Criminal Defense attorney here. I thought I’d weigh in mostly for trivia reasons to point out that several federal statutes do criminally punish the *mere nonpayment* of taxes.
Though the current *policy* of the IRS is that they won’t use this statute against someone who doesn’t have a duty to “collect” a tax from some other person, as in payroll taxes or some gambling taxes. This *might be* the literal limit of the law, but to my knowledge that hasn’t been really formally assessed by any court. I wouldn’t want to be the first case study.
26 USC 7203 is a related and much broader misdemeanor:
naturally, as a misdemeanor the penalty is possibly quite light...possibly no jail time (though potentially as you can see there up to one year)...it’s still technically a crime and for most people reading this, the bite is going to be the conviction itself rather than like a month in a workhouse.
Empirically the IRS’ motives are complex and they won’t prosecute every violation of these laws that hoves into view but as I see it you’re really dancing with the devil. Shower often, be nice to old ladies, and pay your taxes.
As I mention in my post: “There is a law on the books that makes willful failure to pay taxes a criminal offense. However it is almost unheard of for the U.S. government to criminally prosecute someone who files an honest and correct tax return but who will not voluntarily surrender the money.”
American “war tax resisters” have been willfully refusing to pay taxes for decades, often going out of their way to make public declarations of their willful intent (sometimes in letters to the IRS itself). In the last 80 years, of the tens of thousands of American war tax resisters who have done this sort of thing, exactly two have been prosecuted merely for willful failure to pay. One was in 1942, and targeted the leader of an emerging war tax resistance movement (he was prosecuted for failing to purchase a war tax stamp to put on his car, so also this was not really an “income tax” refusal prosecution). The other was in 2005, and targeted an attorney who had two previous tax convictions and whose legal practice tended to get on the nerves of prosecutors by specializing in the vigorous defense of dissidents like Huey Newton, Judi Bari, Dennis Peron, etc.
Given this track record, I think it’s accurate to say that criminal prosecution for willful failure to pay your income taxes is not the sort of thing the typical refuser has to worry about.
But perhaps someone who writes blog posts encouraging other people not to pay their taxes as a form of effective altruism is not your typical refuser...
Copy-pasting an ACX comment here:
As I mention in my post: “There is a law on the books that makes willful failure to pay taxes a criminal offense. However it is almost unheard of for the U.S. government to criminally prosecute someone who files an honest and correct tax return but who will not voluntarily surrender the money.”
American “war tax resisters” have been willfully refusing to pay taxes for decades, often going out of their way to make public declarations of their willful intent (sometimes in letters to the IRS itself). In the last 80 years, of the tens of thousands of American war tax resisters who have done this sort of thing, exactly two have been prosecuted merely for willful failure to pay. One was in 1942, and targeted the leader of an emerging war tax resistance movement (he was prosecuted for failing to purchase a war tax stamp to put on his car, so also this was not really an “income tax” refusal prosecution). The other was in 2005, and targeted an attorney who had two previous tax convictions and whose legal practice tended to get on the nerves of prosecutors by specializing in the vigorous defense of dissidents like Huey Newton, Judi Bari, Dennis Peron, etc.
Given this track record, I think it’s accurate to say that criminal prosecution for willful failure to pay your income taxes is not the sort of thing the typical refuser has to worry about.
But perhaps someone who writes blog posts encouraging other people not to pay their taxes as a form of effective altruism is not your typical refuser...