Black taxpayers are audited more often by the IRS. But why?

It’s tax season, and pretty soon, it’ll be audit season. An “audit” is when the IRS investigates whether an individual or corporation accurately reported and paid their taxes. In 2023, a Stanford study found an unsettling discrepancy when it comes to who does – and does not – get an IRS audit. “Black taxpayers are about three to five times as likely to be audited than everyone else,” said Daniel Ho, one of the study’s authors and the director of Stanford’s Regulation, Evaluation, and Governance Lab, “which is a pretty disturbing finding.”In this episode, Ho unpacks how his team reached their conclusion and what’s being done to counteract it. This episode was originally published on Mar. 10, 2023.