IRS Poll Shows Majority Of Americans Pay Taxes Out Of Fear

Chris | InformationLiberation
Mar. 06, 2014

Sixty percent of Americans told pollsters fear of an audit influences their decision to pay taxes to the IRS. Note, only fifty-three percent of Americans pay federal income taxes.

See how CBNC managed to spin this as a positive:

The IRS Oversight Board's annual taxpayer survey finds that 86 percent of Americans thinks it's not at all acceptable to cheat on taxes. Most people surveyed also said they generally agreed that everyone who cheats should be held accountable.

What's more, the vast majority of Americans—95 percent—mostly or completely agree that it's every American's civic duty to pay taxes.

It's not mainly a fear of getting caught that motivates people to be honest. More than nine in 10 of those surveyed said personal integrity influences whether they honestly report and pay their taxes. By contrast, just six in 10 said fear of an audit influenced their tax compliance.

[...]The taxpayer attitude survey was conducted last August by outside polling firm GfK Custom Research. The pollsters do not say at the beginning of the survey that it is being conducted on behalf of the IRS Oversight Board, but after respondents have answered all the questions it does indicate that the survey is related to the IRS.

Fact is, if people weren't compelled to under threats of imprisonment, no one in their right mind would pay anything. People who fear retaliation from the most powerful criminal extortionists on the planet can't be trusted to respond honestly to such polls, nor should they, the threats are real. If the IRS is so confident people simply pay taxes out of "civic duty," they should remove the threats and see how much they get.
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Chris runs the website InformationLiberation.com, you can read more of his writings here. Follow infolib on twitter here.