Questions for the IRS

The Internal Revenue Service is an easy target for anger and disdain, especially now, as the deadline to file income taxes approaches and the IRS hasn’t quite recovered from the public battering it is receiving over questionable audits of politicized organizations. We don’t mean to pile on. But the startling story reported by our Nathan Guttman raises too many questions for us to stay silent.
Tax accountants working in Israel told Guttman that any American expat living there who files for a child tax credit in an annual return can expect to be audited. “I’ve seen more audits in the past year or two than I’ve seen in the previous 30 years combined,” one accountant said.
This is partly a result of extra scrutiny aimed at all Americans living overseas or with bank accounts in foreign countries, and since there’s about 250,000 Americans residing in Israel, it’s fertile ground for this type of IRS campaign. Fair enough. But the IRS’s Israeli focus is especially intense because of fraudulent activity by a few Americans that now seems to have drawn everyone there into the same net.
Not fair enough. In fact, this behavior echoes the complaints African-Americans had with New York City’s aggressive stop-and-frisk policing tactic — of tarring an entire community because of the misdeeds of a few of its members.
Why assume that all Americans in Israel are behaving badly? Even for those with nothing to hide, an audit is an onerous, expensive process, all the more so when receipts and documents are in a language other than English (and the IRS expects the audited to pay for a professional translator).
The IRS owes those taxpayers an explanation, and so far none has been forthcoming. If some Americans living in Jerusalem or B’nei Brak are abusing the tax system for personal gain — and Guttman cited evidence of this fraud — then they should be stopped and punished.
But to punish a broader class of people is insulting and discriminatory, a violation of the democratic values that both our nations profess to uphold. Answers, please.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Naftali Bennett is back: Former Israeli prime minister will make another run at Netanyahu
-
Fast Forward Citing post-Holocaust doctrine, Germany seeks to deport 4 pro-Palestinian protesters, including one American
-
Fast Forward Trump administration freezes research funding to Princeton amid antisemitism investigations
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.