This doesn’t seem very effective. Your best-case outcome, by evading $117k total of taxes, has been to donate $5k/year, which means that even an EAer who has been doing relatively badly at ‘earning to give’ is probably going to out-donate your entire lifetime impact in a single year or two. I don’t donate very much and make much less per year than you do, but looking over my records, I think I’ve still donated substantially more to EA than you have. (And I imagine quite a few EAers or LWers make enough to pay $117k of taxes per year.) You’ve done this by accepting severe limitations on your lifestyle and career, and looking at your site’s latest update, you have been incurring liens and bank account seizures and your passport is going to expire without renewal, which would severely hamper many careers & lifestyles which hadn’t brutally curtailed themselves as much as you have. And if you wanted to fix any of this, you no longer have the assets to do so because you have lived in self-imposed poverty for so long and couldn’t pay off your existing $90k+ liability. (Nor would I be very enthusiastic about the employment prospects of a freelance technical writer already struggling to get by over the coming decade...) Should any of the tail risks materialize (eg. health risks—you seem to put an awful lot of faith into that deductible, which is certainly a bold move for someone who is so dependent on one of the most dangerous hobbies there is, bicyling), they’ll more than wipe out any of the benefits.
This is without getting into any of the PR or ecosystem concerns, of course—this seems so ineffective when one looks at the numbers & consequences, I don’t think I’m worried about imitation.
I think I see where you’re coming from on this, but there are a few things to consider:
First, a lot of your criticisms apply most strongly to my own particular idiosyncratic method, and when evaluating it solely as an effective altruism strategy. In fact, I chose the method I did largely as a variety of conscientious objection, not as effective altruism. My post here highlighted the possibilities of tax resistance as an effective altruism strategy, but my own motives for my resistance are more complicated and I did not choose my own method of resistance to optimize its charitable donation possibilities. If you judge it by that standard, it will admittedly look pretty weak. But it’s also possible to choose tax resistance methods differently from how I have done, in a way that prioritizes effective altruism over conscientious objection, if your motives are different from mine.
Second, I think you exaggerate the precariousness of my position. I’m not impoverished. I’m actually doing pretty well. I put aside something like 35–40% of my income for retirement, and every year I put roughly the equivalent of my health insurance deductible into a Health Savings Account in case disaster (or distracted driver) strikes. I make about the median annual income for an individual in the U.S., and have saved up more than the median retirement savings for someone in my age bracket. I’m not “brutally curtailed” or living in “self-imposed poverty”. I’m a reasonably well-off person living in the lap of luxury here in California and enjoying the fruits of the most fabulously prosperous time our species has yet experienced. I can’t imagine feeling deprived like this.
Third, you underestimate the charitable impact of my resistance if you only include the $5k/year or so that I donate and ignore the hundreds of hours of volunteer work (not, perhaps, effective-altruistically optimized, but nonetheless good) my particular technique has helped me to put in.
Fourth, your argument that “if you wanted to fix any of this, you… couldn’t pay off your existing $90k+ liability” is incorrect. If for some reason I changed my mind about all this and wanted to wipe the slate clean, if I were too poor to just pay the full amount, the IRS is like many debt collectors in this regard: it would rather get something than fail to get everything, so it’s willing to bargain. It will ask you what you can afford (demanding that you fess up about your income and assets) and then come up with some figure that doesn’t totally bankrupt you, telling you that you can eliminate your tax debt entirely if you can come up with this lower sum. It’s called the Offer in Compromise program (https://www.irs.gov/payments/offer-in-compromise).
This doesn’t seem very effective. Your best-case outcome, by evading $117k total of taxes, has been to donate $5k/year, which means that even an EAer who has been doing relatively badly at ‘earning to give’ is probably going to out-donate your entire lifetime impact in a single year or two. I don’t donate very much and make much less per year than you do, but looking over my records, I think I’ve still donated substantially more to EA than you have. (And I imagine quite a few EAers or LWers make enough to pay $117k of taxes per year.) You’ve done this by accepting severe limitations on your lifestyle and career, and looking at your site’s latest update, you have been incurring liens and bank account seizures and your passport is going to expire without renewal, which would severely hamper many careers & lifestyles which hadn’t brutally curtailed themselves as much as you have. And if you wanted to fix any of this, you no longer have the assets to do so because you have lived in self-imposed poverty for so long and couldn’t pay off your existing $90k+ liability. (Nor would I be very enthusiastic about the employment prospects of a freelance technical writer already struggling to get by over the coming decade...) Should any of the tail risks materialize (eg. health risks—you seem to put an awful lot of faith into that deductible, which is certainly a bold move for someone who is so dependent on one of the most dangerous hobbies there is, bicyling), they’ll more than wipe out any of the benefits.
This is without getting into any of the PR or ecosystem concerns, of course—this seems so ineffective when one looks at the numbers & consequences, I don’t think I’m worried about imitation.
I think I see where you’re coming from on this, but there are a few things to consider:
First, a lot of your criticisms apply most strongly to my own particular idiosyncratic method, and when evaluating it solely as an effective altruism strategy. In fact, I chose the method I did largely as a variety of conscientious objection, not as effective altruism. My post here highlighted the possibilities of tax resistance as an effective altruism strategy, but my own motives for my resistance are more complicated and I did not choose my own method of resistance to optimize its charitable donation possibilities. If you judge it by that standard, it will admittedly look pretty weak. But it’s also possible to choose tax resistance methods differently from how I have done, in a way that prioritizes effective altruism over conscientious objection, if your motives are different from mine.
Second, I think you exaggerate the precariousness of my position. I’m not impoverished. I’m actually doing pretty well. I put aside something like 35–40% of my income for retirement, and every year I put roughly the equivalent of my health insurance deductible into a Health Savings Account in case disaster (or distracted driver) strikes. I make about the median annual income for an individual in the U.S., and have saved up more than the median retirement savings for someone in my age bracket. I’m not “brutally curtailed” or living in “self-imposed poverty”. I’m a reasonably well-off person living in the lap of luxury here in California and enjoying the fruits of the most fabulously prosperous time our species has yet experienced. I can’t imagine feeling deprived like this.
Third, you underestimate the charitable impact of my resistance if you only include the $5k/year or so that I donate and ignore the hundreds of hours of volunteer work (not, perhaps, effective-altruistically optimized, but nonetheless good) my particular technique has helped me to put in.
Fourth, your argument that “if you wanted to fix any of this, you… couldn’t pay off your existing $90k+ liability” is incorrect. If for some reason I changed my mind about all this and wanted to wipe the slate clean, if I were too poor to just pay the full amount, the IRS is like many debt collectors in this regard: it would rather get something than fail to get everything, so it’s willing to bargain. It will ask you what you can afford (demanding that you fess up about your income and assets) and then come up with some figure that doesn’t totally bankrupt you, telling you that you can eliminate your tax debt entirely if you can come up with this lower sum. It’s called the Offer in Compromise program (https://www.irs.gov/payments/offer-in-compromise).