Gap between state taxes owed and paid: $624M-plus
Readers, pardon an old reporter and allow me just one more long, satisfying beating of what for many readers is a dead horse.
A couple of months back, for the fourth time in the last four years, this writer examined once again the maddening reality that in these years of tight state budgets, budget cuts, state retirement system woes and other economic manifestations caused by the global recession, state government is doing an ineffective job of collecting the taxes due under the state’s existing tax structure.
That reality creates, according to State Auditor Stacey Pickering and his staff, a “tax gap” of as much as $624 million that isn’t collected because the State Department of Revenue lacks the resources and staffing to close that gap.
Clarion Ledger
4/10/12
