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How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

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Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#31

Post by ataggart »

tptacek wrote: post #7

For those of you who don't want to go through the trouble of tracking down the unredacted full article, here're the nut grafs: The U.S. has been rewarding people who turn in fellow citizens or companies defrauding government programs since Congress's passage of the False Claims Act in 1863. Whenever there has been an income tax—briefly during the Civil War, and permanently since 1913—the IRS (or its predecessor) has…

>I think we all want you to act.

I'll go on record and state that I am not to be counted in that number.

Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#32

Post by roel_v »

tptacek wrote: post #7

For those of you who don't want to go through the trouble of tracking down the unredacted full article, here're the nut grafs: The U.S. has been rewarding people who turn in fellow citizens or companies defrauding government programs since Congress's passage of the False Claims Act in 1863. Whenever there has been an income tax—briefly during the Civil War, and permanently since 1913—the IRS (or its predecessor) has…

Actually, I would hope that they would pursue those cheating for 1000's just as hard as those who cheat for 1000000's, corporation or not.

Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#33

Post by roel_v »

wisty wrote: post #11
tzs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax laws generally start out simple, then get complex patching holes. My favorite example. Once upon a time a long time ago, a company wanted to pay a dividend to shareholders. That would be taxed as ordinary income to the shareholders. The company's accountants had a brilliant idea. 1. Do a stock split. Say, 105 for 100. 2. Do a stock buyback, where the company buys back 1/21 of the outstanding shares. Net result to…

Why should income and capital gains be taxed differently anyway? If it's to stop Grandma getting hit with a huge marginal tax when she sells her house (despite it being a once-off kind of thing), just introduce some kind of smoothing. If your income is uneven, the tax man can give concessions (if you get a lot of money after a period of low income), and rebates (if you have a low income period after making a lot of m…

Because of incentives, because the actions that created the capitals gains in the first place were already taxed, to be able to correct for the self-employed who incorporate vs those who don't (situation of getting dividend on 5 stocks Coca Cola is very different from being a sole proprietor and paying yourself effectively through dividend), to keep the administration sane (how can you smooth a windfall like selling a house? You'd have to do it over 10 years or so, how are you going to keep track of that? What if the person moves, across the country or abroad? etc...)

None of it is as simple as it looks - there is a reason we ended up in the situation we are now. Nobody likes it, the IRS itself the least. It's not a matter of saying 'oh let's just start from scratch'. (See also: 'second system syndrome', which applies to law just as much as to software)

Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#34

Post by yaix »

dantheman wrote: post #21
wisty wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should income and capital gains be taxed differently anyway? If it's to stop Grandma getting hit with a huge marginal tax when she sells her house (despite it being a once-off kind of thing), just introduce some kind of smoothing. If your income is uneven, the tax man can give concessions (if you get a lot of money after a period of low income), and rebates (if you have a low income period after making a lot of m…

Because income and capital gains are two different things. Capital gains should be lower because there is a risk that you may lose money, if you add a high tax on top of that lots of investments become not worth it.

If you start a company and then pay yourself part of the earnings, there is a risk too that the company goes bankrupt. If you specialize in an industry and get a paid job, there is a risk too that you dont find a job or get laid off. I dont see how the risk of capital investments is any different to other kinds of investment that would justfy it to be taxed differently. A better explanation would be the higher capitalization of the groups lobbying for a lower tax for that income group.

Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#35

Post by artsrc »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #23
wisty wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should income and capital gains be taxed differently anyway? If it's to stop Grandma getting hit with a huge marginal tax when she sells her house (despite it being a once-off kind of thing), just introduce some kind of smoothing. If your income is uneven, the tax man can give concessions (if you get a lot of money after a period of low income), and rebates (if you have a low income period after making a lot of m…

> Why should income and capital gains be taxed differently anyway? Because of inflation, because there's already a corporate income tax.

The correct way to deal with corporate income tax is to have corporations disburse their income, and to disburse the tax credits along with the income.

