Oregon becomes the first state to opt into the IRS Direct File program. Direct File allows taxpayers to file their taxes online for free directly to the IRS. The agency pilot-tested the program this spring in Arizona, California, Florida, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Nevada, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming. This year, Oregon’s Department of Revenue offered its own version of Direct File through its website. 

TIGTA: IRS will no longer target an audit rate of 8 percent of households with income above $10 million. In its report released this week, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) found that the IRS had complied with a 2020 Treasury directive to audit at least 8 percent of individual income tax returns of those with income over $10 million. But The IRS will discontinue the effort at the end of 2023, after determing the audits were unproductive. The IRS is now following a 2022 Treasury directive that no Inflation Reduction Act funding be used to increase the audit rate of taxpayers with incomes below $400,000. 

Five killed in tax protests in Kenya. After thousands of protesters stormed Kenya’s Parliament and lit part of it on fire yesterday, police fired live bullets on unarmed protesters, resulting in multiple injuries and five deaths. Kenya’s ruling party, led by President William Ruto, introduced Finance Bill 2024 yesterday. The bill calls for increases in income taxes, excise duties, and value-added taxes, and introduces new income tax categories. 

G-20 set to consider a billionaires’ tax in July. Gabriel Zucman, of the Paris School of Economics and University of California at Berkeley, shared his technical proposal to create a coordinated minimum tax on the 3,000 individuals in the world who hold over $1 billion in wealth. His proposal, commissioned by the government of Brazil, calls for a 2 percent minimum tax. Finance ministers of member nations of the Group of 20 will gather in Rio de Janeiro next month to debate the plan, which could raise as much as $250 billion per year.  

Denmark will impose a carbon tax on farms. Starting in 2030, the Danish government plans to impose a tax on livestock carbon dioxide emissions. It will be the first country to do so. The tax, expected to pass in Danish parliament, will tax farmers 300 Danish crowns ($43.16) per ton of carbon dioxide emissions in 2030. The levy will climb to 750 crowns by 2035.