Tax evasion

===United States===
{{Further|Tax evasion in the United States}}
In the United States of America, Federal tax evasion is defined as the purposeful, illegal attempt to evade the assessment or the payment of a tax imposed by federal law. Conviction of tax evasion may result in fines and imprisonment.<ref>26 U.S.C. § 7201.</ref>

The [[Internal Revenue Service]] (IRS) has identified small businesses and sole proprietors as the largest contributors to the tax gap between what Americans owe in federal taxes and what the federal government receives. Small businesses and sole proprietorships contribute to the tax gap because there are few ways for the government to know about skimming or non-reporting of income without mounting significant investigations.

{{As of |2007}} the most common means of tax evasion was overstatement of charitable contributions, particularly church donations.<ref>{{cite news |first=Patricia |last=Sabatini |newspaper=Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |title=Tax Cheats Cost U.S. hundreds of billions |url= http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/07084/772106-28.stm |date=25 March 2007}}</ref>

====Estimates of lost government revenue====
The IRS estimates that the 2001 tax gap was $345 billion and for 2006 it was $450 billion.<ref name="tax gap report">{{cite web|title=Tax Gap for Tax Year 2006 Overview Jan. 6, 2012|url=https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-soi/06rastg12overvw.pdf|publisher=U.S. Internal Revenue Service|access-date=2012-06-14}}</ref> A study of the 2008 tax gap found a range of $450–$500 billion, and unreported income to be about $2 trillion, concluding that 18 to 19 percent of total reportable income was not being properly reported to the IRS.<ref name=Cebula/>