http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/20/business/20tax.html?hpOn Tuesday the Senate Finance Committee will hold hearings on tax shelters that, committee aides said, will feature testimony that tax cheating continues unabated and that the numerous crackdowns announced over the past two years by the Internal Revenue Service have had almost no impact.
The committee's leaders, Senators Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, and Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana, have been frustrated by their inability to get Congress to finance a serious assault on tax cheats, aides said yesterday. This hearing, which will feature a witness hidden behind a screen with his voice altered, is intended, in part, as a well-aimed kick in that direction.
In the aftermath of corporate scandals that emerged two years ago, Congress enacted changes and increased by a third the Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement budget, but it did not pass any laws to attack abusive tax shelters or finance a serious hunt for tax cheats.
A consultant's report, prepared for the I.R.S., but kept secret by the agency until now, is expected to show that corporate tax cheating in 2000 cost the government $14 billion to $18 billion.
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One witness is scheduled to appear behind a screen, his voice altered, a tactic usually reserved for Mafia turncoats, spies and in 1997 for some I.R.S. agents who feared the loss of their jobs for speaking out. The leasing expert is being shielded because of fear by security advisers to the committee that "if his name became public it would not be healthy for him.''
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