Treasury: Top 1 percent responsible for $163 billion in unpaid taxes
The U.S. loses roughly $163 billion each year in taxes owed and unpaid by the richest Americans, the Treasury Department estimated in a Wednesday blog post defending President Biden's tax plan.
In a post calling for stronger enforcement of tax laws, the department calculated that the top 1 percent of Americans by annual income are responsible for roughly 28 percent of all lost tax revenue.
"Today's tax code contains two sets of rules: one for regular wage and salary workers who report virtually all the income they earn; and another for wealthy taxpayers, who are often able to avoid a large share of the taxes they owe," wrote Natasha Sarin, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy.
Biden has proposed spending hundreds of billions of dollars to boost tax enforcement and close the "tax gap," the gulf between the amount of money owed to the federal government in taxes and how much of that the IRS is actually able to collect. The Treasury Department estimated that the gap between paid and owed taxes was about $600 billion in 2019, and IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig has suggested that it could be as high as $1 trillion annually.
https://thehill.com/policy/finance/571316-treasury-top-1-percent-responsible-for-163-billion-in-unpaid-taxes?amp&__twitter_impression=true
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