question: How much less would we be paying in Federal taxes were it not for rampant fraud? It is really a good question. I think that virtually none of us object to paying taxes at all. What we object to is being robbed blind! It is not laudable or patriotic to overpay in taxes, it is just stupid. And writ large, this tax system is stupid…
A report from 2024 showed that the U.S. loses between $233 billion and $521 billion annually to fraud, based on data from 2018-2022. [emphasis added]
Yeah that’s sure a lot of money! You could really buy a lot of COSTCO hotdogs for that!
Oh, and a large percentage of agencies studiously avoid examining just how much they are wasting. Yes, fraud is a real problem. But I’m talking about fraud AND waste!
The watchdog said that one of its surveys from 2023 found that about one-third of the 24 federal agencies it reviewed lacked “regular” fraud monitoring or evaluation activities, and half did not make any changes based on evaluation results.
So we take in ~$5 trillion in taxes per year. That’s a lot. How much is THAT? Isn’t that more than enough? Well, it would be but for fraud and waste! So do I believe the $521 billion is the whole of it? No, not at all. I think that is probably a very tiny portion of the fraud and waste. I strongly suspect that it is closer to 2 trillion dollars.
But because of crappy accounting we can’t exactly know. And I think there is a cultural more of wasting money, and such behavior is rewarded (in next year’s budget). There is a method to this madness!
