The U.S. government needs more money. In an election year, ideas about how to get it are lobbed back and forth on debate stages. We have former president Donald Trump’s massive tariff proposal on the one hand (and the costs it imposes on everyday Americans), and Vice President Kamala Harris’s ideas around raising taxes. Politics aside, there is another way to generate government revenue that neither candidate is talking about—and it doesn’t cost the average taxpayer anything: stopping tax fraud and recouping the money tax fraudsters have stolen from U.S. coffers.
The IRS’s latest estimate is that there were approximately $688 billion in unpaid taxes in fiscal year 2021 alone. The government anticipates collecting only about $63 billion of that sum. To close this massive gap, the IRS needs the help of insiders who are willing to expose what goes on behind closed doors—and it must be willing to protect them and reward them for doing this public service.
