Taxpayers have used financial derivatives to lower their tax liability in ways that the courts have found improper or that Congress has disallowed. Taxpayers do this by using the ease with which derivatives can be redesigned to take advantage of the current patchwork of relevant tax rules. As new products are developed, IRS and taxpayers attempt to fit them into existing "cubbyholes" of relevant

The federal tax system contains complex rules. These rules may be necessary, for example, to ensure proper measurement of income, target benefits to specific taxpayers, and address areas of noncompliance. However, these complex rules also impose a wide range of recordkeeping, planning, computational, and filing requirements upon businesses and individuals. Complying with these requirements costs

Foreign and U.S. tax administrators use many of the same practices such as information reporting, tax withholding, providing Web-based services, and finding new approaches for tax compliance. These practices, although common to each system, have important differences. Although differences in laws, culture, or other factors likely would affect the transferability of foreign tax practices to the Un

We found the following: (1) Thousands of Recovery Act contract and grant recipients owe hundreds of millions in federal taxes: At least 3,700 Recovery Act contract and grant recipients--including prime recipients, subrecipients, and vendors--are estimated to owe more than $750 million in known unpaid federal taxes as of September 30, 2009, and received over $24 billion in Recovery Act funds. This

At least 3,700 Recovery Act contract and grant recipients--including prime recipients, subrecipients, and vendors--are estimated to owe more than $750 million in known unpaid federal taxes as of September 30, 2009, and received over $24 billion in Recovery Act funds. This represented nearly 5 percent of the approximately 80,000 contractors and grant recipients in the data from www.Recovery.gov as

Foreign and U.S. tax administrators use many of the same practices such as information reporting, tax withholding, providing web-based services, and finding new approaches for tax compliance. These practices, although common to each system, have important differences. Although differences in laws, culture, or other factors likely would affect the transferability of foreign tax practices to the U.

State issued passports to about 16 million individuals during fiscal year 2008; of these, over 224,000 individuals (over 1 percent) owed over $5.8 billion in unpaid federal taxes as of September 30, 2008. State is not authorized to restrict the issuance of passports to individuals because they owe federal taxes. In addition, federal law does not permit IRS to disclose taxpayer information, includ

We found: (1) As of March 18, 2011, IRS had processed about 73 million returns and issued about 65 million refunds totaling close to $193 billion. (2) The percentage of e-filed returns continues to grow, which remains important because it significantly reduces IRS's costs and speeds refunds. For fiscal year 2009, IRS reported that it costs 19 cents to process an e-filed return compared to $3.29 f

(1) IRS has taken several positive steps to implement the mandate, such as communicating the details of the implementation and publishing proposed regulations for public comment. However, paid preparers raised concerns regarding the proposed regulations, especially with respect to their timing. The proposed regulations were issued approximately 1 month before the effective date. IRS officials tol

We identified 81 areas for consideration--34 areas of potential duplication, overlap, or fragmentation as well as 47 additional cost-saving and revenue-enhancing areas. The 81 areas span a range of federal government missions such as agriculture, defense, economic development, energy, general government, health, homeland security, international affairs, and social services. Within and across thes