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Comment by itistoday2 | Hacker News Reader

> You are free to move to another country.

Please explain how I can do that. I would actually like to move to Switzerland, could you explain how I can freely do that as everything I've researched indicates it's neither free nor possible in any reasonable amount of time. If not Switzerland I'll settle for some other country where I can live freely and be safe from coercion.

> If no automobile maker will sell you the exact car you want...

Nobody is forcing me to buy the car with the threat of prison if I don't, and I do not need a car to survive. I do need to live someplace however.

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If you live someplace and don't pay rent at the end of the month, the landlord will bill you, even if you're desperately searching for somewhere else.

For some reason, most anti-taxers consider this not to be "coercion" but to be an efficient way of allocating resources and will defend to the death the landlord's right to demand that I compensate him for occupying a particular location he has a prior claim over. The rationale behind treating private territorial claims on my wealth more favourably than public ones continues to elude me...

One involves non-coercive mutual consent (a signed agreement), the other doesn't.

You do give consent by continuing to live here past the age of maturity.

When you're a child, and your parents have custody of you, they make that choice for you--you're a citizen here, here's where you'll live, be politically involved, and pay taxes.

When you're old enough to make that choice for yourself, that's when you can stay--with all that entails--or go.

There are several reasons why this argument does not work. The most important is that US law says that US citizens must pay taxes, even those who live in other countries. The only way to avoid it is to give up US citizenship. That can only be done outside of the US, and by an adult.

It's therefore impossible for any US citizen to legally avoid paying tax at least once, assuming sufficient income to have to pay tax in the first place.

Do note that this law also applies to foreign born US citizens, who are citizens by blood but who have never even visited the US. For obvious reasons, many of these citizens either don't know about their obligations under US law, or deliberately ignore it.

Of course you can avoid paying tax at least once: on the day of your 18th birthday, weigh the options about leaving, leave, and renounce your citizenship.

Or, don't work until you decide to leave, and then leave.

That it requires very quick timing or unusual planning to end your obligation does not mean that you don't need to pay it when you are obliged to.

Well in that case, there's no reason to pay taxes at all - simply don't every earn enough to pay taxes. But that's an absurd solution. Otherwise you would have said "You do give consent by continuing to live here past the age of maturity and making enough money to be taxed". (I assume that the major issue is income tax, not sales tax.)

In any case, the current cost to renounce your citizenship is $2,350. You might say it's a "fee" and not a "tax". That label is irrelevant in the overarching context of financial obligations imposed upon a person. Otherwise the US should just charge everyone a fee for having US citizenship and forget about the whole "tax" issue.

Assuming you can afford to move, renounce citizenship, etc.

Moving just within the United States can end up being an expensive endeavor as is. Moving out of it isn't any more affordable, meaning that your argument basically amounts to "tough luck, poor people".

Not that I believe taxes are inherently bad, but the implication that "you can always leave if you don't like it" is misleading at best (and realistically outright false for a rather large segment of the American population).

Whether you can afford to leave--and free yourself from the obligation of paying taxes here--does not change your basic obligation to paying a share of the government of the land you inhabit.

Which I'm fine with, because that's understandable. My point was solely in response to the assertion of "you can leave if you don't like it", since the action of "leaving" is prohibitively expensive for a lot of people.

I never signed a contract with my landlord.

Someone born in a particular house with a third party claiming ownership rights faces exactly the same keep paying up or vacate dilemma as someone born in a particular country. In both cases, they might find it difficult to find a piece of territory that is both appealing to live and doesn't involve paying someone else for their right to occupy it.

This is not at all the same situation.

The relationship governments have with their citizens is unique.

It goes like this: give us a chunk of your entire income forever or else we'll throw you in prison. Don't like it? Say good-bye to all your friends and family and enjoy surviving in a country where you don't understand anything anyone is saying, which will probably just give you the same ultimatum.

That's simply mafia-style protection-money robbery.

There is another option: voluntary association and voluntary taxation. This is just one possible form it can take: http://groupcurrency.org

I can assure you both that my landlord will be equally keen to exercise the full force of the law if I don't continue to pay him the rate he asks for each month, and that I'd have to move quite a long way from my friends and family to find somewhere I can live rent free. If he puts the rent up too much then my flatmates and I don't have any hope of voting him out either!

Finding a jurisdiction in which English is widely spoken and there's no income tax is actually surprisingly easy...

You can leave the U.S. whenever you want. The U.S. isn't restricting your ability to leave.

If the country of your choice doesn't permit you to emigrate, that doesn't mean that you're suddenly free from your obligations to whatever country will host you.

Wouldn't that be convenient? "Sir, I don't have to pay taxes. I want to move to Switzerland, but they're full right now, so I can't."

(And the "threat of prison" is some of the dumbest hyperbole out of the antitax crowd--for nearly all cases, they'll simply garnish your wages, or something equally non-freedom-constraining.)

It doesn't help if all other countries both severely restrict entry and/or force a tax upon you. I'd just end up in the same exact situation.

> And the "threat of prison" is some of the dumbest hyperbole...

It's not hyperbole. If you willfully fail to file that's grounds for imprisonment:

http://www.businessinsider.com/terrible-things-that-could-ha...

You're probably thinking of cases when people "forget" or make "mistakes" in their filing.

> ...out of the antitax crowd

I mentioned this already, I am not anti-tax. Please cut it with the labeling. It's late. We're going in circles. Have a good night, I won't be replying to whatever you post next.

Fine, you're not antitax. You're just engaging in a lengthy thread debate using their common arguments. I stand by my statement w.r.t. the antitax crowd.

And again, whether all other countries do not meet your preference or requirement does not free you from your obligations to this one, as long as you live here.

Whether other countries don't allow you in, don't allow you to stay, don't govern the way you like, or whatever other complaint you may have about other countries, that does not change your present-day relationship to this one: that you live here, and as such are obligated to pay taxes as long as you do.

And of course there are, right now, many other countries that you could emigrate to if you liked. Even if your A-list countries aren't open, you still have lots of options.

My hat is off to Frondo and notahacker. I've occasionally (regrettably, foolishly) tried to argue it out with the "taxation is theft" folks, and this is the first time I've seen one of them actually give up from exhaustion. I'm sure he'll recharge and come back tomorrow once he looks up the next argument in his playbook, but even temporary victories must be savored.

Sorry, itistoday2, I'm sure you're a nice person in person, but the argument you're making is obnoxious. Have you noticed how people get really annoyed when you make it? It's not because it's a good argument!

> Have you noticed how people get really annoyed when you make it? It's not because it's a good argument!

People also used to get annoyed when people said the Earth wasn't the center of the solar system.

They laughed at Galileo, they laughed at Einstein, and they laughed at Bozo the Clown.

And the "threat of prison" is some of the dumbest hyperbole out of the antitax crowd--for nearly all cases, they'll simply garnish your wages, or something equally non-freedom-constraining.

Oh they regularly send people to prison for failing to pay taxes. Does the name Wesley Snipes ring a bell? They sent him to prison for three years on three misdemeanor counts of failing to file tax returns, even after he brought a check to court for the outstanding balance.

On a basic level, that's what all laws are. They are a series of escalating punishments and threats that end soon after "then, we'll send guys with guns to take you to prison".

While you can theoretically leave the U.S. whenever you want, you cannot stop paying taxes whenever you want.

You have to renounce citizenship, pay a fine for renouncing said citizenship to avoid paying taxes and possibly be audited. And you might argue that's fine, because they should be able to collect back taxes but you'll generally have to pay taxes for the next 10 years.

So, putting aside the immigration issues, and assuming you could move to wherever you wanted it's still not possible.

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