TIGTA Documents The Wreck Of Tax Compliance
A possibly apocryphal tale I heard from an IRS criminal investigator was about an old timer who was criticized for not keeping up his firearms proficiency. His answer was that he had put away a lot more guys with his pencil. The technology is different, but what will convince people to be compliant is a lot more actual action dosing out painful but moderate consequences, not the occasional dramatic arrests that attract media attention.
Regardless of all that, pay your taxes. It is the right thing to do.
Historian Argues Ronald Reagan’s 1981 Tax Cut Led To Trumpism
Hopelessness is a mighty political force and therefore it should not be so surprising that after the failed promises and benign neglect of three Republican and two Democratic administrations spanning a third of a century, the have-nots came to believe that only a strongman will change the course of the ship of state. The uneducated, those who experienced the alienation of downward social and economic mobility, or the disappointment of wage stagnation for a generation while others were living the lifestyle of the rich and famous, those who were clobbered subsequently by the tsunami of hyperglobalization, and those who were evicted from their homes while the Lords of Finance were being pampered, were ripe to revolt and turn against the establishment elites. Trump was able to harvest the anger of those who reached for the American Dream and found a nightmare instead.
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Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing sinister in so arranging one’s affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, not voluntary contributions. To demand more in the name of morals is mere cant.