The IRS is expanding its National Research Program to investigate tax compliance related to employment taxes, according to a report ($) in Bureau of National Affairs this morning. The National Research Program is an intensive study and data collection project that helps the IRS to properly screen and target non-compliant tax returns for auditing.The NRP began with investigations into individual tax returns and then moved to business and partnership returns. BNA gives more detail about the next stage:

The employment tax National Research Program—the first such program on employment tax since 1984—will include a multiyear study, with random examinations scheduled to begin in November, according to a presentation made by John Tuzynski, IRS's chief of employment tax, at the [American Payroll Association's] March 2009 Capital Summit.

According to the presentation by Tuzynski, the program's goal is to glean trending information in four categories: worker classification, fringe benefits, nonfilers, and officers' compensation. IRS is training fewer than 200 auditors for the program's fall audits, an IRS spokesman told BNA.

Image by Flickr user kozumel used under a Creative Commons license.