Money Minute: It’s not just Mitt; many try to limit taxes [Video]

Mitt Romney’s tax returns may be one of the top stories of the day. But in the bigger scheme of things, the amount he’s paid (or not) is just a drop in the bucket.

People and businesses underpaid their taxes by an estimated 17% in the most recent year studied, according to our friends at the Internal Revenue Service. That means they failed to send the government about $450 billion that Uncle Sam had been hoping to see.

The IRS study covered 2006, the most recent for which the agency has data available. The amount of underpaid taxes far exceeded the size of the entire federal budget deficit at the time, the Associated Press reported.

After IRS audits and other enforcement efforts, non-compliance shrank to 14%, leaving the final amount of unpaid taxes at $385 billion. That’s still larger than the budget deficit for fiscal 2006, which was $248 billion.

The IRS says it’s busting its hump to crack down on tax scofflaws. Nevertheless, tax pros say there’s no reason to believe that today’s compliance rate has changed significantly from the 2006 figures.

And the national debt just keeps on growing.