Why are lawyers who are convicted of willful failure to pay taxes (state, federal, other) treated more leniently in discipline than lawyers who steal or "borrow" from escrow accounts or charge their firms for client expenses they did not have?
I've seen this pattern consistently over the decades. Tax cheating is still stealing and unlike many of the escrow invaders or expense account padder, the tax cheat is convicted of a crime. There are exceptions of course, but the pattern is persistently there.