• Minotaur@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Completely seriously; while I’m sure essentially no one actually does, the IRS is not going to like network with the FBI or your local police department if you, for some reason, decide to pay taxes on your weed sale profits. Unless you report that you’re selling sex slaves they seriously could not care less.

    I know it’s just a joke image but I do love the idea of someone who makes much of their money illegally but also has this very honorable commitment to paying their fair share in taxes.

    • SuperDuper@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      I know it’s just a joke image but I do love the idea of someone who makes much of their money illegally but also has this very honorable commitment to paying their fair share in taxes.

      If you’re convicted of criminal activity you’d be smart to include that in your taxes. The last thing you need is to be convicted of tax fraud in addition to getting convicted of drug trafficking. If the government already has a record of you profiting from criminal activity, make sure you give them their cut.

    • Որբունի@jlai.lu
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      10 months ago

      The grifters have succeeded 100% if you think paying taxes is honourable in any way shape or form, especially in a declining empire that fields the most onerous army in history.

        • Որբունի@jlai.lu
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          10 months ago

          If you think the State, choosing to ignore certain negative externalities through regulations — like water pollution — by not holding the guilty parties accountable and pushing up pollution targets, is going to get you clean water, as opposed to any other system where accountability is not distorted by coercitive rules that are almost impossible to challenge: I don’t know how any more naive that position could be. When pollution is not associated with having to pay for cleanup and the financial consequences are negligible, even the stock market picks up on it and publicised major pollution events don’t mean a company’s valuation plummets.

          I didn’t know weather forecasts and bridges were more difficult for people not paid by taxes.

          • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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            10 months ago

            Are you suggesting a privatized National Weather Service and toll bridges would be better? If so, I have a nice bear-ridden town in New Hampshire you might like to move to.

            Regulations are exactly how you deal with negative externalities.The EPA makes corporations pay for reducing pollution and cleanup. Why do you think corporations target EPA so much? Because EPA costs them money. Never hear any corporations whining about that free taxpayer-funded geological data coming out of USGS

      • Minotaur@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        Idk man I’ve worked in social services under a multitude of government funded grants and I’m pretty sure tax evasion is extremely bad for many of the homeless veterans / abused children / etc I’ve worked with who are dependent on said grants.

        • Որբունի@jlai.lu
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          10 months ago

          Because when the Fed sends trillions of dollars into the money supply and the federal and State governments create budgets they are less responsible than people doing their best to give the minimal required amount that won’t get goons sent to their house to kidnap them?

    • Mak'@pawb.social
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      10 months ago

      …I do love the idea of someone who makes much of their money illegally but also has this very honorable commitment to paying their fair share in taxes.

      There’s, perhaps, a more practical explanation. As I’ve read before (in some other phrasing): If you’re going to commit a crime, commit only one at a time.

      In this case, if you’re going to make your money illegally, for goodness’ sake, don’t evade taxes.

      • GregorGizeh@lemmy.zip
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        10 months ago

        Also on virtually every gangster or crime movie/series there is either a bad guy getting caught by irs(?) agents for tax evasion, or plays it super safe and pays them diligently to avoid that very scenario.

      • Delphia@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        This is absolutely it.

        Its just one less way that they can come at you, it also means its harder for them to confiscate your property as proceeds of crime.

      • Jimbo@yiffit.net
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        10 months ago

        Seriously though, some people have almost pulled off some crazy illegal shit and then got caught because a headlight was out or someone was doing something stupid. If you’re going to commit crime, one at a time.

      • garbagebagel@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Wasn’t that one woman who lied about cancer and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars fully brought down for tax evasion because they couldn’t really get her on much else? The scamanda woman

  • Jarlsburg@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    It sounds odd but there was a Supreme Court about it. Essentially someone claimed they shouldn’t have to pay taxes on the profits of crime and the Court ruled they did. So they had to create a way for people to do that. For what it is worth, the 5th amendment protects you from incriminating yourself, so you are allowed to decline to provide the details of where the money came from, but it’s a bit like paying your parents for something you broke and then just not telling them what it is, and then expecting them not to look around the house.

    “it would be an extreme if not an extravagant application of the Fifth Amendment to say that it authorized a man to refuse to state the amount of his income because it had been made in crime. … He could not draw a conjurer’s circle around the whole matter by his own declaration that to write any word upon the government blank would bring him into danger of the law.” … "It is urged, that, if a return were made, the defendant [Sullivan] would be entitled to deduct illegal expenses, such as bribery. This by no means follows, but it will be time enough to consider the question when a taxpayer has the temerity to raise it.”

    United States v. Sullivan, 274 U.S. 259 (1927)

  • blackbrook@mander.xyz
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    10 months ago

    So then if you get caught and these are taken away from you, I assume you can declare it as a loss and get an equivalent deduction the next year? I wonder if anyone’s ever used this to their advantage to game their tax rates?