Authored by Jeremy Portnoy via RealClearInvestigations,
Americans underpaid their taxes by an estimated $696 billion in 2022, according to new data released by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
Most of the money came from people and businesses that understated their income. But 9% came from people who didn't file a tax return at all, and efforts to track them down have been slow-moving as the Internal Revenue Services' case log remains backed up.
Key facts: The IRS' backlog of cases increased when its office buildings closed during the Covid-19 pandemic, but the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 appropriated supplemental funding to help resolve the delays.
However, Congress reduced that funding in 2025, and the Trump administration laid off 28% of the IRS' workforce. As a result, "the IRS no longer has the resources to pursue all delinquent filers," according to the inspector general.
The inspector general found that nearly 39,000 people with incomes of $400,000 or more were notified in early 2024 that they had not filed a tax return. As of December 2025, the IRS had not followed up with almost 34,000 of them. Their unpaid taxes are worth an estimated $15.7 billion.
For another almost 11,000 delinquent tax returns, the IRS placed the case in its enforcement queue, instructing agents to take measures like garnishing wages or bank accounts. As of December 2025, 9,4
