Viral News Snippet: New IRS Pilot Program Will Automatically Audit Taxpayers Earning Over $75,000 – But Is It Real?
A viral social media post claims the IRS has launched a secret pilot program that uses AI to automatically flag and audit any taxpayer earning over $75,000 per year, without human review. Screenshots of a supposed internal memo are circulating, warning that "millions of middle-class taxpayers" will be targeted starting next month.
The Claim: The post says the program, dubbed "Project Auto-Audit," eliminates the need for tax professionals and uses bank transaction data to trigger audits for discrepancies as small as $50. It adds that taxpayers earning above the threshold will be "randomly selected" if they itemize deductions.
The Reality: Fact-checkers confirm this is completely false. The IRS has publicly stated that all audits are conducted by trained human agents and that AI is only used to flag potential fraud in high-risk cases—not to automatically audit large groups. No such memo exists in IRS records. The $75,000 threshold is fabricated; the IRS targets high-income earners (above $400,000) for increased scrutiny under the Inflation Reduction Act, not middle-class taxpayers.
Verdict: Fake. Don’t fall for the scare tactic. Taxpayers earning under $400,000 face no new auto-audit risk. Always verify IRS claims on irs.gov.