One practical way for me to evade taxes is to start a startup and sell it, which means my income will be taxed at the much lower capital gains rate.
Also, I draw a distinction between something I am comfortable doing, and the likely future progress of society as a whole. Killer robots aren’t going away anytime soon, and except for the extra wars it will allow us to have, killer robots result in less US deaths and more effective military tactics than on the ground troops. I expect that US killer robots will be making kill decisions or at least very strong kill suggestions that are followed 99% of the time within 10 years. There’s just too much data coming in too fast for a single human operator to be able to process.
If the African totalitarians are still around in 25 years, the possibility of being conquered by an army of killer robots may make them more amenable to internationally monitored elections.
So good and bad things will come about as a result of the killer robot armies of the future. It’s really the military industrial complex as a whole I object to; robots making kill decisions is one of the less objectionable things within the military industrial complex.
One practical way for me to evade taxes is to start a startup and sell it, which means my income will be taxed at the much lower capital gains rate.
Uh, that’s a pretty dumb thing to say. For one, starting a startup and selling it has rather broader consequences than a typical tax avoidance strategy. That’s like suggesting moving to a third world country to cut down on your daily living expenses—your food and accommodation costs may indeed decrease but it significantly changes your life in all kinds of other ways as well. For another this would not be tax evasion but tax avoidance which has the rather significant difference of being entirely legal.
I’m fully aware of the distinction; I was playing with the ambiguous distinction between evasion and avoidance (as you say, the distinction being that avoidance is legal) by using the language of the person I replied to. I was trying to imply that there is no profound difference between avoidance and evasion, just the definitions given by the rule of law.
I assumed wedrifid knew the difference and was suggesting you were morally bound to evade rather than merely avoid taxes if you draw the line at supporting the military industrial complex. I don’t necessarily agree with that but I took that to be his point.
I would have thought that maximizing tax avoidance is something that any aspiring rationalist ought to be doing as a matter of course.
I was trying to imply that there is no profound difference between avoidance and evasion, just the definitions given by the rule of law.
The fact that you can go to jail for tax evasion seems like a pretty profound difference from tax avoidance to me. The whole tax structure is ‘just’ the definitions given by the rule of law.
I like living in a country with a government compared to Somalian anarchism, but not compared to libertarian utopia. This is getting close to politics.
I think the general consensus is that we tread carefully when straying into political territory and tend to avoid explicitly political (certainly party political) discussion but that we don’t entirely avoid discussion that has a political dimension. Taken to an extreme that would seem to preclude most topics of any interest or significance. Generally the standard of discourse is fairly high here and political slanging matches are avoided.
And I still don’t consider it a political point that you basically fail at instrumental rationality if you overpay on your taxes.
I don’t see the contradiction. The government creates the tax code with at least the stated intention of encouraging or subsidizing certain behaviours over others. That only works if people respond rationally to the incentives.
From the individual rationalist’s point of view one should aim to optimize one’s resources. In the context of taxes that generally means arranging your financial affairs to minimize the taxes paid without breaking the law. You can then choose how to best meet your own goals by allocating the money you save as you see fit.
It is only rational to not avoid taxes if you either believe the effort required to avoid them is not worth the money saved or if you believe that the optimal use of the money is to give it to the government. It seems unlikely in the latter case that the optimal amount to give to the government just happens to be the very amount they take from you so you should probably be voluntarily donating a larger portion of your income to the government. If you live in the US you should go here.
In the context of taxes that generally means arranging your financial affairs to minimize the taxes paid without breaking the law.
Since we were talking about choice of career among other things, it’s worth stating that your actual incentive here more closely resembles “maximizing your after-tax income” than “minimizing your taxes paid”.
True, I was focusing slightly more narrowly on the idea of minimizing your tax burden at your current income level without making major changes in your career, country of residence, etc. but on a longer timescale or in the context of broader life goals you are aiming to maximize your after-tax income rather than minimize the taxes you pay.
I don’t think I’m morally bound to evade taxes for the same reason I’m not morally bound to stop the world’s massive amounts of animal suffering. My utility function breaks if I take my morality too seriously. As you say, I am somewhat bound morally to try and evade taxes or even actively stage insurrection against my government. Both of those seem like very bad ideas, as the state will just crush me.
Not working for the government in lieu of trying to bring down the government is similar to my decision to eat less meet rather than trying to make the whole world eat less meat. Yes, I am aware that these are not anywhere close to perfectly analogous decisions.
