Most people don't look forward to being audited by the IRS. It's not just a pain, but it

can end up costing you a lot of money.

I had an incident where my son's mother, who I wasn't married to, signed over the ability

for me to use my son as a dependent, but she turned right around and kept using him

as a dependent. What the IRS told me was the fact that she continued to use him as a

dependent meant that she nullified the document that she signed. They audited me every year

after that, and I had to pay back tremendous amounts of money.

I was audited in 2015. At the time I was a farmer, the audit process was horrible. The agent

that they assigned to us knew nothing about farming, farming practices. Initially, she had stated

that in her examination of all of our records that we owed $38,000, finally with some back

and forth between our tax account and the auditor. We got it down to about 1,500, which we

shouldn't even owed that.

A new study found that black taxpayers are at least three times more likely to be audited

by the IRS than other taxpayers. The reason for this racial disparity isn't what you might

think. The IRS isn't targeting black taxpayers. The agency doesn't keep data on race, but the

outdated algorithms they're using end up singling out black taxpayers. The study was a collaboration

between the University of Michigan, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the US Treasury

Department. And it's one of the most detailed examinations of race and the tax system.

After the break, we'll take a closer look at that study and its implications. We have

a lot to get into. I'm Sarah McCammon, Infergen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast

where we get to the heart of the story. We'll be back with more in just a moment. Stay

with us.

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