On February 24th (year-end September 30, 2013). There were significant increases in criminal enforcement activity. Fiscal year 2013 saw a 12.5% increase in investigations initiated compared to the prior year and nearly an 18% increase in prosecution recommendations, despite a 5% decrease in staffing.

The IRS Criminal Investigation Division (CID) initiated 5,314 cases and recommended 4,364 for prosecution. The IRS only prosecutes cases that it firmly believes it can win. Convictions for tax crimes rose 25% compared to the prior year and the conviction rate was 93%.

One of the areas that the IRS focused on in fiscal year 2013 was identity theft. CID initiated over 1,400 investigations of identity theft and recommended prosecution in over 1,250 of them.

The IRS is involved in a large range of tax crimes, in addition to other crimes such as money laundering, public corruption, terrorist financing and the financial crimes associated with narcotics trafficking.

The report, which highlights many of the specific cases that the IRS successfully prosecuted during the year can be found here: http://www.irs.gov/pub/foia/ig/ci/REPORT-fy2013-ci-annual-report-02-14-2014.pdf , the IRS released statistics relative to its enforcement efforts for the 2013 fiscal year.