One practical way for me to evade taxes is to start a startup and sell it, which means my income will be taxed at the much lower capital gains rate.
Also, I draw a distinction between something I am comfortable doing, and the likely future progress of society as a whole. Killer robots aren’t going away anytime soon, and except for the extra wars it will allow us to have, killer robots result in less US deaths and more effective military tactics than on the ground troops. I expect that US killer robots will be making kill decisions or at least very strong kill suggestions that are followed 99% of the time within 10 years. There’s just too much data coming in too fast for a single human operator to be able to process.
If the African totalitarians are still around in 25 years, the possibility of being conquered by an army of killer robots may make them more amenable to internationally monitored elections.
So good and bad things will come about as a result of the killer robot armies of the future. It’s really the military industrial complex as a whole I object to; robots making kill decisions is one of the less objectionable things within the military industrial complex.
Uh, that’s a pretty dumb thing to say. For one, starting a startup and selling it has rather broader consequences than a typical tax avoidance strategy. That’s like suggesting moving to a third world country to cut down on your daily living expenses—your food and accommodation costs may indeed decrease but it significantly changes your life in all kinds of other ways as well. For another this would not be tax evasion but tax avoidance which has the rather significant difference of being entirely legal.
I’m fully aware of the distinction; I was playing with the ambiguous distinction between evasion and avoidance (as you say, the distinction being that avoidance is legal) by using the language of the person I replied to. I was trying to imply that there is no profound difference between avoidance and evasion, just the definitions given by the rule of law.
I assumed wedrifid knew the difference and was suggesting you were morally bound to evade rather than merely avoid taxes if you draw the line at supporting the military industrial complex. I don’t necessarily agree with that but I took that to be his point.
I would have thought that maximizing tax avoidance is something that any aspiring rationalist ought to be doing as a matter of course.
The fact that you can go to jail for tax evasion seems like a pretty profound difference from tax avoidance to me. The whole tax structure is ‘just’ the definitions given by the rule of law.
I don’t particularly want to avoid taxes, either—I like living in a country with a government.
I like living in a country with a government compared to Somalian anarchism, but not compared to libertarian utopia. This is getting close to politics.
As good a reason as any to drop the subject of tax avoidance.
Yes, Less Wrong could use some sort of Godwin’s law analog, where a thread is declared dead or at least discouraged once it hits politics.
I think the general consensus is that we tread carefully when straying into political territory and tend to avoid explicitly political (certainly party political) discussion but that we don’t entirely avoid discussion that has a political dimension. Taken to an extreme that would seem to preclude most topics of any interest or significance. Generally the standard of discourse is fairly high here and political slanging matches are avoided.
And I still don’t consider it a political point that you basically fail at instrumental rationality if you overpay on your taxes.
I don’t see the contradiction. The government creates the tax code with at least the stated intention of encouraging or subsidizing certain behaviours over others. That only works if people respond rationally to the incentives.
From the individual rationalist’s point of view one should aim to optimize one’s resources. In the context of taxes that generally means arranging your financial affairs to minimize the taxes paid without breaking the law. You can then choose how to best meet your own goals by allocating the money you save as you see fit.
It is only rational to not avoid taxes if you either believe the effort required to avoid them is not worth the money saved or if you believe that the optimal use of the money is to give it to the government. It seems unlikely in the latter case that the optimal amount to give to the government just happens to be the very amount they take from you so you should probably be voluntarily donating a larger portion of your income to the government. If you live in the US you should go here.
Since we were talking about choice of career among other things, it’s worth stating that your actual incentive here more closely resembles “maximizing your after-tax income” than “minimizing your taxes paid”.
True, I was focusing slightly more narrowly on the idea of minimizing your tax burden at your current income level without making major changes in your career, country of residence, etc. but on a longer timescale or in the context of broader life goals you are aiming to maximize your after-tax income rather than minimize the taxes you pay.
I don’t think I’m morally bound to evade taxes for the same reason I’m not morally bound to stop the world’s massive amounts of animal suffering. My utility function breaks if I take my morality too seriously. As you say, I am somewhat bound morally to try and evade taxes or even actively stage insurrection against my government. Both of those seem like very bad ideas, as the state will just crush me.
Not working for the government in lieu of trying to bring down the government is similar to my decision to eat less meet rather than trying to make the whole world eat less meat. Yes, I am aware that these are not anywhere close to perfectly analogous decisions.