Abstract
This paper will examine Limited Issue Focused Examination (LIFE) and whether the Large to Mid-Size Business Division (LMSB) has given up too much in the name of improving audit currency in a world of insufficient enforcement resources. Part II will discuss some of the recent budget and enforcement problems that the IRS has been having. Part III will examine LIFE and explain the program’s specifics. Part IV will analyze whether the IRS has exceeded its authority in implementing LIFE. Part IV will also address the IRS’s unwillingness to explain fully critical aspects of LIFE to the public. Part V will explore whether or not LIFE, even if legitimate, is good public policy. Finally, Part VI concludes that the IRS is indeed sacrificing too much for improving audit currency through LIFE. By implementing LIFE, it has both changed the historical relationship between taxpayers and the tax collector, and it has done so in a manner that it must know that neither Congress nor the public would sanction.
Recommended Citation
W. Edward Afield,
Agency Activism as a New Way of Life: Administrative Modification of the Internal Revenue Code Through Limited Issue Focused Examinations,
7 Fla. Tax Rev.
(2006).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.ufl.edu/ftr/vol7/iss1/9