ISTR that, years ago, Alan Wolfe drew on data showing increasing rates of tax evasion in Scandinavian countries in the book, _Whose Keeper?_. He said that people were increasingly looking for ways to dodge their tax burden as the power of the narrative that helped people understand why it's important to pay taxes dissolved. (This was in the context of an argument that gettin gpeople to honor their debt to those they don't know and will never know in a complex society, was successful in the context of a shared cultural narrative of citizenship. As that broke down, people didn't feel the need to comply.) It's on pp 173-178 http://www.escholarship.org/editions/view?docId=ft9k4009qs&chunk.id=d0e5043&toc.id=d0e4830&toc.depth=1&brand=eschol&anchor.id=JD_Page_173#X
Also, don't they go after people receiving things like EITC far more than anyone else. I once heard that on WMNF radio program about the EITC and taxes. Google quickie: http://www.urban.org/publications/900641.html http://www.slate.com/id/1005162/
But anyway, another story: A guy from my home town was thrown in the fed pen because he was ripping off the state sales tax system *and* paying people partially in cash to avoid paying the full load on employment tax, ss, fica, unemployment tax, etc. I don't know if the government ever got the money because, hear tell, his mistress had already absconded to FL with it. Years later, I was poking around and ran across him and the woman who was his mistress archived in video footage from CBS. Apparently, he got out of prison, and life went on. They were both living happily ever after. They were featured on some morning news show. She'd written in to explain why her ex-convict hub deserved to see an LA Dodgers (Hi Dennis!) game and visit Tommy Lasorda or some such.
The video was hilarity on ice to anyone who knew the characters in question. When my sister worked for him, I used to call him the mole. He was rumored to be kingpin of the local mafia and, to get to his office, you had to maneuver through the maze-like halls to a dark, cave like office where he'd host whoever was there to explain they couldn't pay that month. Screaming and shouting would ensue. Those stories always gave a special, locally inflected flavor to my own reading of The Sopranos. She, twenty years his junior, working at the same joint, with the wife coming in to visit and everyone acting as if there was no affair going on. It's hilarious to observe their revisionist reconstruction of how it was about "going out" together. heh heh heh. "going out". heh.
Trivia bit: the woman in video used to be married to Elf keyboardist, Micky Lee Soule.