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alexfromapex says >"...Healthcare, extremely high rent, and things like property tax where failure to pay sends you to prison are used as the means of coercion.

alexfromapex says >"...Healthcare, extremely high rent, and things like property tax where failure to pay sends you to prison are used as the means of coercion. If the United States continues on the current political course..."< AFAIK you cannot be sent to prison for not paying property taxes in the USA.

jetbalsa 5y ago
Some Tax Evasion laws do allow for criminal charges. tends to only be charged in extreme cases, but can happen.
- giardini 5y ago
  Tax evasion is a crime and imprisonment is a punishment reserved for criminal activity. Failing to pay property tax is not a crime in itself. If someone is charged with tax evasion they are charged with something other than merely owning property and not paying taxes. They are charged with some specific criminal act. Taxation OTOH is a civil, not a criminal, matter. If someone doesn't pay their property tax then, in the worst case, control/ownership of the property is taken by the relevant authorities, the property sold and the taxes paid to the extent possible.
- masonic 5y ago
  Not for property taxes. If one is that far behind, one can sell long before facing anything confiscatory... and incarceration for it is not a thing.
dumpsterlid 5y ago
Failure to pay eventually sends you to prison one way or another when you live in a country with such a catastrophically broken social safety net.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  As someone from a very large, impoverished family, this is an easily falsifiable statement... I mean, being poor sucks, and it does make you more likely to commit crime, but talking about it like it's an inevitability is inaccurate and not in good faith.
Nasrudith 5y ago
You usually just get a lein on your property and a sherrif's sale once it builds up such that much. Foreclosure to sale is a lengthy process and at least some states maintain "right of redemption" which allow even a post auction foreclosure to be reversed within nine months.
anamax 5y ago
> AFAIK you cannot be sent to prison for not paying property taxes in the USA. However, you can lose your property if you don't pay property taxes. (If you're late, the interest can be significant AND it gets treated like property tax for the purpose of "lose your property".) Moreover, the "lose your property" process pretty much guarantees that you'll lose much of the equity that you had in said property.

jetbalsa 5y ago

Some Tax Evasion laws do allow for criminal charges. tends to only be charged in extreme cases, but can happen.

giardini 5y ago
Tax evasion is a crime and imprisonment is a punishment reserved for criminal activity. Failing to pay property tax is not a crime in itself. If someone is charged with tax evasion they are charged with something other than merely owning property and not paying taxes. They are charged with some specific criminal act. Taxation OTOH is a civil, not a criminal, matter. If someone doesn't pay their property tax then, in the worst case, control/ownership of the property is taken by the relevant authorities, the property sold and the taxes paid to the extent possible.
masonic 5y ago
Not for property taxes. If one is that far behind, one can sell long before facing anything confiscatory... and incarceration for it is not a thing.

dumpsterlid 5y ago

Failure to pay eventually sends you to prison one way or another when you live in a country with such a catastrophically broken social safety net.

BobbyJo 5y ago
As someone from a very large, impoverished family, this is an easily falsifiable statement... I mean, being poor sucks, and it does make you more likely to commit crime, but talking about it like it's an inevitability is inaccurate and not in good faith.

Nasrudith 5y ago

You usually just get a lein on your property and a sherrif's sale once it builds up such that much. Foreclosure to sale is a lengthy process and at least some states maintain "right of redemption" which allow even a post auction foreclosure to be reversed within nine months.

anamax 5y ago

> AFAIK you cannot be sent to prison for not paying property taxes in the USA. However, you can lose your property if you don't pay property taxes. (If you're late, the interest can be significant AND it gets treated like property tax for the purpose of "lose your property".) Moreover, the "lose your property" process pretty much guarantees that you'll lose much of the equity that you had in said property.