Quote from: The Sceptical Chymist on May 16, 2024, 06:28:46 AM

Quote from: un_rank on April 30, 2024, 07:02:29 PM

The Uniited States tax laws are insane. Despite several attempts to try and wrap my head around it, I hit a brick wall every time. It seems like a design intended to indict people rather than make the process easier for them, you have to figure out what to do and when to do it, otherwise you'll face prosecution.

...
I don't think the IRS is looking to put people in jail necessarily, but they just make doing your taxes unnecessarily difficult/costly as I just said. The amount of money involved in this case is huge, but for "little people" who owe back taxes or get caught up in tax issues, the IRS usually settles with them in the form of a fine, penalties, whatever and they don't end up in prison.

One thing I learned recently is that the IRS will not go after somebody if the cost of the investigation is larger than the amount of money that can potentially be collected. This info comes first hand from a professional collector who worked as an IRS agent for decades.

Unless you owe, oh lets say $50k or more, the government is unlikely to go after you, because the collectors work on a partly commission-based salary. If you only owe $10k, the amount of commission the collector will receive is small, and in the case of someone like Roger Ver who is living overseas, the cost of the investigation itself could easily surpass $10k. So if that was the case with Ver, he probably would never have been arrested.

TL;DR: small-timers don't have anything to worry about.