I met a realtor at a bar, a friend of a friend, who looked like the kind of girl who did pageants as a little girl. Of course, I'm no fan of realtors.
She actually bragged to me, practically a stranger, that she hadn't paid her taxes in four years.
I know, I know. Paying quarterly taxes sucks. That 8K check killed my whole month. But it's still better than picking a fight with the IRS.
Like Kelis -- who hasn't filed since 2002, according to her divorce. How can you live like that??? Don't you worry about it? Don't you think about it at night?
I was always confused by JW's IRS problems before his blog folded. How could it ever get that far? Why wouldn't you just do it at tax time? Four years later, that 8K check (and all the other ones you missed!) are a whole lot scarier.
Why on earth would you brag to a stranger that you don't pay your taxes? And, my word, would you really want someone who doesn't do their taxes doing the deal on your biggest asset?
Saturday, July 4, 2009
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11 comments:
Some people think they can get away with anything. I'm not surprised.
My sibling, Cheap Opportunist, didn't pay taxes for 6 years until WE found out by accident and by chance one year.
My whole family stepped in and forced him to get all of his back taxes filed and to pay the penalty..
His reason? He just didn't think about taxes.
I think it was just laziness, apathy and a kind of ostrich syndrome that made him not pay for 6 years.
He certainly didn't brag about it.
It bothers me when people hide from their obligations and paying taxes is one of our obligations. What is even worse is when they feel they can brag about it or complain about anything that is going on with the tax dollars. This places them no higher up then the illegals on my list.
As far a JW, if my recollection is correct, he wasn't in trouble from not filing - he was in trouble for not calculating and paying his taxes. He should have asked in the beginning, because ignorance is not an excuse.
What bothered me most about JW, was that he did try to earn while on Unemployment and that is another shifty cheat way to hurt the tax man (aka tax payers).
When it comes just to saving money, and not about caution, common sense, or thinking ahead, then certain expenses appear easier to avoid than others. Count estimated taxes, car insurance and health coverage among those expenses. Not good financial planning, but these are the bills lots of folks wilfully choose not to pay.
I know a variety of people that have cheated all of us by not filing, filing dishonestly, etc. These people generally seem to think it's ok to brag about it - not realizing they've ripped off the people they're bragging to! Or maybe they just don't care and are laughing at all of us honest citizens behind our backs...
Kudos to you, FB, for getting your sibling to do the right thing - if more people were like you, we'd all be better off!
Can't they throw you in jail? Or at least start garnishing your wages?
I'm too much of a worrier to ever let something like that go. I usually file my taxes the moment I have all of the paperwork I need. Not to mention that I don't ever want to owe money, so I set up my withholdings to get something back. (As close to 0 as I can go.)
It is possible not to file your taxes without getting in trouble. If the government owes you money, they're not going to come after you. (I'm guessing this won't apply to the cases you mentioned.) You can even file years later to get the money back. I did this last year, when I realized 2 years ago that I needed to file NY State taxes as well as NJ since I worked in NYC, but was living in NJ. (I had moved from working in Philadelphia where you only need to file in one state. Unfortunately NYC does not have the same state to state deal.) It turns out NY owed me some money. It was a bit of a battle, because when I sent in the paperwork NY decided to try to tax me for money I made in PA. After sending in copies of all my W2’s I eventually received a payout.
I'm surprised no one has called in an anonymous tip on that person, given her loose lips.
In defense of JW, he was on unemployment and picked up some side jobs, not realizing that would make him ineligible for his unemployment payments so they were coming at him for the money he collected plus fines and interest and such. I truly think he didn't realize what he was doing was wrong.
That's just stupid of her. Isn't there some sort of IRS "finders fee" for reporting people who are dodging taxes?
There is a whistleblower program, details here: http://www.irs.gov/compliance/article/0,,id=181292,00.html
Seriously? Whistle blowing on folks not paying their taxes? What are we, in kindergarten? There might be more to it than meets the eye. Just because you're too afraid to stand up for your rights and not pay the fraudulent federal income tax there be no need to throw another under the bus. It's like Auschwitz in here.
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