The Internal Revenue Service is increasingly acknowledging the presence of racial bias in the nation’s tax system — along with the years of work by pioneering researchers who’ve spent years highlighting the issue.
In a letter sent last week to the Senate Finance Committee, the agency said Black taxpayers are far more likely to be audited than non-Black ones, exposing them to tax penalties. And in January, the Treasury Department revealed that a swath of tax breaks disproportionately benefit white people, leaving many Black people with hefty tax bills and little money left over.
“We are deeply concerned by these findings and committed to doing the work to understand and address any disparate impact of the actions we take,” IRS commissioner Daniel Werfel wrote in a letter to Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, the chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.