I saw this headline and it piqued my interest. I wondered how this would be. That would mean each auditor would find over $700,000 in assessments each year. That seems a little overstated. Further reading of the article in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette revealed that the estimates are pretty loose indeed.

First of all, MA, is going to focus on the cigarrette tax and try to force the wholesalers to collect the tax instead of the retailers as is currently done. Of course, the primary interest there is to only have to audit wholesalers and not the individual retailers. The next thing they'll do is make the wholesalers collect tax on a marked up amount. Whatever is easiest for the State, right? They didn't make much mention of how these 80 new auditors are going to bring in all this money.

The other big item, they want to go after, and maybe this is where these auditors are going to be spending their time, is investigating companies' classification of workers as contractors vs. employees. Again, this is mostly a matter of changing who they will go after. Theoretically, there should be no difference in state income tax if a company calls an employee a contractor. However, that contractor/employee may not be paying the taxes due. It's hard to go after individuals -- much easier to go after corporations.