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Comment by yieldcrv | Hacker News Reader

Another thing is that the IRS is an adversary, until you’re rich, then they’re a collaborator

when you’re not rich, this adversarial assumption leads people to actually hide money. like “oh wow I’ve never been in a situation where my employer isn't automatically snitching on me, guess I wont report and just worry incessantly about venmo payments over $600 for the next decade!”

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The IRS is always your adversary, but the people who write the tax code become your friends at a certain point.

nah that’s another level deeper, playing with politicians and public sector employees

the IRS simply does far more than enforcement, at a certain point it switches from hiding from the IRS, to filing and hoping you arent picked for scrutiny, to informing the IRS ways you wont pay them taxes (ie. 83b elections, S-corp designation, 5500 for tax deferred plans), to collaborating with the IRS on not paying taxes (ie. 501(c)X non-profit approval, Advance Pricing Agreements)

I think about that kind of thing as the lawmakers being your friend (but perhaps unintentionally), not the IRS. Those forms are a gentle "fuck you" to the IRS, enabled by congress.

The IRS unilaterally makes the forms, unilaterally makes the guidance, offers private letter rulings that can be in favor of one taxpayer, can unilaterally offer tax exemptions, to the point where you would think the Internal Revenue Service isn’t even interested in revenue collection

The passionate overzealous people in the audits and enforcement division are just one part of the IRS, thats my point

There are some very obscure areas of the IRS with pleasant people just waiting for attention to help you with a less used part of the tax code

In their agreement with the IRS, Scientology got spending on courses/"auditing" to be tax deductible in contravention of a Supreme Court ruling! I guess you just need time and money.

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