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| Baucus Urges Action On US 'Tax Gap' |
by Leroy Baker, Tax-News.com, New York
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Max Baucus (D - Montana), Chairman of the United States Senate Finance Committee,
which has jurisdiction over tax and trade issues, has reiterated that finding
ways to narrow the 'tax gap' should be a major focus of long-term efforts to
reform the US tax code, alongside strengthening the economy and creating jobs.
Baucus's comments follow the recent release of the Internal Revenue Service’s
(IRS) Tax Gap Report, which found the 'tax gap', the difference between legally-owed
taxes and those actually paid to the IRS, increased between 2001 and 2006.
“This report shows that closing the tax gap needs to be a major focus
of tax reform," said Baucus. "An improved tax code that’s simple
and fair to all Americans will help close the tax gap, boost our economy and
create jobs,”
“In an era when we’re squeezing the federal budget for every dollar
of savings, we have to make every effort to recover these lost funds,"
he added. "We simply can’t afford to lose USD450bn while we’re
asking each American to pitch in to reduce the deficit.”
In fact, the new IRS figures show that the US compliance rate is essentially unchanged
from the last review covering the 2001 tax year. With estimated total tax liabilities
rising from USD2.11 trillion in 2001 to USD2.66 trillion in 2006, the tax gap
also increased from USD290bn to USD385bn over the same period. Therefore, the
estimated tax compliance reached a level of 85.5% in 2006, compared with 86.3%
five years earlier.
As part of his work on tax reform, Baucus convened a hearing last June addressing
the relationship between the complexity of the tax code and the tax gap. At
the hearing, he said Congress should pursue an effort to simplify the code and
reduce its complexity as a means of narrowing the gap. He noted that taxpayers
and businesses spend more than six billion hours each year complying with their
tax responsibilities, and the Taxpayer Advocate added that if those resources
were dedicated to one single industry, it would be one of the largest in the
US and employ more than three million full-time employees.
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