The nation is loosing up to $40 billion in revenue per year from tax avoidance, according to a story in today's Washington Post.

The story also indicates that "...efforts to shift resources to the problem have slowed considerably, even as the extent of the problem has unfolded."

In fact, according to the story, last year the IRS commissioner admitted that "79 percent of identified taxpayers who use abusive devices such as offshore accounts are not pursued."

Frankly, the unwillingness to persue tax evaders is an insult to those of us that pay what we owe.

GAO Finds Increase in Tax Evasion (washingtonpost.com)

Abusive tax-avoidance schemes -- especially illegal offshore credit card accounts -- may be proliferating considerably faster than the Internal Revenue Service expected for the last fiscal year, and the agency is not dedicating enough people and resources to combat the problem, the General Accounting Office has found.

The GAO report, to be released publicly today, said the IRS recently told the White House that over the past two years it has linked more than 400,000 taxpayers to tax-evasion schemes that the agency says are likely to be found illegal. That number is considerably larger than the 131,000 the agency reported to congressional investigators this fall.