Posted on 04/03/2012 6:22:12 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
A new survey suggests Americans consider cheating on their taxes more socially acceptable than shoplifting, drunk driving or even throwing trash out the window of a moving car.
The Shelton Group, a green marketing firm based in Knoxville, Tenn. had 1,105 Americans complete on-line surveys in an effort to find out what kind of messages will make them adopt more environmentally friendly and energy efficient products and behaviors. Towards the end of the survey, the respondents were asked directly: “How embarrassed would you be if someone you knew found out that you……” and then read a list of presumably undesirable behaviors, in randomized order. The highest percentage of respondents—73%–said they’d be “very embarrassed” if someone they admired found out they were shoplifting, followed by 65% for driving under the influence, 59% for throwing trash out the window of a moving car, and 57% for cheating on their taxes. Another 14% said they’d be “somewhat” embarrassed by shoplifting (for a total of 87% at all embarrassed); another 17% said they’d be somewhat embarrassed by DUI (for a total of 82%) and another 21% said they’d be somewhat embarrassed by littering or cheating on their taxes (for a total of 80% and 78%, respectively.)
In the IRS Oversight Board’s 2011 Taxpayer Attitude Survey, 84% of the public said it is “not at all acceptable to cheat on one’s income taxes.’’ Still, in that survey, only 66% of the participants said they “completely agree” that “everyone who cheats on their taxes should be held accountable” and only 72% completely agreed that “it’s every American’s civic duty to pay their fair share of taxes”–suggesting, as the Shelton study does, that perhaps disapproval of tax evasion is not as strong as, say, disapproval of stealing from private businesses.
(Excerpt) Read more at forbes.com ...
If you can become Treasury Secretary after cheating on taxes, what’s the big deal, anyway?
Taxes are nothing more than control of people and theft. Why pay taxes when the govt can just print the money via the FED to the same effect?
THINK ABOUT WHAT I JUST SAID.
-—5th Amendment...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.-—
My money is my property. Unless the govt gives me something of equal value in compensation, I’m going to keep as much as I can.
Caesar’s tax rate was a lot less than our current regime. Tax compliance is proportional to the respect for private property rights which includes the overall tax rate, government corruption, and stable rule of law. No surprise in which direction we are going here.
>>One good crime deserves another?<<
I am not sure how you came away from my post with that conclusion.
In fact, I have no idea what you are talking about.
In a nation with a long capitalist tradition like ours, they’ll never really be able to kill capitalism. They might drive it underground but once its taken root its like kudzu.
After all the blood and tears spent fighting and losing to communists in Vietnam, they’re effectively a capitalist nation even if the communist government can’t quite bring themselves to admit it. They call it social based capitalism or something. Entrepreneurship is actively encouraged as long as the government gets their cut.
Not a valid statistic. If someone from the IRS asks a survey question about cheating on taxes, only an idiot would respond that cheating is OK.
“Cheating” on your taxes...hell...that could be considered a civic duty.
Probably because the government wastes the taxes they pay.
Because every American taxpayer knows he is overtaxed!
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