The change from fewer business tax audits that are more in-depth to audits that are less detailed represents a fundamental shift for the agency.

With corporate tax receipts at record lows, IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson recently declared that corporate audits, which now take an average of 38 months, should be completed in less than half that time.

Everson believes that by hastening the audits, the IRS will collect more taxes because more companies will fear that audits are coming.

He said dramatic change is necessary to overcome the agency's "scandalous" complacency in a worrisome deterioration in corporate attitudes toward paying taxes.

Corporate auditors are still finishing work on tax returns from 1997, or even earlier, he said. The IRS was not even a "player" in uncovering the corporate scandals that erupted in the late 1990s because "we were not even near the year these returns were filed, which is inexcusable," said Everson, who took control of the agency in May.