Two things in life we can never escape, death and taxes. But perhaps for the latter, some are audited more than others.
In a new study published in Tax Notes, authored by Kim Bloomquist, he made a chart that shows which counties in the US are being audited most by the IRS.
The study found that Humphreys Country, Mississippi, a rural county in the Delta was the most heavily audited county in America.
In a baffling twist of logic, the intense IRS focus on Humphreys County is actually because so many of its taxpayers are poor. More than half of the county’s taxpayers claim the earned income tax credit, a program designed to help boost low-income workers out of poverty.
The study estimates that Humphreys, with a median annual household income of just $26,000, is audited at a rate 51 percent higher than Loudoun County, Virginia, which boasts a median income of $130,000, the highest in the country.
Conversely, Bloomquist also looked into which counties are audited least. And he found that these tend to be areas which mostly consist of middle income, largely white populations such as New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
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