The Internal Revenue Service has made a big push in recent years to educate taxpayers about criminal behavior that could affect their pocketbooks and even make them unwittingly complicit in illegal activity.
In its latest annual report, the IRS said its criminal investigation division had spent 72.5% of its direct investigative time on tax-related crimes in 2017, including employment tax fraud, identity theft and abusive tax schemes. CI boasted a 91.5% conviction rate.
CI is the only federal law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over federal tax crimes. The IRS said CI investigates potential criminal violations on the Internal Revenue Code and related financial crimes in order to foster confidence in the tax system and compliance with the law.
CI also focuses on public corruption, cybercrime, terrorist financing and money laundering.