Hello Ben,
The concept you asked about -- the difference in the amount IRS
collects and the amount it would collect with 100% compliance -- is
known in the business as the "tax gap". If you search this phrase in
Google (with the quotation marks), you'll come up with a ton of
resources.
Here are a few of the more notable ones of recent vintage:
http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/2004test/072104metest.pdf
WRITTEN STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER OF INTERNAL REVENUE MARK W. EVERSON
BEFORE THE COMMITTEE ON FINANCE UNITED STATES SENATE HEARING ON
?BRIDGING THE TAX GAP? July 21, 2004
"The IRS does not have the information needed to make reliable
estimates of the filing noncompliance and reporting noncompliance
components of the tax gap, the relative sizes of these three main
components to the tax gap, or the total size of the current tax gap.
...Simply put, the information on noncompliance currently available to
the IRS is over 15 years old, and in many cases even older. The IRS?
Taxpayer Compliance Measurement Program (TCMP) last evaluated data
from 1988."
http://finance.senate.gov/hearings/testimony/2004test/072104rwtest.pdf
Statement of Raymond T. Wagner, Jr. Member, Internal Revenue Service
Oversight Board Testimony Before the Senate Finance Committee July 21,
2004 Hearing on Bridging the Tax Gap
"Mr. Chairman, the National Taxpayer Advocate reported in her 2003
Report to Congress that the IRS has estimated the gross tax gap for
2001 as approximately $311 billion. This amount is the difference
between what taxpayers pay voluntarily and what they are supposed to
pay. The IRS also collects approximately $55 billion as a result of
late payments and additional enforcement activities, so the net tax
gap for 2001 was estimated at about $255 billion....These numbers
sound precise, but they are in fact estimates. The exact size of the
tax gap is uncertain. The Commissioner made this point in testimony
earlier this year before both the House and Senate Appropriations
Committees. Current estimates are based on a model developed under the
now-defunct Taxpayer Compliance Measurement Program (TCMP),last used
in 1988. The program?s model was extended to 2001 based on current
demographics, but assumes that taxpayer behavior remains the same."
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=96708,00.html
Individual Tax Statistics - Tax Gap
[there are links to a series of reports at this site]
Hope this information meets your needs. But before rating this
answer, please let me know if there's anything else I can assist you
with.
All the best,
pafalafa-ga
search strategy: Google search on ["tax gap"] |
Clarification of Answer by
pafalafa-ga
on
13 Dec 2004 11:21 PST
Hey Ben, nice to hear from you.
I did see your other question, but truth be told, the US is so much
more data-rich than other countries, that I didn't think there was
much chance of finding the type of info you're looking for on an
international scale.
The closest I came was this October 2004 OECD report (a useful
resource for international financial comparisons, by the way):
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/44/19/33818656.pdf
Compliance Risk Management:
Managing and Improving Tax Compliance
The only really quantitative information on non-compliance in the
entire report is shown in Figure 5.2 and comes from...surprise!...the
US.
I wish I could point you to as more complete source of info, but alas,
I suspect that one doesn't exist. You may want to contact the authors
of the OECD report, however, to see if they're aware of anything.
All the best...
paf
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