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by hga 4520 days ago
Funny enough, it's just been reported that under Obama criminal tax prosecutions have gone up, e.g. http://news.yahoo.com/u-fighting-increase-tax-crimes-under-o...

"[...] under Obama the average annual number of tax crime prosecutions sought by the Justice Department has been 1,568, versus 1,303 under Bush."

Doesn't sound like that's going to strike fear in the hearts of many. Plus I suspect detecting small fry like in byoung2's example is rather difficult.
2 comments
dllthomas 4520 days ago
If that's 100% of the people trying, then it should certainly strike fear in the hearts of those who might try. If it's 0.000001% of the people trying, then it shouldn't phase anyone. I have no idea what the statistics are, though given that there are only 300 million Americans we can put some extremely loose bounds on it (won't be less than one in 200 thousand, about, if my napkin tells the truth). I don't think those bounds are enough to do anything useful, though.
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maxerickson 4520 days ago
How many off the books $30,000 jobs do you think there are?

I'm sure there are lots of them, but I wonder if there are so many that it is something to worry about.

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hga 4520 days ago
In "the trades", e.g. electrical and plumbing work, LOTS. Don't know about you, but my family pays in cash for that sort of work without asking any questions....

Elsewhere, well, look at e.g. Italy where I've read that the people don't view the central government as legitimate and evading taxes is said to be the national pastime. Read up on the tax police stopping cars in the industrial north and checking trunks.

Our current tax system is truly voluntary in a certain sense, and would seriously break down if we widely adopted such attitudes for whatever reasons.

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byoung2 4520 days ago
How many off the books $30,000 jobs do you think there are?

Given the audience of this site, web design would be the obvious choice. But here are some more:

http://livesafely.org/financial-freedom/67-jobs-that-pay-und...

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maxerickson 4520 days ago
That's a list of roles that does nothing to establish that they provide opportunities for $30k and nothing to estimate how many such positions are available.

I'm not arguing that cash jobs are rare or nonexistent. I'm wondering how prevalent "really good ones" actually are.

($30k being a real good cash job is just like my opinion, but whatever)

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byoung2 4519 days ago
It would be very difficult to count the number of people doing these jobs for cash since they aren't reporting the income, but it isn't hard to imagine that these jobs could pay 30k if you combine some of the lower paying ones (e.g. $10/hour of gardening and day labor for 60 hours a week), or if you have skills that pay more (I did test prep tutoring for $60/hour in college).
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