Greetings, misera plebs contribuens! It's what the Hungarian people started calling themselves after King Andreas II exempted the nobility from taxation--an immunity which, like one, long, baronial happy meal, lasted from the 13th to the 19th century. It means "miserable tax-paying people," and if you've already prepared this year's return, you probably feel like one.
Sucker.
One third and perhaps as many as one half of eligible tax filers either cheat on their returns or don't file a return at all. And their numbers, like springtime pollen counts, are exploding. In 1985, there were 3.4 million nonfilers. Just two years later, that number jumped to 4.2 million. By 1991, 6.5 million were dissing the Internal Revenue Service and 74,000 of them had incomes greater than $100,000. There was even a multi-gillionaire who owned art galleries and penthouses in New York, a chateau in France, a residence in Switzerland, and a ranch in Kenya several times as large as Manhattan who never filed a return--a small oversight discovered during divorce proceedings. This disheartening information comes from Donald Bartlett and James Steele, a dying breed of investigative reporters who several years ago wrote a dispiriting (if you're honest), or instructive (if you're not), tome called The Great American Tax Dodge.
How may people escape paying taxes today? No one knows for certain because the IRS enforcement budget has been slashed by Congress, but conservative estimates place it at over 30 million. The amount it costs the treasury can be measured in the hundreds of billions of dollars each year, which those of us who do pay taxes are obliged to make up. And, if you're looking dejectedly at the amount of taxes withheld on your pay stub, this next bit of information is not likely to cheer you.
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