IRS criminal investigations take a dip

The IRS launched around 1,000 fewer criminal investigations in 2014, and secured fewer recommendations for prosecution and convictions, the agency announced Tuesday.

IRS officials have long said that years of budget cuts would impede their investigation efforts, and made that point once more in noting that criminal investigations had fallen from 5,314 to 4,297 last year. 

{mosads}Richard Weber, the chief of the IRS’s criminal investigations division, said his group had absorbed an 11 percent drop in staffing over the last five years, bringing the division back to 1970s levels.

“There is no doubt that we have had to be creative to overcome some of the budget challenges this year,” Weber said in a statement.

The number of prosecution recommendations dropped from 4,364 to 3,478, a decline of 20 percent. But while the IRS scored fewer convictions last year, the conviction rate also ticked up – from 93.1 percent to 93.4 percent.

Weber pointed to that conviction rate, and landmark agreements with the Swiss bank Credit Suisse and the Israeli Bank Leumi as bright spots for 2014. Credit Suisse paid a record $2.6 billion penalty as part of a guilty plea last year.