The Internal Revenue Service is investigating UnitedHealth Group, with an initial probe determining the health care conglomerate underpaid taxes during a four-year period by funneling money through a foreign subsidiary.
The IRS is “seeking to significantly increase taxable income” from 2017 through 2020 and may force UnitedHealth to pay more “for subsequent years after 2020,” UnitedHealth revealed in a recent regulatory filing. UnitedHealth received the notices, which have not been reported, from the IRS in March.
These types of audits from the IRS are exceedingly rare and focus on how big companies transfer profits within themselves. Given UnitedHealth’s size as one of the five largest companies in the world by revenue, this examination likely involves substantial sums of money.
