Economics

The IRS plans to go after 125,000 high-income earners who did not file tax returns going back to 2017 — and the agency says hundreds of millions of dollars of unpaid taxes are involved in these cases.

Beginning this week, the IRS will start sending out noncompliance letters to more than 25,000 people who earn more than $1 million per year and 100,000 people with incomes between $400,000 and $1 million who failed to pay their taxes between 2017 and 2021.

The campaign announced Thursday is part of the agency’s ongoing effort to pursue high wealth tax cheats — mandated in part by funding provided through Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act passed into law in 2022 and a directive from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to IRS leadership not to increase audit rates on people making less than $400,000 a year annually.