According to the latest edition of the Internal Revenue Service’s Statistics of Income Bulletin the number of US citizens with more than $250,000 in adjusted gross income dropped by 5 per cent, from 3 million in 2007 to 2.84 million in 2008.

Taxpayers earning over $1 million, however, were much more likely to be audited in 2008, according to data released by the IRS and reported in Investment News.

Audits of taxpayers earning between $1 million and $5 million soared by about 45 per cent last year to 18,585, from 12,746 in 2008; while taxpayers earning between $5 million and $10 million last year  increased 17 per cent, from 1,784 in 2007 to 2,090 in 2008.

Those earning more than $10 million were audited 9 per cent more in 2008 than the year before .

Nonetheless, odds of being audited for those income levels remained relatively low: 5 per cent for those earning between $1 million and $5 million, 7.5 per cent for those earning between $5 million and $10 million and under 11 per cent for those earning $10 million and above.