>Not worth the hassle of paying legally-required income tax? In many areas of economic activity, there is a level of operation where the costs of complying wit

>Not worth the hassle of paying legally-required income tax? In many areas of economic activity, there is a level of operation where the costs of complying with tax requirements far, far exceed the costs of the actual tax due. A good example of this is trying to operate a small, wholly-owned foreign company while a US tax resident. The costs of filing a complete form 5471 can be many thousands of dollars at a minimum (and potentially much higher), even if the amount of tax due is negligible or even zero. I don't know if there's a term for this, but it strikes me as a kind of deadweight loss, where tax authorities gain tiny amounts of additional revenue to but tax payers spend much larger amounts on compliance. My concern with sending more and more information to tax authorities is increasing these kind of deadweight compliance losses for small operators who will owe little or no additional tax.