how did the IRS or any other revenue agency audit dozens of millions of paper tax returns every year before computers were common?

Question

How did they verify if someone committed fraud or tax evasion in the 1950s for example?

In: 19

Answer 1

They’ve never **audited** millions 😉. They don’t even do that today. In FY22 they only audited 700,000 returns.

Auditing is a very involved, time consuming process. Most returns are superficially processed and accounted for. And the IRS started partnering with IBM in the 1950s to help with that.