Not sure where GP got his/her numbers, but the $3 to $1 ratio is way off. Maybe it was describing the marginal rate for additional collection of unpaid taxes? US federal income and payroll tax receipts for 2018 was approx $3,000 billion, while the IRS budget for 2018 was only $11.7 billion, a ratio of approx 256 to 1.
It makes sense that the rate at the margin would be much higher than the overall rate, you've already collected all the low-lying fruit, now you're going after the scofflaws trying to avoid paying anything.
> Not sure where GP got his/her numbers, but the $3 to $1 ratio is way off. Maybe it was describing the marginal rate for additional collection of unpaid taxes? US federal income and payroll tax receipts for 2018 was approx $3,000 billion, while the IRS budget for 2018 was only $11.7 billion, a ratio of approx 256 to 1.
That's including all the taxes paid by people with unchallenged tax returns. That's basically just the cost of processing the checks. It's quite a lot more expensive to get money from someone who filed a fraudulent return and you have to do an audit to get them to pay. Especially when a lot of the audits you do won't turn up any real fraud.
It makes sense that the rate at the margin would be much higher than the overall rate, you've already collected all the low-lying fruit, now you're going after the scofflaws trying to avoid paying anything.