I.R.S. Cracks Down

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The NYT had a good piece this morning about plans by the I.R.S. to turn over 12,500 tax deliquency cases to private collection agencies. There are two interesting features to this story. First, the I.R.S. believes that it will get less money by turning these cases over to private collection agencies than if it pursued the cases itself. (Well, someone has to help out the collection agencies -- life's tough out there.) The other interesting part of the story is that the I.R.S. is only turning over cases where the back taxes owed are less than $25,000. While this still amounts to a nice hunk of cheating (about 5 times the average cash TANF grant for a year), the industrial strength tax cheats will still not have to worry about annoying calls from bill collectors.

--Dean Baker

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