IRS Hopes to Stem Cheating on Taxes

The Internal Revenue Service has been waging a high-profile attack on corporate tax evaders, but the agency's new chief warns that midlevel and low-income tax cheaters had better watch out too.

"I think that we have to address this vigorously," IRS Commissioner Mark Everson said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Everson, who is six months into a five-year term, said he wants to make enforcement just as important as customer service, the agency's main focus for the past five years.

The changed emphasis comes as a survey conducted for the IRS Oversight Board shows the number of Americans who believe it's OK to cheat "a little here and there" on their taxes increased from 8 percent in 1999 to 12 percent in 2003.

IRS

n/t

you deserve to get caught...I don't care what tax bracket you are in. Cheating on your taxes is the same as stealing to me.

that the lowest income earners are the ones who end up in jail and the highest tax brackets end up paying a fine (amounting to a drop in the bucket for them) and then they walk. Money talks. If you make 15 thousand a year and hide 1 thousand of that, you are not investing that thousand, you are buying food with it, and you certainly don't have any cash to buy your way out of jail. Thus, the poorest tax evaders pay the largest price when they're caught. In a fair system, the consequences would be equal.

If they went after everybody and every Corporation that cheated, then you are right. BUT we know they will have a blind eye to the biggest cheaters.

need to be fined heavily...rarely do any need to be jailed.

on taxes when all they have to do is ask to be exempt???!!!

On the other hand, the rest of us pissants better watch out when we "cheat" by actually being self-employed or attempt to use the medical expense deduction for a long and lingering illness or a whole host of others - them breaks ain't for the likes of us!

WAR on the middle and lower classes??? More like ants at a picnic. There will be no war, just an extermination.