Big Brother and taxes
The IRS is offering rewards for ratting people out:
Suspect your company is cheating the IRS out of millions in taxes?
Pass along the inside information to the Internal Revenue Service and you stand to collect up to 30 percent of taxes and penalties recovered under whistle-blower legislation aimed at snaring high-dollar tax cheats.
The proposed IRS Whistleblower Office is designed to give tax agents an inside advantage when fighting complicated, often invisible tax shelters developed for and used by wealthy taxpayers and corporations.
It would go after individuals and corporations with more than $200,000 in income who use shelters that hide $20,000 or more.
Informants who blow the whistle on tax evasion stand to win 15 percent to 30 percent of the recovered taxes and penalties if they contribute substantially to the case. Those who make less substantial contributions can win up to 10 percent of recovered money.
June 22nd, 2004 at 9:28 am
You know what? I don’t really have a problem with this. Individuals and coporations who don’t pay their fair share of the tax burden shift more of that burden onto everyone else — in effect stealing from every other taxpayer.
I have no more problem with a reward for this than I have with rewarding people who report any other sort of theft.
June 22nd, 2004 at 11:36 am
SO, despite your fair share mythology, you don’t think this motivates someone to maybe fudge things and report it?
June 22nd, 2004 at 1:23 pm
SO, despite your fair share mythology, you don’t think this motivates someone to maybe fudge things and report it?
One, mythology my ass.
Two, reporting something like this is going to bring auditors a-calling; anyone doing the fudging would be subject to that audit. I’m not aware of anyone dumb enough to cook the books and then call attention to the fact that the books are cooked.
June 22nd, 2004 at 1:47 pm
If someone is in a position to “cook the books” then they’re in a position to have the axe come down on them. You would have to significantly cook the books to make any decent money (if you only get AT MOST 30%)
Now I don’t really see the agruement that you’re stealing from someone else if you cheat on YOUR taxes. That gives the impression that the government has to raise X in taxes so if someone else doesn’t pay it you have to.
June 22nd, 2004 at 1:53 pm
James:
Now I don’t really see the agruement that you’re stealing from someone else if you cheat on YOUR taxes.
Well, what happens if you cheat on your taxes? You pay less money than you should have. Where would that money have gone if you had paid it? Either to a program that your tax dollars support, or to a surplus. If enough people are cheating and in so doing withholding enough funds, one or more of three things happens: programs that would have received the money run a shortfall, and are cut back; taxes are increased to make up the budgetary gap; or deficits are racked up.
In the first case, you’ve stolen from those programs. In the second case, you’ve stolen from other taxpayers. In the third case, you’ve stolen from FUTURE taxpayers, who will have to pay back those debts.
June 22nd, 2004 at 1:53 pm
You know what? I’m even willing to concede “fair share” if it makes you feel better. Let’s make it “legal share” instead, and the argument remains precisely the same.
People not paying their legal share of taxes shifts more of the burden to law-abiding taxpayers, and that’s as good as stealing from them.
June 22nd, 2004 at 2:05 pm
tqirsch,
I agree: fair share your ass.
Taxation is theft (at least as far as an income tax goes), so to say that by refusing to comply fully with that theft someone is causing other people to be stolen from more you’re making a psuedo-valid point. Trouble is your point relies on the theft from all taxpayers to be acceptable while the increased theft from a group of taxpayers to be unacceptable.
If a store owner refuses to pay intot he mob’s protection racket you could say that person is responsible for the other people paying more as a result of the mob’s decrease in revenue, but to make the argument legitimate you have to ignore the wrongness of the protection racket to begin with.
Uncle,
They’ve had programs like this for a while. Aside from the idea of a person ratting someone out for avoiding theft I do find these kind of things funny. I mean, if the IRS help line can’t give the correct answer more than 50% of the time, then how the hell do they expect the layperson to knwo whether or not a company is using an “illegal” tax shelter? They can’t pay people to answer the phones & give the correct info but they expect someone who’s looking at up to 30% of the take to know the intricacies of the thef..er, tax code?
Sounds to me like they just want to increase the number of audits to show their doing something against those evil people & companies who try to keep what they earn.
June 22nd, 2004 at 8:07 pm
Publicola:
Oh, please, the tired old “taxation is theft” line? Give me a friggin’ break. Taxation is not only legal and but constitutional, but necessary for a civil society. If you’re that opposed to taxation, convince enough others to agree with you and elect people who will abolish it. Until then, yawn.
