Tax Lawyer's Blog

WebCPA reports that the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division (CID) is getting closer to meeting its objectives for combating tax evasion, corporate fraud, financial crime and even terrorism, according to a new report from TIGTA:

[The] Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration noted that the division’s current strategic plan calls for it to maintain a focus on legal-source tax investigations, to combat corporate fraud and terrorism, and to reduce the number of days to complete an investigation, among other priorities.

“Our report found that the IRS’s Criminal Investigation Division is generally reaching its objectives,” said TIGTA Inspector General J. Russell George in a statement. “The statistics validate that legal-source tax and tax-related investigations are a top priority for the CI Division.”

TIGTA found that CID demonstrated its commitment to pursuing legal-source tax and tax-related investigations as its top investigative priority. The CID achieved its fiscal year 2009 goal, spending 52.4 percent of its time on legal-source tax work and 72 percent on total tax investigations, a 10-year high in both areas.

This step up in criminal tax enforcement is evidence that the White House is serious about its efforts to close the tax gap.

The tax gap is the difference between the correct amount of taxes that the IRS should collect from taxpayers and the amount it actually does collect.

The IRS estimates the annual tax gap to be $300 billion.¹

The tax gap is a form of government waste and, while it’s complete elimination is, of course, impossible, the government has no business raising the taxes of honest, law-abiding Americans until it is reduced to a reasonable level.

Footnote:

¹  For a detailed discusion of the tax gap go to The Tax Policy Institute’s The Tax Gap: What is the Tax Gap?

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