With the economy in a serious recession, the worst since the days of the Great Depression, many Americans find themselves strapped for cash.
The impact of corporations like Lehman Brothers, A&G, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac going into bankruptcy has been felt everywhere from Wall Street to Main Street America.
With finances becoming ever more strapped, and budgets getting increasingly tight around the country, inevitably, many Americans will consider or play with the idea of cheating on their tax returns.
This is of course, an extremely inadvisable, risky, and illegal thing to do.
Any sane individual would strongly encourage all American taxpayers to be completely forthright on their returns, to accurately and precisely state the amount and sources of all of their revenue, and to fill out their forms to the absolute best of the knowledge.
This is not a debatable point.
As an American citizen you need to fill out your taxes correctly.
Still though, it is worth considering the practical reasons to not fill out your taxes fraudulently, if not just to remind yourself of the reasons to not file them illegally in these hard economic times.
First of all, many American citizens are not entirely sure what the reason is that they need to fill out taxes in the first place.
What is it exactly that the government does with the money that they take from hard working American people? To be honest, pretty much every service, organization, and government body that is operated at the state and federal level is funded in some part by the taxes you pay annually.
While a precise breakdown of revenue would be lengthy and difficult to verbalize, you can certainly figure out for yourself where your money is going by looking at a summary of the federal budget.
The President of the United States approves a budget each year that is created by Congress, and this budget delineates where and how every dollar of the American citizen's tax money should be spent.
Everything from Defense (military) spending to education, welfare, and roads, are included in the budget and are paid for by American taxpayers.
Many people are not convinced of the necessity to accurately pay their taxes on civic grounds.
The fact that your money is being used to support essential programs like Medicare and public schools should be enough to ensure that everyone state their taxes correctly, there is still a portion of the American populace who will be tempted to cheat on their return, some of these people may disagree with where their money is spent, and some of these people will simply not care about the fact that the U.
S.
government needs money to support itself.
If this is the case, you need only recognize the fact that, in a time of increased economic difficulty, the IRS and other government bodies will surely be paying close attention to fraud so that they can secure every dime that is owed to the federal government.
If only for the reason that the IRS will be severe with their fact-checking and prosecution strategies in this time of economic recession, you should be absolutely sure that you correctly state your finances on your return this year.
Simply put, tax fraud is a very bad and unprofitable idea.
When filing them this year, think about the different programs that are funded by your duty dollars, and then consider the terrible unlikelihood of successfully cheating the federal government.
You should not need any more reasons to be honest and upfront about your finances.