Biden’s supercharged IRS eyes new ‘marriage penalty’ in tax audits

President Biden introduced a “potential marriage penalty” into the tax system when he ordered the IRS to conduct more audits of higher-income Americans, the agency’s inspector general said.

In persuading Congress to allocate tens of billions of dollars for the tax agency to conduct audits, Mr. Biden promised that agents would focus on those with annual incomes of $400,000 or more.

The way the Treasury Department wrote the guidance, however, treats all “households” the same way. That means a family with two spouses making $220,000 each faces a higher chance of an audit than a single man who earns $390,000.

The IRS is working through the marriage penalty and a host of other issues as it plans to carry out Mr. Biden’s audit orders and spend the tens of billions of dollars that Congress allocated for the effort, said the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.