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113 points jimhi | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.238s | source
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SoftTalker ◴[] No.44474976[source]
What on earth is wrong with not paying taxes legally? What taxes does anyone pay other than those that they must pay?

If the government wants a tax to be paid they need to make it simple and unconditional. If there are loopholes or ways to legally avoid it, they will be discovered and people will take advantage of them.

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capitol_ ◴[] No.44475113[source]
What is legal and what is moral are two circles in a venn diagram.

In a good and just society there is a large overlap between them, and in others there is less overlap.

But it's impossible to build a legal system where there is a 100% overlap, and it would most likely be a broken society in other ways.

I totally agree with your second paragraph, that the government needs to remove loopholes and other ways for people to weasel out of contributing to society. But there will always be some corruption and a lot of money to be earned by only taking from our shared resources and never contributing back.

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1. kelnos ◴[] No.44477694[source]
It depends on what your moral code looks like, though.

While I agree that taxes provide for a lot of useful, wonderful things, taxes also provide for things I find morally repugnant.

So yes, we should all pay our taxes. But at the same time, I'm fine taking advantage of any legal methods available to me to reduce my tax burden.

The only thing that sucks about that is that tax avoidance generally becomes easier as you get wealthier, which is unfair.