At 8:05 PM 5/6/96, Duncan Frissell wrote:

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However, are you controlling for level of income? The IRS is a lot more worried about TCMay committing tax fraud than they are about me committing tax fraud; my income taxes are a lot closer to 0 than his. -Allen

Actually, as a percentage of income, tax evasion is probably more prevalent among the poor than the rich. Because they are less exposed. Studies of spending show that the poorest 20% of Americans spend twice their reported income.

Indeed, I am extremely limited in how I can avoid complete traceability of my major income sources. Not rich enough to shelter income in a really big time way (and even these shelters are harder and harder to find...near-billionaire Justin Dart renounced his U.S. citizenship and became a citizen of Belize to avoid huge U.S. taxes). And too rich to "forget to report" income from mowing lawns, tips, freelance car body repair, etc. Caught right in the middle where the computers file reports automatically with the IRS."You can run, but you can't hide." By the way, as long as I've added another comment to this not-very-relevant thread (but one which has generated a lot of comments, so it's hard to hard folks aren't interested), I should mention that I left out the effects of INFLATION in my "60%" figure. To wit, imagine buying an asset (stock, real estate, etc.) for, say, $10,000 in 1982, selling it for $20,000 in 1995, and having to pay $3600 in taxes on this "gain," much of which was erased by the effects of inflation. (I don't have a convenient chart of the cumulative inflation over this period, but I'd guess it's between 60% and 90%. Meaning, a 1995 dollar is worth about half to two-thirds of a 1982 dollar.) Also, the effect of inflation has been to inflate salaries and thus inflate people into higher tax brackets, even when their "real wages" have not gone up. If we ever get really bad inflation again (>10% per year, as we had in the late 70s, early 90s), or, God forbid, hyper-inflation, the tax system will likely not survive in anything near its current form. --Tim May Boycott "Big Brother Inside" software! We got computers, we're tapping phone lines, we know that that ain't allowed. ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, tcmay@got.net 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Licensed Ontologist | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."