this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2024
862 points (99.7% liked)

Lemmy Shitpost

27210 readers
3932 users here now

Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.

Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!


Rules:

1. Be Respectful


Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.

Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.

...


2. No Illegal Content


Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.

That means:

-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals

-No CSA content or Revenge Porn

-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)

...


3. No Spam


Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.

-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.

-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.

-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers

-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.

...


4. No Porn/ExplicitContent


-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.

-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.

...


5. No Enciting Harassment,Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts


-Do not Brigade other Communities

-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.

-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.

-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.

...


6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.


-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.

-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.

...

If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.


Also check out:

Partnered Communities:

1.Memes

2.Lemmy Review

3.Mildly Infuriating

4.Lemmy Be Wholesome

5.No Stupid Questions

6.You Should Know

7.Comedy Heaven

8.Credible Defense

9.Ten Forward

10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)


Reach out to

All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 155 points 10 months ago (11 children)

Completely seriously; while I’m sure essentially no one actually does, the IRS is not going to like network with the FBI or your local police department if you, for some reason, decide to pay taxes on your weed sale profits. Unless you report that you’re selling sex slaves they seriously could not care less.

I know it’s just a joke image but I do love the idea of someone who makes much of their money illegally but also has this very honorable commitment to paying their fair share in taxes.

[–] superduperenigma 74 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I know it’s just a joke image but I do love the idea of someone who makes much of their money illegally but also has this very honorable commitment to paying their fair share in taxes.

If you're convicted of criminal activity you'd be smart to include that in your taxes. The last thing you need is to be convicted of tax fraud in addition to getting convicted of drug trafficking. If the government already has a record of you profiting from criminal activity, make sure you give them their cut.

[–] rockSlayer 74 points 10 months ago

As the joker once said:

I'm crazy enough to take on batman, but the IRS? No thank you

[–] makeshiftreaper 47 points 10 months ago (3 children)

More specifically the IRS field book discourages reporting illegal income to other agencies for basically everything besides terrorism. Also, when you file taxes there's a reason there's an "other income" field. Nobody expects you to list "MS-13" as your employer. You can report money earned from illegal activities to avoid additional federal charges being tacked on

[–] [email protected] 42 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Exactly. I’ve seen such a gigantic rise in like “conspiracy-everything” posts online (wherein people seemingly assume that everything ever done by the government is in some way a poorly concealed conspiracy) and i think anyone who has actually worked under government funding can pretty quickly attest that this just… isn’t how things work.

All these “little conspiracies” operate under the assumption that the US government is this hyper-connected, ultra advanced and professional shadowy room where everyone is out to get non-government employees for vague purposes (“they just want to have control… man…”.)

When really, 99% of government employees are like some guy or gal you went to high school with who is working in a cubicle because the benefits are pretty decent

Anyway, not to make the joke post too serious. I just always worry the naively minded might take posts like this too seriously lol

[–] Bassman1805 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The number of people in government who get promoted because they're awful and that's the easiest way for their boss to be rid of them...

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

In my experience this is essentially never the case. I struggle to think of a circumstance where it would be

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

In some cases I've witnessed they were swapped in a position where they "couldn't make things worse". Maybe there were some benefits attached toake the new position a little more attractive, but definitely not a promotion.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

And reporting "other income" wouldn't flag you as a likely criminal anyway, unless it was a massive amount. They don't know if you got it from selling weed, picking pockets, or mowing your neighbor's lawn (no, Bill is not going to submit a form 1099 for you, he's just going to hire a professional lawn service instead if you're going to be weird about it).

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

IRS isn't a snitch

[–] [email protected] 40 points 10 months ago (4 children)

…I do love the idea of someone who makes much of their money illegally but also has this very honorable commitment to paying their fair share in taxes.

There’s, perhaps, a more practical explanation. As I’ve read before (in some other phrasing): If you’re going to commit a crime, commit only one at a time.

