Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanmcdirmid | Hacker News Reader

I would think, at least for under the table cash transactions, that it would be more lower income, not higher. That includes the fly by night electrician who will install a new outlet for you as long as you don’t need it certified, cash only, the guy also lives out of his truck. Or is consequential excluding those cases?

View on HN

Yes it's widespread and frequent among the lower income classes for the reasons you mention. But it's a whole lot less money than tax evasion by the wealthy, for obvious reasons.

I’m not sure, probably. But they are usually skipping out on not only income tax, but self employment taxes. I have to say I don’t find myself bothered by it as much as tax evasion.

I would hazard a guess that the amount of taxes avoided by the top 10% of wealthy in the United States is larger than the actual total income of the bottom 10%.

Avoidance isn’t illegal, however, so I’m not sure why it would count. I’m pretty sure evasion in the top 10% is pretty low, just because they have better accountants and wouldn’t take the risk.

I’m not sure. I do know that until some of Biden’s changes, identifying tax evasion in the lower classes was hardly possible. The only evasion cases worth identifying were those that could pay enough to help fund the expensive prosecution of such crimes. Now, with greater government power over bank accounts (the 600 dollar rule), we should have better ability to measure tax evasion in the lower classes even though we won’t prosecute it yet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com