From the article:
The season of W-2s and 1099s is nearly upon us. As millions of Americans gear up for the annual national agony of filing tax forms, a minority are deciding how much of their income they actually want to report. Almost $400 billion in federal revenue is lost to tax cheats each year—much of it connected with firms and individuals under-reporting the income they make from selling goods and services to consumers.
One way to deal with that problem is to encourage consumers to report how much they’ve spent and where they spent it, providing a check on the sales figures. The city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, has found a way to encourage people to accurately report that information: It pays them for it. The result has been a dramatic rise in tax revenue. It’s time to try something similar in the U.S.
Read the full article here.
