This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Any man without a greatly above average social network is one bad tax mistake away from homelessness.
I wouldn't say I have a greatly above average social network, but even if I somehow managed to bankrupt myself, at the very least my parents would let me move in with them...
And then the IRS would start digging into your parents finances to see if anything belonging to them could be construed as belonging to you... which they would then take. Your parents might not be too hot on that idea.
I guess it's like whatever TVTrope it is where people who know things about science or history or biology are more annoyed by movies that don't even try to get it right than normies, but the sheer ignorance people post here about how federal agencies work regularly astounds me.
The IRS is actually one of the more reasonable agencies. They are subject to a lot of oversight (auditors can get in big trouble even for accidentally mistyping someone's name and pulling up the wrong file), and they go out of their way to work with people who aren't being intentionally criminal. They don't go after people on whims, people who make innocent (even if really stupid) mistakes are generally able to work out repayment terms, and even for tax frauds, the IRS doesn't even have enough resources to go "digging into" the finances of everyone related to their target just for spite and punitiveness. This scenario you have conjured in which they seize all your assets and garnish your wages forever so you are forced to live in poverty, and then try to take your parents' house, because you "made one bad tax mistake" - do you have some particular example in mind of this happening, or did you make it up?
The IRS used to be known for doing obviously cruel things, which they did on purpose because they wanted to be seen as obviously cruel so people would pay their taxes. I've heard that's no longer policy for some time now. But they still want their money, they'll still go after you like a Terminator until they get it, and they absolutely will go after people they think might be helping a delinquent taxpayer hide assets from them. The scenario I described -- owing more than you ever actually had -- was a common one during the dot-com bust. They don't garnish your wages forever -- I believe the limit is 10 years -- but they do take everything you have and garnish your wages down to what they consider subsistence levels.
When was this era of capricious cruelty? Because it's not within my lifetime or yours.
Yes, if you evade taxes, they will pursue what you owe. This is called enforcement. I don't know that the IRS is particularly more "Terminator-like" than any other enforcement agency. There are two possibilities here:
You think they are pursuing people for things that shouldn't be enforced. Your complain is with Congress - they make tax law. (The IRS has been advocating for simpler tax codes for decades. It's not the IRS that wants a tax code system so byzantine that the average person needs help from software and/or tax preparation services and still runs a risk of making an expensive mistake. Guess whose interests are served by that?)
You think they shouldn't pursue tax cheats. So... don't enforce the law, because you think taxes are bad? Again, take it up with Congress.
Yes, if you are playing shell games with friends and relatives to try to hide your assets, they will go after you (and the people you're using). That's called tax evasion.
None of this remotely resembles the scenario you described where "Poor average guy somehow accidentally finds out he owes more taxes than his total net worth and the IRS impoverishes him and then goes after his parents." That sounds like the story a dedicated tax evader might tell that should be taken with a huge grain of salt. Again, got any actual examples?
I'm not familiar with how many actual cases of this there might have been. It's possible to have massive paper capital gains which you then owe taxes on, immediately prior to a bust, so while I am not a tax accountant myself, I can envision hypothetical scenarios where a heavily leveraged person might end up owing "more taxes than he ever actually had." Color me skeptical, however, that this was common or that it didn't involve some financial shenanigans on the part of the alleged victim.
The IRS helpfully posts this information on their website. You can be garnished until either you pay off what you owe or the levy is released, and it's calculated based on standard deductions and the number of dependents. I don't know precise numbers and it's certainly possible that if you owe a lot of money (which almost always is the result of doing a lot of tax evasion), you will be heavily garnished, though hardly down to "subsistence levels." Generally speaking, the upper end of what they will garnish is more like 50%, and that's after deducting what they consider necessary for you and your dependents (not as "subsistence level").
You are just repeating J. Edgar Hoover-era just-so stories.
It's within mine. It hit its nadir when the IRS decided to raid a co-op nursery school and refuse to release the children to their parents until they signed a form agreeing to be responsible for a share of the taxes. I think this was in the 1980s but it might have been the 1970s. But even without that sort of thing, the casual impersonal cruelty of the juggernaut is quite sufficient.
I never said he was an average guy. Several people have assumed that because they have even less sympathy for a man who this might happen to (e.g. a dot-com bust principal or early employee) than to an average guy.
No leverage is required.
And this is just-worlding.
I'm pretty sure I am at least as old as you. I'm not usually one to do the obnoxious "cite?" thing, but you're going to have to give me a link, because that story doesn't ring any bells and I'm highly skeptical that it's an entirely accurate description of the case.
Okay, so give me an actual example of a rich guy this happened to, as you described it.
Then explain to me how it works. Seriously. I'll bet you cannot describe the mechanism by which someone literally owes more than they ever had. Capital gains taxes are only applied once you actually sell something. There has been discussion recently about taxing "unrealized capital gains," but that has not happened yet.
No, it's how the actual world works. You picked the wrong topic to play argument-by-vibes with me today, my friend. But go ahead, prove me wrong with some concrete examples.
The story appears in James Bovard's "Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty", page 269. November 28, 1984, the Englewood Learning Center in Allen Park, Michigan. An excerpt appears here. This isn't how I knew the story; I read it in a news publication at the time. Of course, one of the reasons the "cite?" thing is so obnoxious is the challenger rarely changes their position when the cite is provided.
You owe ordinary income on certain stock grants when they vest. You may not be able to sell at that point because of insider trading rules. It's not about unrealized gains, it's about illiquid ones.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link