The Indy Star has an article entitled Tax amnesty’s take: $24M and counting, reporting –as the title may suggest– that the tax amnesty has brought revenues of $24 million in the first half of the program. However, frustratingly, the article seems to assume that the number $24 million is significant in a vacuum. I think to make useful judgments about that number we need to know how much debt the State had to forgive to get that money. If the $24 million was recovered on a total bill of $26 million, well then the program is pretty good. If the $24 million was recovered on a total bill of $100 million, then that’s not so good.
And, of course, there is always the question of whether the Daniels Administration has collected $24 million in the same way IDEM closed 90 cases. Or, possibly, we have to use a Daniels-administration-to-reality conversion chart which would bring the revenue to about $12 million.
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