Tax evasion in the United States unlawful gains as income when filing annual tax returns (see e.g., "James v. United States") although such income is typically not reported. Suspected lawbreakers, most famously Al Capone, have been successfully prosecuted for tax evasion when there was insufficient evidence to try them for their non-tax related crimes. Reporting illegal income as earned legitimately may be illegal money laundering. In the United States, the IRS estimate of the 2001 tax gap was $345 billion. For 2006, the tax gap is estimated to be $450 billion. A more recent study estimates the 2008 tax gap in the range of $450 to
Tax evasion and wealth at the top, even in countries where tax compliance is generally high. We also find that after reducing tax evasion—by using tax amnesties—tax evaders do not legally avoid taxes more. This result suggests that fighting tax evasion can be an effective way to collect more tax revenue from the ultra-wealthy." HMRC, the UK tax collection agency, estimated that in the tax year 2016–17, pure tax evasion (i.e. not including things like hidden economy or criminal activity) cost the government £5.3 billion. This compared to a wider tax gap (the difference between the amount of tax that should, in