I think avoiding taxes is a good idea. Evading? Forget it. Have you seen this one yet - I ran into a retired guy, seemed reasonably intelligent (but see below), who believes that he can get around paying taxes through some third-party operation. What it is, as near as I can tell, a way of unscrupulous folks to end up with this guys house/property, but why he can’t see that, is hard to understand.
The most insane to me is the guy that came in and tried to tell me he doesn’t use any of the services tax money goes to. I said, “So, do you send your kids to private school?” “Na, they go to ((public school up the road)).” “And the police? Fire department?” I ask. Oh, he’s used them. “And the roads? Did you drive on those to get here today?”
That’s when my dad made me go in the back :(. heh
Not to hijack, but this Tax Protester FAQ is a really great explanation of the tax protester movement & many of their ideas.
Truth is tax protester arguments are not frivolous are are carefully thought out. Shiff was a vocal spokesman and was not thrown in jail for 40 years. If it were so simple he would have been summarily jailed 30 many years ago.
The first time he lost a case was when he wrote on the tax return , I do not recognize your right to tax . The court said because he wrote on a tax form ,he was recognizing the form as official. Does that sound like it is so cut and dried. They have chased protesters for many years and if it were simple they would have disappeared long ago.
If you want to avoid taxes you need to be rich enough to take advantage of tax shelters.
I deal with tax protest cases now and then, including one case in which a man declared himself a “sovereign American citizen” of the (nonexistent and ahistorical) “Ohio Republic” to try to avoid a $1,500 state tax judgment against him. A favorite quotation of mine: “Some people believe with great fervor preposterous things that just happen to coincide with their self-interest.” Coleman v. CIR (7th Cir. 1986), 791 F.2d 68, 69.
You have to regularly deal with these pinheads? My sympathies.
The only tax protestor I’ve ever talked to was a woman who didn’t like what the federal gov. did with her money, so she wasn’t going to give them any of it. She knew it wasn’t legal and said that she knew that if she were caught, she’d be jailed, and claimed to be ok with that potential consequence.
Are most tax protesters like that? Or are most “Ohio was never a state” type protests?
Oh no, most definitely fall into either the latter category or the “Emperor of the Universe” category. IE: they don’t know why, but THEY shouldn’t have to pay taxes. I can’t think of a single client I’ve come across that was like the lady you mention (she was doing what I’d consider a legitimate protest, as she was willing to suffer the consequences of such actions). The ones that come to us are high and mighty about their cause. . . until it’s time to face the penalty for their actions.
Underlining mine.
Are you kidding me? A bit confused so they didn’t file for 15 years? Sorry, but that’s bullshit. Call H&R Block or something… sheesh. :rolleyes:
No, they’re completely insane. Thinking the tax codes don’t mean what they say they mean is insane. Thinking you are not subject to the laws of the country in which you live and work is insane. Trying the same tactics over and over again despite judges calling you insane is, well, not a good way to win real-world court cases.
Nonsense. They’re playing whack-a-mole with hundreds if not thousands of people who think like you do. There is no way to make all the morons disappear.
Name one. Name one tax shelter that the rich can take advantage of to completely avoid paying taxes.
Sorry. But as a guy who is being [screwed up the ass] as we speak… Do you enjoy screwing otherwise law-abiding citizens?
I mean, do you enjoy catching someone who made a mistake? Do you lay in bed at night and mastubate on some poor schmuck’s misfortune?
Who are you talking to? If you made a mistake, the rules are the same for everyone, you need to pay the taxes plus penalties/interests. The IRS laid out the rules; the tax prep people are helping the tax payers understand and deal with them.
The majority of the people the OP is dealing with are willfully trying to avoid paying their taxes. I do like seeing them brought to pay their share, but you seem to have a persecution thing going on.
Were you talking to the OP, or someone else? If talking to the OP, how did you decide that the OP was the IRS? She’s on the side opposite the IRS - She’s made that quite clear.
So what ended up happening to these people? Did they have to pay all that money after all? Or did you manage to get everything resolved satisfactorily?
If you’re talking to me sugar, we are ANTI IRS. We represent the citizens to resolve their problems in a manner that is better for them and less good for the IRS. We will do anything legally possible to protect our clients and their assets from the taxing agencies that are coming after them for what they owe. The fact is though, that they chose to previously participate in an illegal activity that has put them where they are now, so any ass raping they get isn’t my fault. You might say I’m there, trying to give them some lube and a reach around for that raping from the IRS, to make it a little nicer.
But yeah, I totally love ass-raping law abiding citizens, but my line of work really does facilitate that. That’s why I’m getting a degree in political science 
.
Oh, and some friendly advice? Either pay your taxes or go get some council. There are lots of folks around the country that do what we do and they mostly are good folks with reasonable prices. You more than likely wont be able to resolve this yourself, regardless of how smart you are or how much time you dedicate.
It’s an ongoing process, as they did legally owe a bit of cash in the more recent years. All of the older years were dismissed, leaving a small portion of money owed; so if I remember, they’re on an installment agreement for the last chunk.
All the levies were removed from their paychecks within 24 hours of signing with us though. Like I said, that’s probably one of the services that we provide that people are most fond of.
Thanks for the thread Diosa. Tax protesters are my favorite kind of nutjobs. Yeah, young earth creationists are amusing, but tax protestors are really amazing in their delusions, you can be a YEC and go about your day to day life without any significant impact. A tax protestor will eventually end up having wages garnished, paying someone like your Dad to try and straighten out mess, and could potentially face jail.
What’s the problem with not getting social security numbers for your children? I didn’t get one until I needed to open a savings account at a bank. I find the idea of assigning social security numbers to newborn babies to be rather creepy. If I’m willing to forgo the tax deduction for a dependent, what’s the problem? If some random person demands that I provide them with my child’s social security number, they can go to hell.
Has the Bush administration really made it easier for the filthy rich to evade taxes? Some of the claims I’ve heard is cutting inspectors and ordering the focus to be on those who make less than 200k. Paranoid delusion of the blogs, or based in fact? What is your take?
Well, from what I’ve seen, it causes the kids some problems once they turn 18 and want to go to college, apply for loans, etc. and so forth. Oh, and if they want jobs before that too, of course. We’ve had the kids of clients come in here, begging us to tell them how to fix the problem their parents started for them. So while it’s entirely your decision as an individual and a parent, it’s important to remember the ramifications on the person you’re implementing your belief system on.
Funny you should mention this, I was at a tax conference last week and they were breaking down the incidents of audits and such based on income. By and large, the VAST majority of attention by the IRS is being directly focused on the wealthy. If you make over $1,000,000 in any given year, your chance of being audited is more than 50% (don’t take that as an exact stat, I can’t remember the exact number off the top of my head). Even for people that make more than $100,000 a year, the number of audits and inspections are sometimes triple that of “poor” folks.
Also, the IRS is closing various return processing centers over the next few years (they’ve already closed one or two) due to E-Filing being so popular. Rather than firing those folks, they are reassigning them to collections and auditing and all that jazz.
So based on what I was told, I’m going to say that the vast majority of the focus is being placed on both tax debtors and the wealthy. Apparently the new commissioner of the IRS is even more of a hardass than the last one, so he is really big on finding tax fraud in the wealthy and upping collections on the preexisting debts in the lower classes.
Jeez, what’s a tycoon or trust-fund baby to do? It never woulda happened if a Republican had won the Presidency in 2000.