The correct way to deal with inflation is to to keep it low, and understand that inflation + capital gains tax creates an effective wealth tax, and that some wealth tax in the mix, along with income and consumption taxes, is a good thing. Inflation is not, and should not, be taken into account on term deposits for the same reason.

Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#36

Post by bradleyland »

dmlorenzetti wrote: post #20
feydr wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whooooahhh buddy -- did you just seriously have the audacity to use the phrase "other people's money" wrt to collecting taxes?? Seriously??

Since bradleyland stated It's not even their money! This is their employees' withholding tax. , it appears the point was the malefactors withheld money from their employees, and then failed to pass it along to the feds. Hence, if I read OP correctly, the money in question was taken from their employees.

You nailed it. It's one thing to skip on your own taxes. I fully grok the philosophical disagreement that objectivists have with taxation, but to misappropriate someone else's tax funds is theft, plain and simple.

Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#37

Post by Astrohacker »

georgieporgie wrote: post #26
Astrohacker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I find it disturbing that other commenters in this thread would evidently use this program if they had a chance. I can sense the downvotes already... but let me explain why this program is terrible. If I charged everyone a tax, and threatened people with violence if they didn't pay up, then everyone would recognize it was wrong. When government does it, the brainwashed masses think it's a good thing. But it i…

government is immoral. Government is therefore a criminal organization Well, the simplest of the logic errors there is that one. Immoral does not equal illegal. I'm not even going to get into the fact that it's not always wrong to force people to do things.

> Immoral does not equal illegal.

I meant criminal as in immoral, not as in illegal. Obviously the government is going to declare its taxes legal.

> I'm not even going to get into the fact that it's not always wrong to force people to do things.

There are cases where it's OK to force people to do stuff, just like there are cases where it's OK to kill someone. But those cases are rare. Government employs force beyond those rare moral cases, and is therefore immoral.

Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#38

Post by Astrohacker »

robryan wrote: post #15
Astrohacker wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I find it disturbing that other commenters in this thread would evidently use this program if they had a chance. I can sense the downvotes already... but let me explain why this program is terrible. If I charged everyone a tax, and threatened people with violence if they didn't pay up, then everyone would recognize it was wrong. When government does it, the brainwashed masses think it's a good thing. But it i…

How do you propose public services are paid for and law and order is maintained?

Public services would be provided by businesses like everything else. "Law and order" would be maintained primarily the way it is now, which is through social custom. But since there would still be aggressors, you would have to pay for private security. And you would probably want to carry a weapon with you.

All of these issues are discussed extensively in the libertarian literature. Murray Rothbard and Stefan Molyneux are good places to start.

Re: How to turn in your tax-cheating neighbor

#39

Post by georgieporgie »

Astrohacker wrote: post #37
georgieporgie wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

government is immoral. Government is therefore a criminal organization Well, the simplest of the logic errors there is that one. Immoral does not equal illegal. I'm not even going to get into the fact that it's not always wrong to force people to do things.

> Immoral does not equal illegal. I meant criminal as in immoral, not as in illegal. Obviously the government is going to declare its taxes legal. > I'm not even going to get into the fact that it's not always wrong to force people to do things. There are cases where it's OK to force people to do stuff, just like there are cases where it's OK to kill someone. But those cases are rare. Government employs force beyond…

I meant criminal as in immoral, not as in illegal.

That's not what criminal means. Except in the sense of "deplorable and shocking" criminal means "of or relating to a crime." Crime means "An action or omission that constitutes an offense that may be prosecuted by the state and is punishable by law". Crime has one non-legal definition, "An action or activity that, although not illegal, is considered to be evil, shameful, or wrong" but that's the sense applied to, for example, Apartheid, not to organized crime.

But those cases are rare.

No they aren't. I put a fence around my property to force people to go around it. It works 24x7x365. If people choose to circumvent that fence, I will personally force them to leave my property. This will happen precisely as often as people choose to bypass my fence.

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