IRS auditing targeting has been at the explicit behest of Republican controlled Congresses. That is, they were told to stop/reduce targetting high net worth individuals, or face even further cuts to their budget.

What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS? I worked on a state tax system briefly at Accenture and they offered the product for a percentage of reclaimed taxes. They started with high debts with good credit scores. Since they had skin in the game (which it could be argued the IRS doesn’t), they wanted to maximize the unpaid taxes they collected.

Because wealthier people have more complicated returns and are much more likely to litigate, resulting in more time commitment.

For high net wealth audits, you could have potentially dozens of people working on it for years so there is a possibility that a judge / jury rules in your favor.

They are going after low effort people, but making it up by volume.

Because it's easy to mess up claiming the EITC and only low income people can claim it. Also, there's a lot more (relatively) low income people than high income people.

This also depends if by "audits" you include every kind of correction letter the IRS sends you.

I got a letter from the IRS today and thought it was some kind of ironic punishment for commenting this, but it turned out it was just warning me I'd used the website last week(??)

> What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS?

Wrong question. The correct question is:

What benefit would the IRS targetting low wealth individuals have to high wealth individuals?

> What benefit would targeting low wealth individuals have to the IRS?

I'll shorten the explanation even further: many more easy/no contest wins.

> IRS resources historically and presently target low-income, low-wealth households/individuals for audits

If we could actually increase their funding substantially, this would be less true, but it's difficult and expensive to go after wealthy individuals.