I guess you skimmed the article or just missed it..like I said this is a very conservative estimate(studies were paid by IRS) and does not include tax planning...
"Adding an IRS budget of about $10 billion produces the overall collection cost estimate of $135 billion. This is 14.5% of individual and corporation income tax receipts in fiscal year 2004, and about 1.2% of 2004 GDP."
I guess you skimmed the article or just missed it..like I said this is a very conservative estimate(studies were paid by IRS) and does not include tax planning...The Arthur D. Little study that grossly overstates the compliance burden was paid for by the IRS. They used it until relatively recently. And now they are paying IBM. I don't think the IRS paying for a study affects the outcome one way or the other.