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That's completely false. At worst you would owe a penalty. Due to the complexity of the tax code, there is a very high bar for criminality.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago
> At worst you would owe a penalty. Not if they claim the violation was intentional. Which, whether or not they can prove that, means they can arrest you, and deplete the money you'd have used for your defense as bail. And they do so enjoy that trick where "intentional" generally applies to whether you intentionally did a thing that was against the law, even if you didn't know that it was against the law. Let's also not so easily dismiss as unproblematic a conclusion that you owe five times more money than you actually have in back taxes plus penalties and interest, which someone wouldn't have who filed the same tax return as you but didn't raise the ire of anyone in power. > Due to the complexity of the tax code, there is a very high bar for criminality. If only all of the complex laws actually worked that way.
- kortilla 6y ago
  A judge wouldn’t give an arrest warrant for a deduction issue like that.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    A prosecutor wanting to give someone a hard time would choose tax law as the mechanism only if the amount in contention was large, e.g. it was against a business owner. You don't think a judge would issue a warrant in a case alleging million dollar intentional tax fraud?
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      No, because charges for violating tax laws must originate from the tax authority, i.e., the IRS for federal taxes. Prosecutors don't have the authority to file charges for tax law violations on their own.
    - srtjstjsj 6y ago
      Can you name a single case of it ever happening?
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        https://www.kare11.com/article/news/crime/former-officer-derek-chauvin-wife-charged-with-felony-tax-fraud/89-89eea2ad-28ff-438e-9ab5-cebcc5cda1cc https://www.kare11.com/article/news/crime/former-officer-der... My suspicion is that felony tax fraud would not have been charged there, or maybe even investigated, if he hadn't been implicated in the death of George Floyd. They had their man so they found his crimes. Obviously nobody is going to feel sorry for him, but only getting charged with something because you became a political target over something else entirely is exactly the problem in general. Registering your car in a lower tax state may not be legal but it's not exactly uncommon, and plenty of people probably don't even realize it's illegal.
        gamblor956 6y ago
        What world do you live in where you think that someone who hasn't filed 3 straight years of tax returns wouldn't be charged with a crime? Also, to note: the filing of these charges is unrelated to the Floyd case. Based on the article you linked, there were years of financials that the investigators would have had to go through in order to substantiate the charges they filed. They had to investigate ownership of multiple homes, multiple cars in multiple states, and correspond with tax authorities in several states. This isn't an investigation that they just trumped up because of the Flloyd case; just the correspondence part alone would have taken months, and these charges were filed less than 8 weeks after the Floyd incident based on a substantial record of tax violations. Chauvin was already on their radar for tax fraud. Politics had nothing to do with it. Registering your car in a lower tax state may not be legal but it's not exactly uncommon, and plenty of people probably don't even realize it's illegal. True, but they're not charged with tax fraud because they failed to pay use taxes. RTFA. They were charged with tax fraud for falsely changing their state of tax residency so that they could avoid Minnesota sales/use taxes despite all evidence showing they were still Minnesota residents. TLDR: Chauvin was not a political target. He was just a bad apple, and in addition to beating suspects was also a tax fraud.
- gamblor956 6y ago
  Everything you've just started is wrong. I do this for a living. I know how tax penalties and tax crimes work better than you do.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    You're presumably dealing with ordinary tax investigations, motivated by ordinary tax investigators and not politics.
    - gamblor956 6y ago
      You're presumably dealing with ordinary tax investigations, motivated by ordinary tax investigators and not politics. Those are the only kind of tax investigations in the US. None of the politically motivated tax investigations you speak of has resulted in criminal sanctions.

AnthonyMouse 6y ago

> At worst you would owe a penalty. Not if they claim the violation was intentional. Which, whether or not they can prove that, means they can arrest you, and deplete the money you'd have used for your defense as bail. And they do so enjoy that trick where "intentional" generally applies to whether you intentionally did a thing that was against the law, even if you didn't know that it was against the law. Let's also not so easily dismiss as unproblematic a conclusion that you owe five times more money than you actually have in back taxes plus penalties and interest, which someone wouldn't have who filed the same tax return as you but didn't raise the ire of anyone in power. > Due to the complexity of the tax code, there is a very high bar for criminality. If only all of the complex laws actually worked that way.

kortilla 6y ago
A judge wouldn’t give an arrest warrant for a deduction issue like that.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  A prosecutor wanting to give someone a hard time would choose tax law as the mechanism only if the amount in contention was large, e.g. it was against a business owner. You don't think a judge would issue a warrant in a case alleging million dollar intentional tax fraud?
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    No, because charges for violating tax laws must originate from the tax authority, i.e., the IRS for federal taxes. Prosecutors don't have the authority to file charges for tax law violations on their own.
  - srtjstjsj 6y ago
    Can you name a single case of it ever happening?
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      https://www.kare11.com/article/news/crime/former-officer-derek-chauvin-wife-charged-with-felony-tax-fraud/89-89eea2ad-28ff-438e-9ab5-cebcc5cda1cc https://www.kare11.com/article/news/crime/former-officer-der... My suspicion is that felony tax fraud would not have been charged there, or maybe even investigated, if he hadn't been implicated in the death of George Floyd. They had their man so they found his crimes. Obviously nobody is going to feel sorry for him, but only getting charged with something because you became a political target over something else entirely is exactly the problem in general. Registering your car in a lower tax state may not be legal but it's not exactly uncommon, and plenty of people probably don't even realize it's illegal.
      - gamblor956 6y ago
        What world do you live in where you think that someone who hasn't filed 3 straight years of tax returns wouldn't be charged with a crime? Also, to note: the filing of these charges is unrelated to the Floyd case. Based on the article you linked, there were years of financials that the investigators would have had to go through in order to substantiate the charges they filed. They had to investigate ownership of multiple homes, multiple cars in multiple states, and correspond with tax authorities in several states. This isn't an investigation that they just trumped up because of the Flloyd case; just the correspondence part alone would have taken months, and these charges were filed less than 8 weeks after the Floyd incident based on a substantial record of tax violations. Chauvin was already on their radar for tax fraud. Politics had nothing to do with it. Registering your car in a lower tax state may not be legal but it's not exactly uncommon, and plenty of people probably don't even realize it's illegal. True, but they're not charged with tax fraud because they failed to pay use taxes. RTFA. They were charged with tax fraud for falsely changing their state of tax residency so that they could avoid Minnesota sales/use taxes despite all evidence showing they were still Minnesota residents. TLDR: Chauvin was not a political target. He was just a bad apple, and in addition to beating suspects was also a tax fraud.
gamblor956 6y ago
Everything you've just started is wrong. I do this for a living. I know how tax penalties and tax crimes work better than you do.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  You're presumably dealing with ordinary tax investigations, motivated by ordinary tax investigators and not politics.
  - gamblor956 6y ago
    You're presumably dealing with ordinary tax investigations, motivated by ordinary tax investigators and not politics. Those are the only kind of tax investigations in the US. None of the politically motivated tax investigations you speak of has resulted in criminal sanctions.