Check out this Reuters story by David Cay Johnston: More Than 100 Million Unnecessary Tax Returns Filed Each Year. Highlights follow —
On March 28, the U.S. Justice Department sought to close a nationwide chain of income tax preparation shops it accuses of fraud.
Individual income tax returns … for most people are make-work that creates a drag on the economy, provide tidy revenues for Intuit, the maker of TurboTax software, H&R Block and other legitimate corporations that profit from preparing tax returns.
Riling up voters against the Internal Revenue Service attracts votes and campaign donations.
The average time for each criminal tax prosecution the Justice Department completed last year was 740 days, more than double the 345 days in 1992. Last year, the Justice Department completed only 3,656 criminal cases in which tax was the main charge.
Canada, with a ninth of the U.S. population, listed all 204 tax convictions last year at the Canada Revenue Agency’s website.
