March comes to a close today, which means that tax day is just over two weeks away. William Raabe , tax professor at [The] Ohio State University , expects tax cheating to increase under the Obama Administration. Raabe is one of four participants in an online quorum at the Freakonomics blog about tax cheating. He writes that cheating occurs when three conditions are met: "inclination, reward, and opportunity." In tough economic times, Raabe writes, people are more inclined to cheat, and the rewards are that much greater as money is harder and harder to come by. And, "opportunities to cheat on one’s taxes tend to arise when structural changes in the tax law occur." The Obama team seems to favor the use of tax credits against the federal income tax to carry out the stimulus, health, energy, and education agendas that it is committed to. Tax credits, though, have been easy for tax cheats to use. The Earned Income Tax Credit, a federal welfare system mainly for low-income families, is notorious for attracting improper behavior, often via false taxpayer names and ID numbers. Education credits can be overstated when the taxpayer self-reports qualifying expenditures for supplies and travel. Oversight of energy credits (say for “green” home improvements) is almost nil. So the increased use of a credit of this sort by itself over the next few years will trigger new tax cheating. Read Raabe's full post, along with other analysis from the Freakonomic Tax Cheating Quorum , here .