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 of evasion depends on the severity of punishment for evasion. Professor Christopher Hood first suggested privatization of tax enforcement to control tax evasion more efficiently than a government department would., and some governments have adopted this approach. In Bangladesh, customs administration was partly privatized in 1991. Abuse by private tax collectors (see tax farming below) has on occasion led to revolutionary overthrow of governments who have outsourced tax administration. Tax farming is an historical means of collection of revenue. Governments received a lump sum in advance from a private entity, which then collects and retains the revenue and bears the