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Comment by toyg | Hacker News Reader

You forgot quotes around the “anti” definitions. Tax evasion in China is often the equivalent of “counter-revolutionary activities” under Stalin: the blanket accusation to frame whoever has fallen from favour and has to be purged.

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I don't know if I'd say that. For instance, the Fan Bingbing case made a splash, but there's little doubt she was actually evading her taxes. The only reason people are surprised is that "everyone" is evading taxes and has been able to get away with it.

Is there anyone who the Chinese government punished for tax evasion who turned out to be not cheating on their taxes? Selective enforcement is one thing. Fabricating charges is worse.

And selective, exemplary enforcement is not a phenomenon unknown outside of China.

Potato, potato. In the USSR, anything you said could be interpreted as anti-revolutionary if it criticised the boss in any way; and plenty of people were privately criticising, but it was brought up only against the ones who had to be purged.

Similarly, in China today, everyone who is anyone in the apparatus is cheating taxes in some way, but it's brought up only if they become a problem for the leadership for some other reason.

And here in the US, people routinely violate rules about registering as a foreign agent and have for a long time, but suddenly it's an issue and we lock up Maria Butina for what seem like mostly political reasons. Our tax fraud cases are also, I'd suspect, getting only a fraction of the tax cheats.

Not having firsthand experience as a person who is someone in the Chinese government apparatus, it sounds like it should be possible to just pay the tax you owe. But hey, maybe that kind of thinking is why I have no political power.

Depending on what you did, you can go to jail for cheating on your taxes in the US too. Which is as it should be -- if the penalty is just that you have to pay what you owed then the expected value of fraud is positive and it's only logical to just always cheat and then only pay when you get caught.

> you can go to jail for cheating on your taxes in the US too.

Jailing after trial and due public process is one thing, "disappearing" people is another.

That's true, but not the suggestion I was replying to.

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