In an email, an IRS spokesperson said that tax returns are selected for audit without regard to race or where the taxpayer lives.
EITC audits can be punishing for taxpayers, since they routinely start with a refund being held, and can drag on for well over a year. The IRS does sponsor a program to provide free legal help to low-income taxpayers, but in Mississippi, the state with the highest audit rate in the country (according to Bloomquists estimates, the IRS audits about 11,000 returns there each year), there is only one attorney for the program.
I cover all 82 counties, said Ben Wilkerson, of North Mississippi Rural Legal Services. Out of necessity, he largely deals with his clients over the phone, counseling them on how to collect documentation to confirm their earnings or that a child lived with them for over six months of the year. We get a lot of calls from pretty much everywhere, he said.
Rep. Terri Sewell, a Democrat whose western Alabama district includes some of the counties with the highest audit rates, and who sits on the House Ways and Means Committee, which oversees the IRS, said in response to the study that taxpayers shouldnt be disproportionately targeted for claiming a certain tax credit.
Congress, she said, must ensure that the IRS initiates and executes audits in a fair and impartial manner.
The bigger issue here is the quota for "random" audits.