Around The Water Cooler this morning, we’re diving into more statistics.  The IRS recently released its 2015 Data Book.  The following statistics are related to 2015 estate and trust income taxes and 2015 estate taxes.  There are a few tea leaves to read in the statistics; particularly the respective audit rates.

Estate and Trust Income Taxes:

Gross Collections from Estate and Trust Income Taxes:  approximately $33 Billion (a 14% increase over collections in 2014).  Gross collections from estate and trust income taxes represent 1% of total gross collections from all sources (a total of approximately $3 Trillion).

Number of Estate and Trust Income Tax Returns Filed:  3,202,706

Number of Estate and Trust Income Tax Returns Audited:  5,288 (0.17%).  The audit rate of estate and trust income tax returns is the lowest audit rate of all types of tax returns.

Estate Tax:

Gross Collections from Estate Taxes:  approximately $18 Billion.  Gross collections from estate taxes represent 0.5% of total gross collections from all sources.

Number of Estate Tax Returns Filed:  36,343

Number of Estate Tax Returns Audited:  2,770 (7.6%)

A whopping 31.6% of estate tax returns with a gross estate of greater than $10 Million were audited.  The audit rate of these estate tax returns is the second highest audit rate of all types of tax returns behind only income tax returns of corporations with total assets over $5 Billion.