We have a representative government; if your representatives are doing things (like collecting taxes) that their constituents don’t want them to do, then people can vote them out. If people don’t vote them out, then the majority doesn’t agree with you, and you can kindly quit your bitching! (Actually, you can continue to complain about taxes all you want, as is your right, but the use of incendiary and inaccurate terminology like “theft” contributes nothing to the debate, apart from perhaps poisoning the well.)
June 23rd, 2004 at 6:54 am
So, as long as our representatives vote for it, it’s OK? I’m going to remember this the next time I hear people complaining about how awful the PATRIOT ACT is.
Even better, I’ll remember that part about “incendiary and inaccurate terminology” that “poisons the well” when I read about what a “dimwit Southern gunslinger” we have for a president.
June 23rd, 2004 at 10:05 am
Thib:
So, as long as our representatives vote for it, it’s OK? I’m going to remember this the next time I hear people complaining about how awful the PATRIOT ACT is.
Let’s have our elected officials openly support renewing it, and see how they do come election day, shall we?
The PATRIOT ACT isn’t the greatest example because it was a one-shot-deal (admittedly a knee-jerk reaction), and is very likely unconstitutional (although no test cases have yet made it to the SCOTUS to my knowledge). Taxes, on the other hand, are voted in time and again, and are entirely constitutional.
Even better, I’ll remember that part about “incendiary and inaccurate terminology” that “poisons the well” when I read about what a “dimwit Southern gunslinger” we have for a president.
It detracts from the debate when anybody does it, including my comptriots. That’s why I try (not always successfully) to steer clear of it whenever I can. You won’t see me defending that language, even though I must admit, it did make me chuckle.
June 23rd, 2004 at 10:23 am
No, I don’t see you defending it, but I also don’t see you condemning it as you do here. Why the double standard?
June 23rd, 2004 at 8:22 pm
Why the double standard?
What’s that thing Uncle always like to say? Something about consistency being a fine characteristic in a wine, but not so much in a human being?
But seriously, KTK wasn’t addressing me, so there wasn’t really an organic opportunity for such condemnation.
Notice, too, how you’ve helped prove my point. Publicola’s choice of terminology got us sidetracked on a debate about the terminology, and completely got us off the topic at hand. It’s a brilliant strategy of distraction. 🙂
June 24th, 2004 at 1:49 am
No tqirsch – it’s reducing a situation to its simplest components.
You feel that if a person doesn’t pay taxes they’re cheating society & those in that society. You think this is wrong.
I think that taxation is theft & is therefore wrong.
What you’re arguing is not that taxation is not theft, but that the theft is so justifiable it doesn’t deserve the bad rap that the word “theft” gives to it.
I’m just saying that you’re condoning one thing that is wrong because you agree with its result whereas you condemn another thing that isn’t morally wrong because you disagree with the result.
Oh, & before you start whining about taxation being legal & constitutional – so? If it is (& I do say if) then that’s fine & dandy, but it does not change the nature of the beast – which is taxation is theft.
An income tax like ours takes money from people (in most cases before the people receive any money themselves) whether they consent to it or not. If an objection is raised its dismissed & if you attempt to keep your money then you face the weight of the government. Most people simply accept it as unavoidable, but it does not change the fatc that the money is taken without free conset & by the threat of force. That’s theft.
You can argue that such theft is necessary & even desirable but in doing so you’re putting the needs of the many before the needs of the few or one. But before you pat yourself on the back cause we all wanna be like Spock remember that the famous Vulcan line had its origins inan earthling named Marx.
& I’ll try to spare you from other tired old points thta could poison the well, just remember that you’re thinking they’re tired & old does not make them false.
So to make it easy for you…
How can you claim that not paying taxes is stealing from your neighbors in society when you can’t even acknowledge that taxation itself is a form of theft?
& have you looked at the candidates lately per chance? Tell me of any candidate other than Ron Paul who is for eliminating the income tax? Now tell me of any candidate other than Ron Paul who has no viable competition for their seat?
If people had a choice between someone who wanted to lower or eliminate taxes & someone who wanted to keep them the same or raise them, it’d take a helluva lot of political errors on the former candidates part to lose.
