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If I stopped paying my taxes my goverment will not even notice. It cannot run on my money alone for even seconds. Is that an argument for me to not pay my taxe

If I stopped paying my taxes my goverment will not even notice. It cannot run on my money alone for even seconds. Is that an argument for me to not pay my taxes? > (and crashing the stock market in the process) Some scaremongering there for a straw man's argument that you made up. Put thieves, tax avoidance is theft, into prison. Getting the money back is not enough. Society needs justice, and people stealing from everybody should not only pay their fair share but also be punished when they steal from society.

MilnerRoute 2y ago
Here's a graph of America's national debt. Its rate of increase clearly starts spiking...right after the Bush tax cuts. https://www.statista.com/chart/28393/us-public-debt/ https://www.statista.com/chart/28393/us-public-debt/ I think it's indisputable that tax policy has an impact on a government's health. Yes, that's not exactly the same thing as prosecutable tax avoidance. But my sense is the real problem here is quasi-legal tax avoidance, and that this small $1.3 billion figure is just hinting at how easily more taxes could be recovered with less lenient tax policies. (As well as better-funded enforcement officers...) But that gets dangerously close to also saying, "let's raise the tax rates on millionaires (not just billionaires) back to where it was a few years ago..." And let's be honest: that's why we're having this discussion. Government spending is bad and part of the problem, according to one side - with taxes just a way of enabling it. There's been a lot of words devoted to extolling the values of lower taxes in creating jobs and innovation. So I think at some point, people just start rooting for tax avoidance.
- jerkstate 2y ago
  legal tax avoidance has nothing to do with the $1.3b discussed in this article. I'm all for collecting legal taxes - but I'm against pretending like we can fund the budget with any reasonable tax policy. i'm trying to make the point that if we try to fund the bloated budget at the current gdp, it won't (just) be the super-wealthy who suffer, it will be the people who can't retire, the people whose kids still need scholarships and loans for colleges, the workhorses of the economy, the middle class.

MilnerRoute 2y ago

Here's a graph of America's national debt. Its rate of increase clearly starts spiking...right after the Bush tax cuts. https://www.statista.com/chart/28393/us-public-debt/ https://www.statista.com/chart/28393/us-public-debt/ I think it's indisputable that tax policy has an impact on a government's health. Yes, that's not exactly the same thing as prosecutable tax avoidance. But my sense is the real problem here is quasi-legal tax avoidance, and that this small $1.3 billion figure is just hinting at how easily more taxes could be recovered with less lenient tax policies. (As well as better-funded enforcement officers...) But that gets dangerously close to also saying, "let's raise the tax rates on millionaires (not just billionaires) back to where it was a few years ago..." And let's be honest: that's why we're having this discussion. Government spending is bad and part of the problem, according to one side - with taxes just a way of enabling it. There's been a lot of words devoted to extolling the values of lower taxes in creating jobs and innovation. So I think at some point, people just start rooting for tax avoidance.

jerkstate 2y ago
legal tax avoidance has nothing to do with the $1.3b discussed in this article. I'm all for collecting legal taxes - but I'm against pretending like we can fund the budget with any reasonable tax policy. i'm trying to make the point that if we try to fund the bloated budget at the current gdp, it won't (just) be the super-wealthy who suffer, it will be the people who can't retire, the people whose kids still need scholarships and loans for colleges, the workhorses of the economy, the middle class.