Prosecuting some well-off but unknown person for deliberately underpaying their taxes doesn't have nearly the same deterrent effect as prosecuting someone more famous.

Oh, I disagree. It still has a pretty strong deterrent effect. The reason why these things are crimes, rather than just civil fraud statutes, is because the threat of going to jail has a deterrent effect whether the person is famous or not. And for that deterrent to have effect, you generally try to put people in jail that are provably committing willful fraud in their tax filings. Because you want every one who is filing their taxes to be deterred against large-scale intentional fraud.

And for that deterrence to work, you have to also prosecute the unknown well-off people. You can't have it be the rule that large-scale intentional tax fraud can land you in jail, but only if you're famous. Otherwise people that aren't famous won't be deterred at all by prosecutions against the famous. The IRS has to go after the non-famous large-scale tax frauds, too. Word gets around that if you stiff the IRS for big figures over long periods of time, they'll put you in jail if they can - famous or not.

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