Mind the Gap

I used to be mystified by this. . .

IRS Measures $300B Gap in Unpaid Taxes

Americans' unpaid taxes are now topping $300 billion a year, with people who underreport their income the biggest culprits.

The government is also losing hundreds of millions of dollars each year because Internal Revenue Service computers don't record interest due on penalties for those unpaid taxes.

The IRS estimated the tax gap, the difference between taxes owed and taxes paid, after auditing 46,000 people and combining those findings with older estimates of unpaid corporate, payroll and unemployment taxes.

The report Tuesday estimated the gap at $312 billion to $353 billion for 2001, about 15 percent of the total taxes owed. Taxpayers were slightly less likely to comply with tax laws than they had been at the time of the latest previous study, completed in 1988.