5 ms·
The income tax is a grotesque violation of Human Rights and should be abolished. Threatening to throw someone in prison for refusing to disclose their income or
by aminok 10y ago
The income tax is a grotesque violation of Human Rights and should be abolished. Threatening to throw someone in prison for refusing to disclose their income or hand over a share of the currency they receive in private trade is antithetical to a free society.
- koralatov 10y agoI can't tell if this is satire or not.
- aminok 10y agoWhat part of it resembles satire? There's nothing funny about throwing someone in prison.
- aninhumer 10y agoUnless it's because they tried to use some resources that the government assigned you exclusive rights to, then it's an integral part of a free society?
- Dylan16807 10y agoAnd there's nothing funny about underfunded critical community services.
- aminok 10y agoThrowing people in prison for not funding something, even if it is critical, is wrong..
- pdkl95 10y agoFailure to pay income tax is not a crime punishable with prison time. If you cannot pay, all the IRS will do is arrange for future payment through civil methods (e.g. garnishing future wages, putting a lien on your house, etc). If your poor, the IRS won't throw you in jail. However, if you have a reasonable source of income, you will be asked to pay your share of the services you're using[2]. Note that tax evasion/fraud[1] is illegal, which may be difficult to distinguish in some cases. [1] not to be confused with tax avoidance [2] services like national security, various types of infrastructure, verification and enforcement of safety regulations (e.g. no melamine in your food). You may not like all of these services - I certainly disagree strongly with some - but citizenship is not à la carte[3]. If you don't like some things your tax money is going to, I encourage you to participate in the political process so your opinions are heard, or even run for office yourself. [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSQCH1qyIDo#t=219 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSQCH1qyIDo#t=219
- aminok 10y agoRefusal to report your private income (surrender your financial privacy) is punishable by prison. >If your poor, the IRS won't throw you in jail. However, if you have a reasonable source of income, you will be asked to pay your share of the services you're using. This is false. The government does not ask. The government demands and punishes non-compliance with expropriation of private property and or prison.
- pdkl95 10y ago> Refusal to report your private income (surrender your financial privacy) is punishable by prison. Of course. You still have to file tax forms, and if you have the money you have to pay it. The situation I'm referring to is how not having the money to pay taxes is only a civil offense. Failure to file or filing fraudulently are, of course, offenses that risk jail time. > This is false. I suspect you're conflating filing the tax paperwork (i.e. 1040 and related forms) with the actual payment. These are separate requirements with different potential punishments for non-compliance. > The government does not ask. Obviously.
- aminok 10y ago>Failure to file or filing fraudulently are, of course, offenses that risk jail time. So the income tax is a grotesque violation of Human Rights and should be abolished.
- Dylan16807 10y agoI fail to see how it's a violation of human rights to make fraud illegal.
- aminok 10y agoIt's a human rights violation to demand someone give up their privacy and disclose their income, and then to demand that they hand over a share of the currency they receive in private trade. To even categorise refusal to disclose one's personal income as "fraud" (which is an entirely different behavior) is political language to rationalise this human rights violation.
- nicky0 10y agoFound the libertarian.
- aminok 10y agoHow sad that you have to be a libertarian to oppose throwing nonviolent people in prison. This should just be common sense, not libertarianism.
- aninhumer 10y agoSo you don't support the enforcement of property rights? Since that involves throwing non-violent people in prison after all. (And to predict a common argument, I do not consider taking someone else's property without the use of force to be a violent act.)
- aminok 10y agoViolating someone else's property rights is violent. One's exclusive right to their body is a type of property rights. One's right over their body is based on exactly the same principle of appropriating unclaimed natural resources for one's own exclusive use as one's right over what we commonly refer to as property.
- aninhumer 10y agoThat's an argument that violence is theft, not vice versa. But let's not get hung up on a semantic argument. I am drawing a distinction between what you are calling "theft of body" and theft of anything else. I can use whatever terms you like, as long as you accept the distinction. (I will use "violence" and "theft" for now.) Most people think violence is bad because it causes direct physical suffering. Theft alone causes no such direct suffering. It may cause suffering as an indirect outcome, but this depends on a lot of factors. To take an absurd example, if one person owns all the resources, and refuses to let others access them, theft will lead to better outcomes than letting everyone else starve to death. Now it gets murkier when the inequality is less pronounced, but many people would argue that taking some resources from the rich to help the poor leads to better outcomes in a similar way. If you want to argue against that, you need to talk about outcomes as well. Just asserting that something is a "human rights violation" is not going to be very convincing to people who don't believe the action has bad outcomes.
- GavinMcG 10y agoI am horrified at the idea of living in a truly free society.
- aminok 10y agoThat's so bizarre.