The people that get convicted seems to be either rich people blatantly evading taxes or people that write entire books about not paying taxes. Last I looked at the data for a normal person to get convicted just for running late on payments you basically have to tell the IRS to go fuck themselves and then brag about it publicly and stir up enough people they have to make an example out of you so no one else gets ideas. I'm sure there's odd other examples but they seem to be rare.
By and large the IRS wants to squeeze you for what they can get, not burn up a bunch of public resources convicting people and hindering their ability to earn more money for the IRS.
The people that get convicted seems to be either rich people blatantly evading taxes or people that write entire books about not paying taxes. Last I looked at the data for a normal person to get convicted just for running late on payments you basically have to tell the IRS to go fuck themselves and then brag about it publicly and stir up enough people they have to make an example out of you so no one else gets ideas. I'm sure there's odd other examples but they seem to be rare.
By and large the IRS wants to squeeze you for what they can get, not burn up a bunch of public resources convicting people and hindering their ability to earn more money for the IRS.