¶The absence of an updated tax gap estimate is part of a pattern across the Trump administration, which has either stopped collecting or sought to change the measurement of federal data that scientists and other researchers have long relied on for a rigorous, unvarnished understanding of the country. The Pentagon declined to provide information to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office about the cost of the war in Iran, and last year the president fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the monthly job numbers, baselessly calling the labor market data “rigged.”

¶It seems like a stretch to lump the missing tax gap estimate into a bucket with “federal data that scientists and other researchers have long relied on”, considering this apparent inconsistency in the article:

¶The I.R.S. has long published an estimate of the tax gap, the amount of tax owed under existing law that goes uncollected each year. The agency began releasing an estimate of the tax gap annually during the Biden administration....

¶So which is it—“long published” or “began releasing…during the Biden administration…”?

¶The author seems to have introduced this smudge on his work to support the assertion that the Trump administration has “stopped collecting or sought to change the measurement of federal data....” There are certainly plenty of well-known, long-standing federal data that Trump has killed or wounded that the author could have pointed to for support.

¶And, regardless, the main point is made: the I.R.S. isn’t telling us how much tax owed is unpaid. Is it more or less than the “roughly $700 billion” from the estimate released in October 2024, which is apparently the last one the agency has provided.

¶I’ll assume it’s more until I see and believe otherwise.