Attacking the Tax Gap?
The stories have been spreading all over the media on how the IRS needs to stop all of those nasty tax cheats who are stealing from the government. As always, one of my biggest pet peeves about this issue is the way journalists accept the amount of the Tax Gap as gospel when it’s nothing more than a WAG (wild ass guess) by IRS. Could the journalists be afraid of offending the IRS by pointing out the simple fact that measuring unreported income and taxes with any degree of accuracy is impossible?
My other pet peeve about this issue is the sweeping generalization that everybody is a tax cheater, when the truth is that most people overpay their taxes because of their confusion and lack of understanding of how to effectively reduce their tax bills.
A couple of recent articles I came across: