I enjoy Jon Tevlin's columns very much anyhow, but I did even more so when he wrote on May 16 about the comeuppance of a proliferate tax cheater ("Tax cheat is about to get his (way over) due").
There's so much angst these days about deficits, and calls to cut this and that are very loud, but so little is heard about the equally important part of the problem: tax evasion.
A study from the IRS in 2009 showed a shortfall of $380 billion that year because of people not paying taxes they should have.
Over a small number of years, that would add up to trillions and would certainly do wonders for deficit reduction.
Most of us earning paychecks all our lives had little opportunity to cheat the government with this tax loophole or that, or with a variety of tax dodges that currently go on.
Then almost inevitably we are told that we are the ones who must learn to do with less and not to expect so-called "entitlements" such as Social Security, into which we have paid all of our working days.
It's past time for a far wider and pervasive crackdown on a practice that some consider clever, but which is really perniciously crooked.
GREG VAN HEE, PERHAM, MINN.
