You can also take deductions for costs relating to criminal activity!

ickplant@lemmy.world to Lemmy Shitpost@lemmy.world – 852 points –
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More specifically the IRS field book discourages reporting illegal income to other agencies for basically everything besides terrorism. Also, when you file taxes there's a reason there's an "other income" field. Nobody expects you to list "MS-13" as your employer. You can report money earned from illegal activities to avoid additional federal charges being tacked on

Exactly. I’ve seen such a gigantic rise in like “conspiracy-everything” posts online (wherein people seemingly assume that everything ever done by the government is in some way a poorly concealed conspiracy) and i think anyone who has actually worked under government funding can pretty quickly attest that this just… isn’t how things work.

All these “little conspiracies” operate under the assumption that the US government is this hyper-connected, ultra advanced and professional shadowy room where everyone is out to get non-government employees for vague purposes (“they just want to have control… man…”.)

When really, 99% of government employees are like some guy or gal you went to high school with who is working in a cubicle because the benefits are pretty decent

Anyway, not to make the joke post too serious. I just always worry the naively minded might take posts like this too seriously lol

The number of people in government who get promoted because they're awful and that's the easiest way for their boss to be rid of them...

In my experience this is essentially never the case. I struggle to think of a circumstance where it would be

In some cases I've witnessed they were swapped in a position where they "couldn't make things worse". Maybe there were some benefits attached toake the new position a little more attractive, but definitely not a promotion.

And reporting "other income" wouldn't flag you as a likely criminal anyway, unless it was a massive amount. They don't know if you got it from selling weed, picking pockets, or mowing your neighbor's lawn (no, Bill is not going to submit a form 1099 for you, he's just going to hire a professional lawn service instead if you're going to be weird about it).