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Uncollected Taxes Almost Equal to National Budget Deficit

You have ten days left to file your federal taxes. Thanks to Republican budget cuts and propaganda, that’s probably how long you’ll spend on hold with the IRS at this point if you call in with any questions.

Once you file, there is less than a 1% chance that the IRS will audit your return. For the most part, the IRS will take us at our word, because they don’t have the time and resources to do otherwise.

How much tax revenue goes uncollected because of our underfunding of the Internal Revenue Service?

The IRS estimates that the “tax gap,” the taxes owed that aren’t collected, came to about $385 billion in 2006, the last year the agency calculated it. That’s the equivalent of about $448 billion in 2015 dollars, nearly big enough to eliminate this year’s entire federal budget deficit of $468 billion [Doyle McManus, “The IRS Is Actually a Model of Efficiency,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2015.04.05].

Increasing funding for the IRS would decrease the federal deficit. That’s not magic; that’s sensible government.

2 Comments

  1. mike from iowa 2015-04-06 07:50

    The IRS actually works which is why wingnuts hate it.And of course it isn’t like they haven’t used it to their advantage over the years-harassing political opponents. And there is something on the order of 21 trillion bucks in offshore accounts that Uncle Sam has a vested interest in collecting taxes on. Wingnuts will come up with a repatiation act for those revenues in which the gubmint pays interest to the taxpayer scofflaws when they bring that money back home.

  2. Deb Geelsdottir 2015-04-06 21:13

    Cory said, “that’s sensible government.” And that’s exactly the problem Congressional Republicans have with that. Their corporate owners don’t want sensible government.

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