The new "equity" frontier: IRS audits

I see no reason to change algorithms that are facially neutral as to race merely because they disproportionately identify blacks for audits. To do so smacks of partiality. Furthermore, to the extent that blacks make a disproportionately large number of one type of mistakes, it’s far from clear that they well fare better under a system that focuses on different kinds of mistakes. (What we really need is radical reform of our tax system to eliminate the complexities that are causing taxpayers of all races to make so many mistakes.)

In any case, if there’s something wrong with the algorithms, the solution is to change them — not to have taxpayers identify their race to the IRS.