Tax Cheats Costing U.S. $1 Trillion a Year, IRS Estimates (1)

The head of the IRS calculated that tax evasion in the U.S. may total $1 trillion a year, a figure that is multiples higher than previous estimates from the federal government.

Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Chuck Rettig told a Senate panel Tuesday that previous tallies of the tax gap -- which came to a cumulative amount of about $441 billion for the three years through 2013 -- didn’t include some tax evasion-techniques that weren’t on their radar at the time.

New estimates include the use of cryptocurrency, he said. Offshore tax evasion, illegal income that goes undetected by the IRS ...