Tax noncompliance

Tax noncompliance is a range of activities that are unfavorable to a state's tax system. This may include tax avoidance, which is tax reduction by legal means, and tax evasion which is the criminal non-payment of tax liabilities. The use of the term 'noncompliance' is used differently by different authors. It's most general use describes non-compliant behaviors with respect to different institutional rules resulting in what Edgar L. Feige calls unobserved economies. Non-compliance with fiscal rules of taxation, gives rise to unreported income and a tax gap that Feige estimates to be in the neighborhood of $500 billion annually for the United States.