$511 Billion in Taxes Left Unpaid to IRS in 2018

Published by Matt Fishman on

In 2018, United States taxpayers owed the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) about $511 billion in delinquent tax debt.

Delinquent tax debt arises “when taxpayers file a return without paying taxes owed in full”.

Since 2010, over $400 billion of the taxes owed annually were left unpaid. “Most of the unpaid taxes were the result of taxpayers’ underreporting their income.”

The IRS has been able to collect “an average of $60 billion” of those unpaid taxes annually, leaving $381 billion per year unpaid, on average.

The IRS collected $3.5 trillion in taxes in 2018.