Nearly 50% of the returns filed by overseas citizens or resident aliens report no tax liability, primarily as a result of sections 911 and 901 of the Code. In addition, even among those overseas citizens or resident aliens who have been found by IRS not to have filed returns, the provisions of sections 911 and 901 still may operate to eliminate or reduce significantly the amount of U.S. tax owed.7 For example, in one IRS compliance initiative, which the Government Accounting Office (the “GAO”) studied in a 1993 report, Tax Administration: IRS Activities to Increase Compliance of Overseas Taxpayers (the “1993 GAO Report”), out of 176 overseas taxpayers that IRS contacted who hadn’t filed returns, only one owed U.S. taxes, totaling $9,595. Similarly, in another initiative, only $2,126 was owed from a group of 140 delinquent filers, and in a third only $5,345 was owed from a group of 62 overseas nonfilers. See 1993 GAO Report, at 9-10.8 Although these samples are clearly too small for any definitive general conclusions to be drawn from them, Treasury believes the samples do indicate that with respect to U.S. taxpayers working overseas, a taxpayer’s failure to file a U.S. tax return does not necessarily indicate that the taxpayer is not paying the taxes he or she owes to the United States. Therefore an initiative aimed merely at increasing overseas filing compliance may not necessarily raise sufficient revenue to justify the cost of such an initiative.
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