New Deputy Treasury Secretary To Pursue America's Tax Cheats

Mike Godfrey, Tax-news.com, Washington

02 April 2001

Since before George W Bush was sworn in as the new US president, Kenneth Dam, a professor of American and foreign law at the University of Chicago, was being widely tipped to become deputy Treasury secretary. Speaking to a Senate Finance Committee at the end of last week, the nominated Dam - who has still not been confirmed in his post - said that once in office, he would be in hot pursuit of America's tax cheats.

Dam is a strong supporter of the tenets of the president's tax cut plans, yet will obviously not take any nonsense when it comes to tax collection. When questioned by Democrat Max Baucus of the Senate Finance Committee about reports that a growing number of US citizens were finding ways to avoid paying taxes, Dam assured him that tax compliance would be at the top of his list.

Baucus told Dam that he was concerned over accusations that Americans were becoming 'more shameless about how they dodge the IRS.' The US Treasury Department oversees the operations of the IRS, so Dam was asked what the Bush administration planned to do in terms of devoting greater resources to the Internal Revenue Service. The answer was computers. The IRS will be allocated more resources to upgrade its IT equipment to make tax collection more efficient and less fallible: 'It is important that every American pay their fair share', said Dam.

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