Budget leaves Arizona Department of Revenue with 4 auditors

[TexasTowelie]

PHOENIX (AP) — The state agency in charge of enforcing tax laws for thousands of Arizona corporations is now down to four auditors.

The Arizona Department of Revenue, which at one time had 30 corporate auditors, has been dramatically slashed by budget cuts.

Department spokesman Sean Laux said Wednesday that the agency has $7 million less in its budget than last year.

The department cut more than 50 workers last June. Most were auditors and collectors in the education and compliance division.

&quot But) we haven't seen any drop off in our ability to enforce the state's tax laws, either on the audit side or the collection side," Laux said.

Georganna Meyer, a former economist at the department, told lawmakers that "there is likely no corporate income tax auditing occurring" with only four auditors to monitor more than 50,000 companies.

"I'm going to be the one to own up to being the one that dropped their corporate revenue forecast significantly because of the absence of enforcement at the Department of Revenue," she said. "There's basically is no longer any corporate audit activity at the Department of Revenue, and it's going to have significant impact on any enforcement revenues."

Read more: http://www.dcourier.com/news/2016/oct/07/budget-leaves-arizona-department-revenue-4-auditor/

[Cicada]

1. Many states just piggyback on IRS audits

The IRS turns over their audit results to the states.

But IRS audits are down too.

[TexasTowelie]

2. I read a different article that projected that $100 million will not be collected

due to inability to enforce compliance. After the word gets out that there isn't any enforcement mechanism that number will undoubtedly grow.

[Cicada]

3. Probably true. The IRS audits very few. Independent state audits would be profitable.

But despite the lost state revenue some states, such as California, mainly piggyback on the IRS.