Racial Disparity in Tax Audits? A Chat with Evelyn Smith and Hadi Elzayn about their study "Measuring and Mitigating Racial Disparities in Tax Audits"

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Scott and Jeff chat with Evelyn Smith and Hadi Elzayn, two of the seven coauthors on a recent working paper entitled "Measuring and Mitigating Racial Disparities in Tax Audits."

We ask them details about the paper. We find that the unconditional audit disparity between (estimated) black tax payers and (estimated) non-black taxpayers  is about 5%. We ask about the conditional disparity. The authors explain that conditional on some factors the disparity remains. We discuss what constitutes an audit (a letter in this case). We ask whether the IRS should care about collecting the most amount of revenue, or whether the IRS should care about deterring non-compliance.