What happens if you don't file your taxes in the US?

Nothing if you’re not an American and not living there.

Eventually, the IRS figures out that you have income but you haven’t filed your 1040s and they will come get you. If you don’t pay up promptly at that point they can freeze your bank account, garnishee your paycheck, and even throw you in jail.

If you live in the US and earn money here you need to file your taxes. There may be certain exemptions for foreign nationals who can prove they have paid income taxes to their home country, but otherwise, file or regret it.

Isn’t that what the whole U.S. is about…Taxes?

I’m calling border patrol

I just starting thinking about this topic because I saw this.

Its actually a whole movie and it’s a lot longer than this video. It’s rather interesting. If you have time you should watch the other parts on the Federal Reserve.

Two words: Wesley Snipes.

You can get out of paying your taxes in several legal ways as well as through illegal tax evasion. Legal ways to do it are called tax avoidance, and of this practise “The United States Supreme Court has stated that ‘The legal right of an individual to decrease the amount of what would otherwise be his taxes or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted.’” Look at these articles on tax protesters and tax resistance

Got a problem with paying taxes. Don’t drive down the street or call 911 when your house is on fire.

@johnpowell Some people choose to pay taxes selectively – like withholding the percentage of your taxes that is equivalent to the percentage of the military’s share in the budget.

You go to jail.

darwin: i believe the verb is garnish, not garnishee. garnishee is the person that gets garnished.

wildpotato: there was an article in the NY Times magazine recently on this topic. There is a whole movement of people who have various arguments why they believe it’s not illegal to not pay taxes, and the IRS has a phone number with agents who are versed on this topic. apparently the people who feel it’s ok to not pay are incorrect. have no doubt the IRS will freeze your assets, put liens on your property, throw you in jail, fine you penalties with interest.

i have another friend who went to a storefront tax preparer in the Bronx who was known for getting people very large returns. Since tax preparers put their federal id number on the bottom of the return, and since in this case the IRS somehow found out this preparer was being very liberal with deductions and getting these huge returns for people, the IRS audited everyone who had their taxes prepared by this place. my friends were audited for a few years retroactively, and owed over $10000 to the government, plus interest and penalties. THey had to get a real CPA to prepare their corrected returns, and i’m sure they’ll be using a real CPA who is honest from now on.

In some cases, the tax collector lets it go on for years, and then gets prodded to do something about it. A recent news report in California stated that a total $6 million is owed by a few hundred people, and the tax office has done very little to collect it, or prosecute the cheaters, even though they know who they are.

They flog you and make a spectacle of you in the public square.

@YARNLADY…My guess is it is not economically feasible to go after those folks. They are probably self employed, so there is no employer to whom they can go for the relatively easy garnishing of wages. And the cost of prosecuting them probably exceeds the $10K or so these people probably owe on average. There are much bigger and much easier fish to fry and $6M is insignificant in the grand scheme of things. It would be wonderful if the services funded by those taxes could be easily cut off from those folks (eg, no trash collection or street sweeping or upon calling 911 they received a busy signal) See ya…..wtf

@johnpowell….Good to see you. Welcome back! See you around….wtf

I had a friend who didn’t file for three years. And one day he received a visit by a nice, well dressed couple that looked very much like a certain religious group that goes door to door. He just ignored the doorbell. When he checked later for the expected Watchtower he found a letter taped to the door stating among other things, that he had 60 days or his property would be seized.
I guess he could have ignored that one. But he didn’t.

yarnlady: that sounds like the state tax collector which may be more lenient (or understaffed due to budget constraints rampant in california) than the IRS (feds).