Associated Press: IRS to the rescue? Tax audits eyed for infrastructure cash

The Internal Revenue Service has estimated the tax gap is $440 billion per year. But IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig stunned his audience at a recent Senate hearing when he offered a new number: about $1 trillion annually.

The old estimates don’t take into account the recent boom in income made by self-employed “gig” workers, which can be underreported, concealed offshore income and the rising use of cryptocurrency, which makes it hard for the IRS to identify taxpayers in third-party transactions, experts say.

The $1 trillion figure “is not crazy. That’s totally possible,” says Steve Wamhoff, director of federal tax policy at the left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Read more

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