Employee Retention Credit figures and Justice Department cases

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At a glance

Preview

First 10 of 42 rows · cells longer than 60 characters are cut with an ellipsis · shown as text, unformatted.

Files

Columns

Type, blanks, distinct count, and range are measured on the file. The same table as CSV: dictionary.csv.

How to use it

• Two tables. erc-official-figures.csv has one row per figure; erc-doj-releases.csv has one row per press release, and erc-doj-releases-screening.csv lists every release that names the credit.
• value_as_printed is text. The figures carry their own words and units; unit and as_of say what and when.
• Join the release tables on release_id, which the screening file repeats in table_row.
• LF line endings, UTF-8, 26,313 bytes.

Before you quote a row

• The official figures count different things at different dates. "Approximately 3.6 million" is claims the IRS had received by September 14, 2023; "nearly 5 million" is claims GAO says the IRS had processed by June 2025; TIGTA's 184,923 are returns, not claims. Quote each with its date and its unit.
• There is no official improper payment rate for the ERC. GAO reports that the IRS "did not complete an improper payment estimate for ERC, as required in law". The Treasury's PaymentAccuracy.gov page says that in August 2022 the Treasury "decided it would not report an improper payment estimate". TIGTA's "more than $2 billion" is an estimate for 184,923 returns that skipped examination, not for the program.
• IRS Criminal Investigation's counts are worded differently each time. One is "as of" a date, one is "in FY 2024", one is "from the start of the pandemic". The task force report's $2.9 billion at the end of 2023 is lower than the $3.4 billion IRS-CI gave for September 30, 2023. The rows quote each as printed.
• A release is not a case, and a charge is not a conviction. One case can produce an arrest, an indictment, a plea and a sentencing release; the table keeps each step as its own row. Charged defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty. The three defendants in the Utah case announced on February 3, 2023 were acquitted, according to the update the Justice Department added to that release.
• Sought is not stolen. 38 rows give the amount claimed from the IRS, 41 the amount paid out, obtained or on a check, 15 both and 9 neither; the two columns keep them apart. Many amounts include the paid sick and family leave credits filed on the same forms; the credits column says so where the release does. Do not add amounts across rows: releases on the same case repeat the same figures.
• Names are as printed. Spelling variants are kept (Isaiah and Isaac Aaron Tenryk; Aylissa and Alyssa Glidewell), with a note on the row.
• The site's DOJ press-release index counts fewer ERC releases, because it covers less. The index holds the 2,879 releases found by searching Justice Department press releases for ten phrases; its program column names the credit in 37 of them, all among the 98 screened here, and 40 of the 98 are in the index at all. This table was screened from all 135,405 releases in the archive's Justice Department collection.
• Only releases that name the credit are here. 24 further releases in the collection describe fraud with COVID-19 employment tax or sick-leave credits without naming the ERC; they are not in the table. Releases after September 15, 2026 are not in the collection.
• It is not a count of ERC prosecutions: the Justice Department does not issue a release for every case, and the table holds only releases in the archive's collection. It says nothing about businesses that claimed the credit lawfully, and it does not total the amounts.