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or, if you’re a billionaire:
IRS: “meh just pay whatever. or nothing idk–we’re not going to check anyway”
Or that the IRS don’t have the jurisdiction to check how much the billionaire have in their off-shore accounts.
“Uh… $1?”
“Jail. 🙂”
Now now, let’s not pretend that you’ll go straight to jail.
First they audit you for two years, combing through every single thing while causing constant stress, and then you go to jail.
Because you didn’t keep that receipt from the Amish store where you got snacks on a road trip.
Let’s not pretend that jail is common at all except in cases of blatant fraud.
The American right wing has been screaming about taxes being theft for so long that most actually believe it, but my experience with the IRS is that while an audit is stressful, the IRS will actively work with you. Provided you’re honest with them.
They will work out payment plans that are usually less than you actually owe, plans that will not ruin you.
As a kid you’re kind of told to fear the IRS and trust cops. The opposite is the truth.
Also, if you’re a drug dealer or not in the country legally, they have special ways for you to pay taxes that are not reported to any other government agency.
But there’s a massive industry built around making the average American fear and hate the IRS, mostly based on lies and rich people fraud.
Yeah that’s one of the plotlines in Everything Everywhere All at Once
Yeah, can’t you plea the 5th for the occupation field on your tax forms?
The “occupation” field is only used by the IRS for statistical purposes. You could put “nerf herder” in there and it wouldn’t really matter.
Sir/Ma’am/Enby, this is a shitpost.
Damn it, there Amish that’s a charitable tax right off!
You gotta itemize to do that. Hope you kept every receipt that’s now faded to near-illegibility, or it’s the Standard Deduction for you!
Next scene: A morbidly obese, monocle-wearing greasy business man with a very nice suit, top hat, and cigar steps in to say “See, young fella, he ain’t allowed to tell you what you owe him. That’s the law in these parts, but if you’d like to know what you owe, I’d be happy to tell ya! For a modest fee, of course.”
Well thats not quite right, the IRS really doesn’t know. They have a very rough idea maybe, but the whole point of audits is they just spot check a small percentage of the population to try to keep everyone honest.
I thought that was what the gubmint guy looked like. The first one to tell him stuff would be a moderately obese guy with a patchy tweed suit, a see-through green visor, and three hairs on his head. That’s what accountants look like. The gubmint guy, he struts up and down and says “now I say now I say look here, in this book here I got it says in that’s right in the code i said the code of federal regulations here in Title 2 Subtitle A Chapter I Part 180 Subpart F section 180.630 that a federal agency may impute the fraudulent, criminal, or other improper conduct of any officer, director, shareholder, partner, employee, or other individual associated with an organization to that organization when the improper conduct occurred in connection with the individual’s performance of duties for or on behalf of that organization, or with the organization’s knowledge, approval or acquiescence. The organization’s acceptance of the benefits derived from the conduct is evidence of knowledge, approval, or acquiescence. Ain’t that wild.”
also, especially fuck the irs because they handed over info on immigrants to ice.
Now look here son, you’re going to head on over to the barber shop. Pay him $20, and he’ll let you know how much you owe me. Give him what you owe me, and then he’ll see that it gets back to me.
Me and him have a prior understanding see, and that’s just the way things work around here.
Sort of implies we have standing and an effective weapon against them.
You can always stop paying
they can garnish
Not really.
Good ol’ Scooter. Apparently the fish cost 3.80 Deutsche mark back in the day.
The IRS doesn’t know how much you owe. You may choose to file in different ways, have side gigs, spend money on deductible or credit-eligible expenses, or qualify for certain breaks. It’s your choice to depreciate or carry over certain items. Only you know that your spare room was rented for 5 months or the cost basis for the bitcoin you sold.
if you work one job and have no complications like that - the 1040EZ is what you’re asking for. But still not the government’s role to tell you or sign your name to it.
It obviously doesn’t have to be this way. All that information can be itemized and tracked automatically, the IRS just doesn’t do it that way because it predates the telephone.
In the US, that would require either dramatically simplifying the tax code or attaching your social security number to a hell of a lot more transactions. Medical expenses over 7.5% of income are deductible, so the IRS would need to know every time you buy aspirin, and CVS or Kroger or wherever you buy that needs to log your social security number. Educators are allowed to deduct the cost of school supplies, so the IRS would have to know every time they buy crayons (and whether those crayons are personal or classroom). Certain home improvements, so Lowes needs your SSN. If the guy you sold your PS3 to on Facebook is trading them as a business, then IRS probably needs you to report that transaction.
My bank already knows every time I buy stuff from the pharmacy. It also knows when I buy school supplies. It also knows when I buy hardware or materials for home improvement. It might not know if I sold my PS3 on Facebook, but Facebook certainly knows. Sometimes it’s ambiguous, like if I go to a big box retailer and buy drywall+aspirin+groceries it’d all be lumped together, so a little bit of modification would need to be done to how receipts are tallied and how the software works. This seems trivial, though.
And the government certainly knows, too. Hell, other governments probably know enough about me to file my taxes.
The biggest obstacle would be edge cases, like selling my PS3 to my neighbor’s kid in cash. There’s no record anywhere. In that case, yeah, it makes sense to require me to file because I need to create a record of the transaction myself.
In all other cases, this is just busy work. The information is already out there and already in ten different databases, it just isn’t being connected together because the IRS was created in a time when having such a complete digital transaction history was essentially impossible and because we want to pretend that we don’t live in a panopticon.
I use cash almost everywhere I can, and want as much as possible to avoid the pervasive data collection and handover that you endorse.
I don’t agree that “they already know” - and fight such efforts instead of taking them for granted.
And for you, you should have to file your own taxes.
But if I’m going to be giving all my data to every agency on Earth they might as well do my fucking taxes for me.
They could send people “simple returns” where all they have to do is sign it. Most people would fall into this category. Ronald Regan even had this idea.
Trump killed that project https://www.marketplace.org/story/2025/11/12/trump-kills-irs-direct-file-what-now
That’s not what that was, but it was free and I used it, it was great
Conspiracy myth alert: What if the US tax office is intentionally rage baiting their middle class to sell tax reductions? /s
Hum… AFAIK Trump was the one that killed their project to auto-fill people’s data and bring them to the 21st century.
So… You used the wrong subject on that phrase.
Intuit and HR Block have been trying, and successful at killing that program since at least the 90s.
Written by a person that has never done taxes before.
It is only illegal to not file. You don’t have to pay taxes. [Also be ready for a court case]
If I pay state but only file federal, can I claim the federal government is taxing me without representation?
You’re going to rack up crippling fines. My mom couldn’t file because she started getting Alzheimer’s and they garnished her social security to the point she couldn’t afford to exist or get any care……this country is evil
