Increases in tax prosecutions & convictions

[Famspear]

Tax professor Paul Caron highlights report on big increases in tax prosecutions and convictions:

http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog ... ions-.html

And see:

http://trac.syr.edu/tracreports/bulleti ... nov10/gui/

[Judge Roy Bean]

Without searching at this hour, my essentially cynical self tells me that if one were to place that trend line against something else there would be a different story.

The other nagging thought is why should it be increasing? Doesn't effective enforcement translate to fewer offenders?

And given the variances in tax law over the last seven years, is the trend even meaningful?

[$OVER1]

There are two things missing that would provide real meaning to the numbers - what is the total number of returns filed and the prosecutions represent what percentage of the filings.

Prosecutions may be up because the number of returns filed is up. Victories may be up, because there is very little new under the sun, so what is being seen is what has been seen before, which would seem to make it easier on the prosecution side.

Your mileage may vary.

Exactly.

For over 300 million residents the numbers are quite small.