I know I ramble on a bit & comments boxes aren’t the best place for a meaningful exchange, but your arguments just aren’t convincing.
June 24th, 2004 at 5:19 am
But seriously, KTK wasn’t addressing me, so there wasn’t really an organic opportunity for such condemnation.
Lame excuse. You’ve made comments condemning posts or comments of mine that weren’t addressed to you.
As far as I’m concerned, hypocrisy and inconsistency are for worse poison for the well (by the way, that’s also a lame metaphor) than “incendiary terminology.”
June 24th, 2004 at 9:55 am
Publicola: theft is what the law says it is, not what you say it is. Cheating on your taxes technically isn’t “theft,” but for the reasons Tom has pointed out, it is a very close cousin. From a purely economic standpoint, it’s no different from stealing from the government. And morally, it’s no different either, assuming your motive for robbing the government was to get “your” money back. Come to think of it, maybe tax evasion is theft after all. Lawfully holding money you know belongs to someone else, and then unlawfully appropriating it for your own use. That is the classic example of embezzlement; how is tax evasion different? In any event, it’s a serious crime, and rightly so. If you want to fight taxes (and I do), the thing to do is to pressure your legislature to lower taxes for everybody. It’s not to help yourself to your own private tax cut so the rest of us can pay more.
So you think you have a moral right to keep 100% of your earnings. Neat. You don’t have that legal right, and ultimately, that’s what matters. Some thieves probably think they are morally entitled to “their” loot, which they’ve worked hard to “earn.” Guess what, they’re not entitled to that, either? Most thieves have no rational basis for thinking the property is theirs, but some do. Take, for example, a divorcee who got a raw deal in court. He may have excellent reasons for thinking he was morally entitled to more of the couple’s property than he got. Depending on the circumstances, his justifications for stealing back “his” property may be just as strong as yours, or even stronger. Regardless, if he takes matters into his own hands and helps himself to “his” property, it’s still theft.
Your “taxation is theft” argument is bad enough, but the crap about it supposedly being illegal puts you well into moonbat territory.
If you’ve followed past political threads on this blog, you may have gotten the impression that it would be a cold day in hell before Tom and I agreed on anything. Thanks to your moonbattery (or whatever you call its right wing equivalent), that day is today.
June 24th, 2004 at 2:37 pm
Moonbattery? Is that what you call someone who has a position you don’t agree with? Nice.
As far as the legalities of the income tax are concerned, there are some very thoughful & well reasoned arguments that the system we have in place is a bit off between what the law calls for & the usual practice. But that’s a seperate issue from the one we’re discussing.
Yes, some people feel their theft is morally justified, but to say that theft is only what the law says it is isn’t totally accurate. I won’t go into any specifics but there are many situations where what’s illegal is not immoral & what’s immoral is not illegal. That’s just the way it works. & taxation – the taking of somone’s money w/o their consent through use of force – fits the general definition of theft very nicely. If you wish to argue that the theft is necessary that’s one thing as is arguing that the theft is or should be legal. But it’s still theft.
as for the embezzelment argument – sorry, it’s not compelling. When a person embezzel money it is money that definitively belongs to someone else. When a person avoids paying taxes he is keeping money that does belong to him which the government claims possession of. A better example would have been comparing tax avoidance to a person who refused to pay money to another party after a court detrmined he shoud pay it. It’s still an unconvincing argument but it’s a bit more reasonable than the embezzelment analogy.
There are two ways of looking at taxation (morally that is): one is that it is theft. The other is that it is not theft because a person’s property (money in this case) belongs to the government. The latter view raises serious problems with the concept of property rights. The former raises problems with the justness of the tax plan we have in place. whether either moral view is justifiable for a “greater good” is anoher issue altogether. The point I was trying to make wan’t so much that no one should pay their taxes but that it’s hypocritical to call tax avoidance theft when taxation itself is theft.
I’ll leave you with a bad paraphrase of Jefferson (the hero of us moonbats): the government ought to enforce the equal rights of others. I do not say the law because often the law is just the will of the tyrant.
June 24th, 2004 at 3:49 pm
Hardly. There is plenty that reasonable people can and do disagree on. The desirability of an income tax is one of them. The legality and constitutionality of said tax are not. Neither is any argument that blurs the line between theft (taking what’s not lawfully yours) and taxation (lawfully taking what YOU don’t think they should take), or between tax avoidance and tax evasion.