IRS Takes Aim At High-Income Non-Filers. Will It Cut The ‘Tax Gap’?

August 13, 2020  |  The Insider: White Collar Defense and Securities Enforcement

Even before the deficit exploded as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, the federal government was running annual deficits approaching a trillion dollars due to substantial increases in spending that were not offset by additional tax revenue. One perpetual cause of shortfalls in tax revenues is the so-called tax gap, which purports to represent the difference between taxes that are owed and taxes that are paid. Last fall, I wrote about a September 2019 report in which the IRS concluded that the tax gap for 2011 through 2013 was $441 billion per year. In that report, the IRS attributed $39 billion of that shortfall to non-filers, and the IRS is now targeting that source of incremental revenue by pursuing high-income non-filers. [...]

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