"Big Six" Draft White Paper on Tax Gap

Six of the nation's largest CPA firms have collaborated on a white paper and submitted it in late May to then-Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Mark Everson with a series of recommendations on strategies to close the $300 billion tax gap. The letter, submitted by executives from BDO Seidman, Deloitte, Ernst & Young, Grant Thornton, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, told Everson that strategies to narrow the massive payment fissure should encompass such areas as targeting the service's efforts toward high-risk areas of noncompliance, making better use of technologies, and establishing measurable milestones over reasonable time frames to monitor effectiveness. The paper also held tax preparers' feet to the fire as a part of the problem stating that in some cases, the preparers "failed to inquire for complete facts or otherwise facilitating noncompliance. Initiatives directed at improving the performance of paid tax return preparers and strengthening the integrity of the tax system should be undertaken as part of any strategy to improve voluntary compliance and reduce the tax gap," the paper said.