Some paid no taxes. Some paid partial taxes. And two, including Taggi, were taxed on the full amount. The federal appeals court that heard the case said it was irrelevant that the 12 were taxed differently.\n\nAnalysis of the data indicates Taggi's case may be closer to the rule than the exception, although IRS and Justice Department officials Johnston interviewed disagreed.\n\n\"Officials of the IRS and the Justice Department tried to disown the data after TRAC had spent five years in a protracted lawsuit trying to gain access to it. If the data truly was flawed, the Justice Department had five years to deal with that issue,\" Johnston said. Long and Burnham argue that the data is useful in showing how the IRS carries out enforcement.\n\nJohn Sullivan can be reached at (573)882-0684, or send e-mail to john@nicar.org",
  "provenance": {
    "extracted_by": "anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6",
    "extracted_at": "2026-07-05",
    "verified": true
  },
  "similar": [
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      "slug": "1996-may-taxed-to-the-limit",
      "score": 0.387
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      "slug": "1996-june-whats-on-tracs-irs-web-site",
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  "html_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1996-june-erratic-enforcement-found.html",
  "json_url": "https://dwillis.github.io/uplink/article/1996-june-erratic-enforcement-found.json"
}