Running for President? I have an idea to curb tax cheating that you can steal for your campaign. (Tax cheating is estimated to cost the U.S. Treasury something like 300 billion dollars a year.)
Create a national lottery tied only to the filing of tax returns – you file, you have your ticket. The IRS picks the winners randomly, and your refund includes your national lottery winnings.
The only catch? You get audited.
If you cheated on your taxes -- failed to report substantial income, used some kind of sneaky overseas tax shelter, or wrote off some large and imaginary expense -- then sorry, no winnings, just the regular legal and financial consequences.
I leave it to the candidate to develop the specifics as to how many winners and winnings it would take to work correctly for both individuals and corporations.
Just credit me with the idea if you use it. I would like to note that I am opposed to a national lottery for any other purpose.
But I will bet that if we implemented this suggestion we would collect a lot more money and get a lot more honest tax returns.