NY Times: Democrats, Bush Spar Over Tax Gap

Interesting article in the New York Times:  Democrats Seek Unpaid Taxes, Setting Up Clash, by Edmund L. Andrews:

Congressional Democrats, hoping to finance an ambitious agenda without raising taxes, are on a collision course with the Bush administration about pursuing the potentially vast amount of money that people hide from the IRS. House and Senate Democrats say the government could collect as much as $100 billion more a year by whittling the tax gap — the unpaid taxes, mostly on unreported earnings, that the IRS estimated was about $300 billion a year. But the Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, says it cannot realistically recover one-tenth as much as Democrats suggest.

(Hat Tip:  Ann Murphy.)

Update:  Wall Street Journal:  Tax-Law Crackdown To Raise $29.5 Billion, by Rob Wells.