IRS Announces Tax Refund Increase as It Rakes in Near-Record $4.7 Trillion From Taxpayers

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has disclosed that it raked in nearly $5 trillion in taxes from Americans in the last fiscal year, while boosting the amount it paid out in refunds by nearly 3 percent and boasting that it kept its pledge not to increase audit rates for those earning less than $400,000 per year. After a record $4.9 trillion haul in the 2022 fiscal year, the IRS collected a slightly lower but still substantial $4.7 trillion last year, according to the IRS’s annual Data Book for fiscal year 2023. The eye-catching tax-intake amount was made possible in part due to a significant funding boost of $78 billion that the IRS used in part to hire more enforcers and deploy advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to squeeze more dollars from non-compliant taxpayers....