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BahRamYou  5mo ago (lesswrong.com)   Edited 5mo ago   2074 thread views

Thoughts on the LessWrong "don't pay taxes" post?

lesswrong.com

There was a recent post on lesswrong, which also got highlighted on AC10, that struck my interest. It claimed that he had been avoiding taxes for 20 years through "one simple trick:" filing, but not actually paying them. The idea is that the IRS is so small and incompetent that they basically won't do anything against this sort of passive resistance.

Is this too good to be true? I'm not any sort of "effective altruist," I just don't want to pay taxes. And as it happens, I have a lot of capital gains income this year. According to the rules, I'm supposed to write the IRS a big check by Jan 15 for "estimated taxes." I can afford it, but it would make my life better to keep that money for myself. Can I just... not...? This feels like a real Matrix, red pill moment-

"You're telling me that I can dodge taxes?" "No. I'm telling you that when the time comes- you won't have to."

Then again... I really, really don't want to go to prison. even just getting my passport suspended would be a major hassle. And the guy who wrote that post seems like a real hippy... no bank account and no salary income??? how does he live?

Perhaps it would be better to set up a shady small business and claim all sorts of vague tax deductions. Thoughts on this?

btw: long time lurker, first time poster. I'm asking here because you seem like people who are smart, outside-the-box, and not simps for the government.

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The idea is that the IRS is so small and incompetent that they basically won't do anything against this sort of passive resistance.

Author wrote about it also on https://sniggle.net/TPL/index5.php?entry=19Mar23

And this indicates that you need to restructure your life, give up passport, lower income AND hope that IRS will stay incompetent and will not use its power to seize what you owe. And maybe also put into prison.

This is terrible idea, as expected.

The total amount I owe at this point is well over the threshold at which the IRS is supposed to notify the State Department that I ought to be forbidden a passport and perhaps ought to have my passport revoked. It took the agency longer than I expected, but they eventually submitted this notification a few years back.♦ This means that the State Department could revoke my passport at any time, and in any case is not supposed to allow me to renew it when it expires. So far they have not revoked my passport.

BTW, given "Last year, when another year of my tax debt became uncollectible due to the statute of limitations" it seems that IRS funding really should be increased.

Yeah that is an important caveat. Thanks for catching that. Seems like this guy has very much devoted his life to this strategy. Interesting that the IRS did come after him, but they only took a relatively small amount of money from him, and didn't actually take his passport. Even though he's publicly encouraging tax fraud, so he really seems like the sort of person they'd want to make an example of. He does have some useful tips for legally reducing taxes though.

So he claims. I wouldn’t follow advice from this poster. Risking tax fraud for…small sums of money is insane.

well, its not that small. its like 20-40% of all the money you ever earn, which compounds over time.

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