In this case, if you’re going to make your money illegally, for goodness’ sake, don’t evade taxes.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Seriously though, some people have almost pulled off some crazy illegal shit and then got caught because a headlight was out or someone was doing something stupid. If you're going to commit crime, one at a time.

[–] spicytuna62 15 points 10 months ago

Timothy McVeigh was pulled over for driving without a license plate an hour and a half after blowing up the Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City.

From the Wikipedia article

Within 90 minutes of the explosion, McVeigh was stopped by Oklahoma Highway Patrolman Charlie Hanger for driving without a license plate and arrested for illegal weapons possession. Forensic evidence quickly linked McVeigh and Nichols to the attack; Nichols was arrested, and within days, both were charged.

He likely would always have been caught, but he got picked up quick because of that.

[–] Delphia 13 points 10 months ago

This is absolutely it.

Its just one less way that they can come at you, it also means its harder for them to confiscate your property as proceeds of crime.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Also on virtually every gangster or crime movie/series there is either a bad guy getting caught by irs(?) agents for tax evasion, or plays it super safe and pays them diligently to avoid that very scenario.

[–] garbagebagel 5 points 10 months ago

Wasn't that one woman who lied about cancer and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars fully brought down for tax evasion because they couldn't really get her on much else? The scamanda woman

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Actually what happened is that some criminal got caught. And in addition to everything, he was accused of tax fraud. He successfully argued though, that because there wasn’t a field to properly declare his taxes, rhat he would be committing fraud by lying about his income, and as such had no option. This is what led to those fields to exist

[–] NotMyOldRedditName 7 points 10 months ago

Kudos to whoever that was. It's not easy to beat the IRS

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago

The premise of it is basically to have an easier way to prosecute organized crime since those folks rarely are keeping honest books.

[–] db2 19 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I know it’s just a joke image

It isn't. (pdf)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I am obviously not claiming the image is fake, I’m claiming it’s being used in a joking context

[–] Armok_the_bunny 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Also you're allowed to plead the fifth on the origin of the income IIRC, though honestly that's just as likely to get you looked at by the FBI/local constabulary.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

On the other hand if you're making enough money illegally to feel the need to declare it on your taxes (either for ethical reasons or because you don't want to get done like Al Capone) law enforcement is probably already looking at you.

[–] Ultraviolet 7 points 10 months ago

The IRS doesn't report it to the FBI because that's not their job. If you're already under investigation and the FBI asks, they'll hand over the info, but they won't initiate anything, they just want their cut.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

This is just my D&D character. He's an accountant for a thieves' guild

[–] CosmicTurtle 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Slightly related question: is money laundering, in itself, illegal?

Like, say I have $1000 from my regular W-2 job, taxes paid.

I launder it through a bunch of accounts. Is that illegal?

Or is it the mixing with dirty funds that makes it illegal?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Not sure you can “launder” clean money.

If you get paid money legally and just… transfer it a bunch through various banking accounts or similar. That is obviously not illegal in any way.

If you get paid money legally and then say, “buy a lot of car washes” at the car wash your cousin owns and then he pays you the money back and you two don’t report that to the IRS, that would be tax fraud (though laws on “gifting” money get pretty vague)

Basically, it’s really hard to somehow illegally “launder” clean money

[–] CosmicTurtle 2 points 10 months ago

I think it was an episode of Suits or something similar where a guy was divorcing his wife but wanted to hide certain legal assets but hide it from his wife.

The episode made it sound like he had to launder the money so it looked like, on paper, it didn't belong to him and it implied that it wasn't legal but they did it anyway. I can't remember the details but basically why I asked.

[–] stankmut 2 points 10 months ago

If it's legal money, then you aren't laundering it. Transferring money you've obtained legally is just transferring money. It's only money laundering by definition if the money was illegally gained.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

… so far. Just wait til fascists are in control, and they kill all social programs then reallocate those resources to shit like that. The German government did that in the late 30s. They started using all government and private records to root out undesirables.

Ten years ago I wouldn’t have worried either, but now? I wouldn’t give my information to anyone.