This is contrary to every article I've seen on the subject.

Are you perhaps thinking of when IRS said they couldn't afford to go after wealth tax evaders because they were underfunded?

probably because high-wealth individuals have a lot more wealth preservation instruments available to them and paying a $300/hr to professionals that help them navigate these tax reduction techniques makes very little sense when youre income is less than $100k

Heard mostly it's the opposite:

By mapping audit costs and returns across the income spectrum, he continued, “We saw very clear evidence that the return from audits at the top of the income distribution really exceeded by quite a bit the returns at the bottom of the income distribution.” With the top 10 percent of earners, they found, audits have the potential to return more than $12 for each $1 spent.

https://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/07/turns-out...

thank you for sharing! i'm having trouble finding it but the explanation i gave i believe was one given by the IRS commissioner in some hearing which i took at face value, but this seems like a much more thorough analysis

That's exactly it. The earned income tax credit (EITC) is a direct transfer of money from the government to tax payers that only low income households are eligible for.

Most of the low income audits are related to the EITC, because people tend to fudge checking a box to get more money.