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by Arainach 977 days ago
Tax evasion is not a victimless crime.
4 comments

It is, under any remotely common usage of the term. A victimless crime is one where the directly involved parties all consented to the action.

If you consider the government itself as a "directly-involved party" then you would consider no crime to be victimless, since it's always the government who prosecutes a crime.

If you invoke something like "society at large" as the victim, then again you can exclude any action from being a victimless crime if you happen to think society is worse off if that action happens (e.g. certain sexual acts between consenting adults, certain types of drug use, etc.).

Tax evasion, along with similar crimes like smuggling and insider trading, are widely listed as examples of victimless crimes.

It's actually easier to perform tax evasion with cash, as it doesn't leave a transaction history.
There's nothing to debate. Everyone living in society benefits from taxes paid - food inspected, fire service and toll-free roads provided, and so much more. Evading taxes is theft of service from everyone.
There's so much value in roads. You'd think that they could be funded on a pay as you go voluntary model rather than expropriation under penalty of imprisonment. Not to mention the opportunity costs of misallocated resources. If there were nothing more to say here, centrally planned economies would deliver the utopia their proponents promise. Somehow history hasn't played out that way.

I'll allow that pragmatism has an important role in tempering the extremes. Claiming that there is "nothing to debate" is a leap into absolutism.

Taxation is not a victimless crime.
Taxation is the price you pay to live in civilization. You can always give that up. Most people prefer the benefits they get from it though.
I literally cannot give that up. The US government demands taxes on all of my global income, will not allow me to renounce my citizenship without another citizenship, and the state department refuses to grant me a passport or disclose the reason why they won't grant me one, even with FOIA requests.

I'd gladly pay $100k for the privilege of renouncing my citizenship and legally becoming stateless. I'd actually have more rights as a noncitizen than I do as a citizen these days inside the US, especially when it comes to KYC and AML rules.

The federal government is going to print the needed funds regardless of how much tax income they receive