The tax gap again: Latest estimate is $1 trillion/year

Tax gap again? Awww, jeez, yawn . . . . . CRASH . . Hey! Ouch! 

(sound of sleeping person falling off their chair onto the floor

and waking up in a transient state of pain and confusion)

OK, this is the last time I'll bring it up. (For now) I know it is a boring topic. I get it. Taxes -- boooorrringgg.

Two posts here in March 2021 focused on the tax gap (here and here). Short story shorter:

Size of tax gap (unpaid taxes each year):

IRS estimate about 10 years ago: ~$440 billion/year

Janet Yellen estimate last month: ~$600 billion/year

Germaine the Magnificent estimate last month: ~$700 billion/year

IRS commissioner Charles Rettig estimate a few weeks ago: ~$1 trillion/year (Tax cheat response to that: Yabba dabba dooo!!!)

Darned Germaine, he just can't get his numbers straight. Bad, bad Germaine. Go sit in the corner.

The New York Times writes:

The United States is losing approximately $1 trillion in unpaid taxes every year, Charles Rettig, the Internal Revenue Service commissioner, estimated on Tuesday, arguing that the agency lacks the resources to catch tax cheats.

The so-called tax gap has surged in the last decade. The last official estimate[1] from the I.R.S. was that an average of $441 billion per year went unpaid from 2011 to 2013. Most of the unpaid taxes are the result of evasion by the wealthy and large corporations, Mr. Rettig said.

So, when republicans whine and complain about the federal debt and horrible democratic spending, they are just full of bullshit.[2] Absolutely full of it. Hypocrite republicans in congress have been actively blocking funding for the IRS to enforce tax laws for decades. To date, their success in their 'I hate government' and 'taxes are theft' exercises have probably cost the Treasury at least about $10 trillion since 2000 and it will cost at least another ~$7.5 trillion (probably ~$10 trillion) by 2030 if nothing is done to fix the problem (assuming one sees and treats it as a problem -- not all people do, e.g., tax cheats, most or all congressional republicans and most other government and tax haters like most libertarians are).

Unless I'm mistaken, that's a lot of money.

Question: Am I mistaken?

Footnotes: 

1. I'm not sure the last IRS estimate was "official" in the sense of a detailed analysis like what was done in 2001 and 2006. The 2001 and 2006 data points were what I used to get my ~$700 billion/year tax gap estimate. My take of the ~$440 billion estimate from about 10 years ago was that it was intentionally underestimated to keep the GOP in congress from flying into another fit of irrational self-righteous rage directed at the IRS. This whole mess could be significantly worse than my estimate from 2000 until now.

2. A Washington Post opinion piece observes:

Why is this? Because Congress has starved the IRS of funds needed to patrol the increasingly complicated tax code it created. The IRS chief noted that the vast majority of the tax gap comes from uncollected (i.e., evaded) taxes on corporations and the rich. Think of it as an extra tax cut for corporate America and for the super-rich. (The Wall Street Journal cites “[t]he growth of cryptocurrencies and foreign-source income, as well as outside estimates that suggest a tax gap of $7.5 trillion over the next decade.”)

The notion that Republicans are friends of working-class Americans is laughable, given that they have been the ones to cut corporate and high-income individual rates, create new and arcane tax breaks ($74 billion was lost as a result of the 20 percent deduction for S corporations in the 2017 tax cuts), and deny the IRS the ability to collect from the rich.

Not sure it's laughable, but it is something that deserves to have a label(s) stuck to it, e.g., disgusting, incompetent, hypocritical, corrupt, really corrupt, profoundly corrupt, super duper pooper corrupt, etc.