The IRS is preparing to look a lot more closely at large corporate entities, especially partnerships, as it bring on more enforcement staff, said Accounting Today. Based on remarks at a recent meeting between the agency and stakeholders, the IRS has already hired 50 people with partnership experience as it readies itself for a very large partnership compliance campaign later this year. The effort would be part of an overall enforcement push planned by the new administration as a way to at least partially fund the White House's infrastructure project.

Partnerships became slightly easier to audit in 2015 after a budget deal, which contained a provision that IRS can apply audit changes to the partnership as a whole, as opposed to having to go through potentially thousands of individual partners, making the process much faster. Individual partners are not subject to joint and several liability for partnership-level taxes under the new rules, and the partnership as a whole would have the ability to both contest the audit and divide the taxes among its partners. In 2018, the IRS provided guidance for certain parternships to opt out of this centralized audit regime.

Beyond large corporate audits, the IRS is also planning to take extra effort in looking at potential fraud in the expanded child tax credit; updating the rule about denying passports to people with serious tax debt; and cannabis industry tax enforcement.

The NYSSCPA's Tax Planning for Business Entities Conference will be on Dec 02, 2021. You can register for the in-person event here, and the webcast here.