Will you be audited by Trump's IRS? New data says there's one group that can breathe a lot easier.

MW Will you be audited by Trump's IRS? New data says there's one group that can breathe a lot easier.

Andrew Keshner

A new report out Friday reflects IRS audit activity and other operations at the start of the second Trump presidency

The IRS looks a lot different now. What's that mean for audits?

The Trump administration significantly shrank the IRS last year, and now that's starting to show up in shrinking audit numbers.

At a high level, new Internal Revenue Service numbers reveal there was a gradual decrease in audit activity during a span of time covering the first nine months of the Trump administration, according to new data released Friday.

A closer look shows a deeper shift happening under the surface.

Overall, IRS agents sought $35.7 billion in extra taxes and assessments when they audited taxpayers during fiscal year 2025, according to the agency's yearly report on its operations.

That's $1.1 billion less than auditors sought a year earlier. It's a nearly 3% decrease. It's also pocket change for an agency that collected more than $5.3 trillion in revenue from October 2024 to September 2025.

Americans fearing an audit can take a breath. Audits remain extremely rare.

There was also a notable shift in whom the IRS asked for additional taxes from the end of the Biden era to the start of the Trump era. The tax collector turned up the heat on individuals while easing off on companies.

IRS agents asked individual taxpayers to pay $11.3 billion in extra income tax as a result of audits. That's $1.8 billion more compared with the last full fiscal year under the Biden administration.

Meanwhile, the IRS recommended corporations pay almost $12 billion extra in the 2025 fiscal year. That's approximately $3 billion less compared with the previous fiscal year.

The new numbers are part of the IRS's annual data book, showing everything from phone service and website visits to audit rates and assessed penalties.

In recent years, the IRS has been on a roller coaster. During the Biden era, the agency received a multibillion-dollar budget boost to increase enforcement of tax payments by corporations and scofflaw taxpayers.

The Trump administration reversed the build-up in a big way. Officials such as Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the plan was to right-size the staff and introduce more technology to sniff out unpaid tax bills. Following staff cuts at the agency, lawyers and accountants noticed an uptick in abruptly ended audits.

By the end of 2025, the agency's head count was roughly one-quarter smaller than it had been at the start of the year, according to one count.

Deep staff cuts and exits occurred in the Large Business and International Division, which oversees lengthy and complicated audits. The division shed nearly 750 revenue agents, according to an April report from the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

Other numbers in Friday's report show the drop-off on audits of corporations, as well.

Once taxpayers file an income-tax return, the IRS usually has three years to audit the return. 2021 now marks the most recent year of finalized audits. When the agency's auditors closed audits on 2021 returns, they recommended individual taxpayers pay almost $7 billion in extra tax.

That's an increase from the $5.5 billion in recommended extra tax from 2020 returns.The audit rates on households with at least $10 million declined from 2020 to 2021, but they increased for people with $5 million to $10 million in total positive income.

Americans fearing an audit can take a breath. Audits remain extremely rare. The IRS examined 0.3% of all individual 2021 tax returns, unchanged from previous recent years.

Then there's the shift on finalized corporate audits between 2020 and 2021.

The IRS recommended corporations pay nearly $560 million extra on their 2021 returns. That's a nearly 75% decrease from the $2.2 billion auditors recommended on 2020 returns.

To be sure, the report represents an early snapshot, and numbers may fluctuate. IRS CEO Frank Bisagnano has said collections are a priority.

It may be just one set of audit statistics under the second Trump administration, said Carl Davis, research director at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

Still, "there's very good reason to be concerned about the trajectory that our tax-enforcement efforts are on in this country." After the administration's "slash-and-burn approach" at the IRS, the impacts could take a while to come into focus, Davis said. "This is not, by any means, the end of the story."

The new numbers raise questions about IRS strategies and the taxman's moves going forward, said Pete Sepp, president of the right-leaning National Taxpayers Union. He questions how the administration is going to ramp up its technology and where it's going to target enforcement efforts.

But it's possible to become overly fixated on audits, Sepp said. "It would be a mistake to just ascribe effectively some political quota to how much additional tax should be recommended here. That would be taking the tax system in precisely the direction many Democrats are accusing the administration of doing."

While audits have declined, the new IRS data do not seem to show a lighter touch across the board. The agency assessed far more penalties on missteps including failures to file and pay, though it collected slightly less on owed assessments. The tax agency's criminal-investigation branch completed more cases compared with a year earlier.

The IRS data book lands while the biggest news on IRS audits these days is about the ones that may not be happening.

Last month, the federal government and Trump's lawyers settled a case over the illegal disclosure of his tax returns during his fist White House term.

That deal included the establishment and funding of a $1.8 "anti-weaponization" fund intended to pay people Trump has characterized as victims of unfair prosecutions. The settlement also prevented the IRS from pressing any audits against Trump, his family or businesses on past returns.

Early Friday, senators passed a $70 billion immigration funding package. The bill did not kill the fund, though acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said earlier this week the government is not moving ahead with the weaponization fund. The settlement provision involving the IRS stood, Blanche noted at a congressional hearing.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Democrat from Connecticut, criticized Blanche. Trump was walking away with "immunity" from tax-code enforcement, she said.

The provision wasn't immunity, Blanche countered. When the IRS settled cases, "it's typical to get rid of past ongoing audits," Blanche said, stressing that the deal was looking back and not ahead. "It's nothing that gives any sort of immunity in the future to the president, or his family or his organizations."

-Andrew Keshner

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June 08, 2026 11:29 ET (15:29 GMT)

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