Tax Compliance: Inflation Has Significantly Decreased the Real Value of Some Penalties

United States. Government Accountability Office.

United States. Government Accountability Office.

关键词: Government accountability -- United States.;    tax policy and administration;    justice and law enforcement;    tax compliance;    letter report;   

RP-ID  :  GAO-07-1062
RP-ID  :  265638

美国|英语

来源: UNT Digital Library

【 摘 要 】

A letter report issued by the Government Accountability Office with an abstract that begins "Civil tax penalties are an important tool to encourage taxpayer compliance with the tax laws. A number of civil tax penalties have fixed dollar amounts--a specific dollar amount, a minimum or maximum amount--that are not indexed for inflation. Because of Congress's concerns that civil penalties are not effectively achieving their purposes, we agreed to (1) determine the potential effect of adjusting civil tax penalties for inflation on the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) assessment and collection amounts and (2) describe the likely administrative impact of regularly adjusting civil tax penalties on IRS and tax practitioners. GAO examined IRS data on civil tax penalties and conducted interviews with IRS employees and tax practitioners."