Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen claimed during congressional testimony Friday that colorblind algorithms used to determine audits are racially biased, citing studies.
“The IRS doesn’t know an individual’s race and we are certainly not proposing that race be reported on tax returns. However, the IRS does need to be careful to ensure that there’s fairness in tax administration,” Yellen told the House Ways and Means Committee during a hearing on President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2024 budget request.
President Joe Biden signed an executive order Feb. 16, mandating the creation of “Agency Equity Teams” and requiring that agencies ensure that the use of artificial intelligence by government the “advanced equity.”
The Inflation Reduction Act, which President Biden signed into law in August, included $80 billion for the IRS to hire up to 87,000 new agents. Some experts claimed that the expanded Internal Revenue Service (IRS) would primarily target small businesses.
WATCH:
“And when studies, like some that have recently been published, suggest that algorithms… algorithms that the IRS may be using are racially biased in the sense they are much more likely to audit, for example, taxpayers of color rather than others with exactly similar circumstances, it’s important for the IRS to become aware of that and to make sure that the procedures that they use are fair,” Yellen continued.
The IRS came under fire after ProPublica received and published tax information on some of the wealthiest Americans in 2021 that reportedly showed the “true tax rate” they allegedly paid, and a similar leak involving conservative organizations occurred in 2013. An investigation into the 2021 leak is ongoing.
The agency also came under fire for allegedly targeting the Tea Party during the Obama administration. Lois Lerner, a central figure in the scandal, faced no criminal charges as a result of the scandal.
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