Senate Seeks Suggestions for Closing the Tax Gap

Over the summer, I signed a letter with over ninety other tax professors calling on Senator Baucus to end his block of Eric Solomon’s appointment as Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy until the Treasury produced a specific plan for closing the tax gap. In response, I received the following letter yesterday from the Senate Finance Committee, requesting my "suggestions on ways to improve compliance with our tax laws, including specific recommendations to reduce the tax gap":

4 responses to “Senate Seeks Suggestions for Closing the Tax Gap”

Richard Murphy

March 22, 2007

This is a multinational issue
You might be interested to look at my UK report ‘Mind the Tax Gap’ available at http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2006/12/08/ho-w-much-does-tax-evasion-cost-the-uk-start-at-£75-billion/
Richard Murphy

Alex

March 22, 2007

Advocate for increased state efficiency in unemployment payments. For example, states could use automatic deposit rather than mailed check, this would:
1) Assist unemployed individuals who need funds more rapidly and aid in their job search by forcing them to spend less time on administrative tasks;
2) Provide a clearer mechanism for tracking funds sent to those individuals;
3) Provide a quick audit test for individuals that are interested in being “on the grid” and those that are not interested – thereby providing a useful test pool for collections;
4) Increase federal revenues by increasing payments and reducing delay;
5) Not raise federal taxes;
6) Reduce state budgets in the long term because of reduced costs of e-payments;
7) Be consistent with assisting individuals making a transition in work without unnecessarily burdening the system;
8) Provide job opportunities in state technology spending, further facilitating growth in key financial data infrastructure, which might long-term lead to private-sector innovation as well.