this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2024
145 points (97.4% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35393 readers
6 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

I have seen multiple times on Lemmy that the IRS wants people to report income from illegal means and that they don't care to bust someone for it. For example, an illicit drug dealer is expected by the IRS to report their drug sale revenue without having to worry about being caught for drug dealing.

Will the IRS seriously not report illegal activities or individuals that report they earned income through vague illegal means?

If they don't, do law enforcement agencies skim IRS tax reports to find people that report illegal income to further investigate?

Can IRS tax forms that report illegal income be used against someone in court?

It just seems ridiculous that reporting illegal activity, however undefined, to the federal government would be a safe option.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 76 points 5 months ago (2 children)

It is not a safe option.

It is designed as a catch all.

The FBI isn’t going through tax returns looking for Illegal income; rather if you’re suspected of illegal activity, they WILL go through your tax returns, because if you didn’t report your illegal income that is another law you’ve then broken. — See Al Capone

So. It is both a very bad idea, and a good idea to report your illegal income

A better idea is to not do anything illegal; or at least do the illegal thing offshore and hide the income there. Like a good multinational corporation would.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 5 months ago (4 children)

What you need to do is report your illegal income in a legal way. Like say you are a life coach, and you advise people.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

If it looks extremely questionable, like you're a life coach in Alabama and made 380k, it'll raise a lot of flags.

  • Do you have a paper trail?
  • who pays for life coaching in cash? And 100% of customers?
  • Life coaching in Alabama and you made that much? " Is there also some business presence like a website?

There's more things to consider. I say that as a person who has to set up my own company to protect myself when I got freelance clients, and complicated the hell out of my taxes.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Probably why fronts are often restaurants. They would have lots of money going in both ways.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Or car washes? Night clubs maybe.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

There's always money in the banana stand

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Laser tag is actually the best option.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

That is a pretty good explanation of money laundering, actually.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

I was looking into doing some mutual "consultant work" with a friend to make it look like I had an income. The taxes wouldn't have made it viable though.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Would that not be illegal under the fifth or does the right for congress to collect taxes override that?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Oooh. I like that.

I’d think that courts would say that you can’t claim the fifth, since you self reported the illegal income. And that had you failed to claim it, you’d be evading taxes….

So yes. You COULD claim your 5th amendment rights against self incrimination, but then you’ve violated the 16th where you’ve failed to declare income.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

Yeah that's what I was thinking. Thank you.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You can only plead the 5th while you're in court. Prosectors are free to use all the shady crap you did that they have evidence of in building a case against you though.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Hi that is not true.