It’s apparently a good time to be a tax criminal

Data points extracted from the most recent The Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council Public Report, November 2018:

• IRS budget has been cut $14.5 billion since 2010
• Close to 24,000 jobs amounting to 25% of work force were cut
• More than 17,000 of those former employees were working in enforcement
• IRS staff is aged; 40.5 percent are eligible for retirement by 2021 and 64.5 percent eligible by 2028
• Drop in audits is close to 50 percent
• IRS Audited 0.9 percent of all returns and 1.1 percent of individual ones in 2010. It dropped to 0.5 percent of all returns and 0.6 percent of individual ones in 2017
• Fewer than 3 percent of taxpayers use the IRS online self-filing program even though 70 percent are eligible
• Internet fraud accounts for $445 billion in revenue losses
• Decrease in criminal investigations, resulting in a drop of nearly 1,700
• All this translates to a tax revenue loss of about $58 billion to $84 billion.