Researchers Evaluate Explanations for IRS Risk

Researchers and IRS collaborators empirically evaluate explainability techniques using real, line-by-line IRS audits in a peer-reviewed article accepted 02/18/2026. They decompose aggregate tax under-reporting into constituent line-item misreporting, compare local explanation models with direct constituent-risk estimation and rule-based heuristics, and find local explanations depend on model quality and often fail to recover true risks. The findings advise caution using explanations in high-stakes settings.