People Twitter

9542 readers

1882 users here now

People tweeting stuff. We allow tweets from anyone.

RULES:

Mark NSFW content.
No doxxing people.
Must be a pic of the tweet or similar. No direct links to the tweet.
No bullying or international politcs
Be excellent to each other.
Provide an archived link to the tweet (or similar) being shown if it's a major figure or a politician. Archive.is the best way.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

SendMeYourTaTas@sh.itjust.works

pelespirit@sh.itjust.works

1397

Did you pay your taxes? (infosec.pub)

submitted 1 week ago by thal3s@sh.itjust.works to c/whitepeopletwitter@sh.itjust.works

133 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Related: Robert Reich posted earlier today that Tesla paid ZERO taxes on $5 billion in sales (earnings?), so that’s just fucking great.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

it's not a matter of you respecting them. it's a matter of whether or not it's economically or legally worthwhile.

if the fine for cheating on my taxes is less than the tax i'd pay (and the returns I'd get on investing those taxes) it's worth it.

People behave according to incentives. If the penalty for under reporting your taxes was 20 years in jail and it was rigorously enforced, people would not cheat on their taxes as much. However, the punishment is:

In cases of substantial understatement, the accuracy-related penalty is 20% of the portion of the underpayment of tax.

So basically if I get caught, all I do is pay more tax, which might be scary to lower income people, but for rich people who can get MASSIVE returns on their untaxed income, it is stupid not to do it. if I can save 10,000 per year and invest it and turn it into 400K after ten years, then the 20% extra tax I'd pay on that withheld 100K is a not much of a penalty at all. It's 20K or 5% of the money I now have from cheating on my taxes. and even if i only double my money to 200K, I'm still only paying 10% of what I have earned.

shouldn't the penalty be 500K? that would make cheating on my taxes more costly than not cheating.