Tax fraud and worldbuilding

## Original thread

https://www.reddit.com/r/worldbuilding/comments/ek72gg/if\_i\_commit\_tax\_fraud\_in\_your\_world\_what\_will/?utm\_source=share&utm\_medium=web2x

## Greatest hits

If in the event the thread is deleted, here's some of the "best" responses.

> "Decapitation, Poison, execution. your choice."
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> "So, execution, execution, or execution?"
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Grimdark indeed.

> "Tax fraud in the Argyran Empire is something you'd have to be very brave to attempt. Several Imperial agencies have a militarized arm for enforcement of things that fall entirely under their jurisdiction and the Imperial Treasury is one of two departments, alongside the Postal Service, to have their regulations enforced by the Palace Guard.
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> Palace Guard are the unfortunate combination of being exceptionally competent, utterly unrestricted by Imperial law, and extremely bored. They're just waiting for somebody to give them an excuse to do something over the top.
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> Basically, if they use their 'You have no private life as far as I'm concerned' legal powers to uncover proof of tax fraud, they will introduce you to the "Spite Tax" which is where they take however much money they think will get their point across. Any fines and jail time apply in addition, with Palace Guard offering public beatings as an alternative to jail to get it over with quickly and ensure that you don't have to arrange for somebody to feed your dog or anything."
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Militarized IRS. That's something new.

> "If you try to avoid paying your import tariffs by skipping your mandatory stop at the Trojan Stations, Earth's laserstar constellation will vaporize you on sight. So that's not recommended."
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Vaporization, the only fitting punishment for tax fraud.

> "Before the reforms, The bureaucrats take you or your first born as a hive-slave, it was pretty effective. Now, they give you a large fine, take one of your slaves for the Plantation Hive."
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In MY world, the confederate states are actually a hivemind!

> "An Auditor (yes, auditors are a big deal in my world) might track you down with the help of alchemy (if needed), detain you in the Hub Council embassy, and then ship you to the Hub with the weekly fulfilled requisition orders."
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Using alchemy to track fraud. Overkill?

> "You’re in for a world of pain. Due to neurological advancements. They can make you experience a trillion or so years of hell while your head is cut off. Easy and painful way to punish a prisoner."
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Angry Astartes (Assfartes) himself responds in his grimdark way as usual.

> "There are many different punishments depending on what species, kingdom, and ruler you're dealing with.
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> The gnomes are pretty laid back. The money is helpful, but they dont really need it and their rules can get it in other ways. As long as you help out in the mine occasionally, you're fine.
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> The Wood Elves, since they're all hunters that provide for themselves, dont really have taxes. (I can't think of any reason the king would need to collect them, please tell me if theres something I'm missing)
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> The Night Elves regularly refuse to pay their own taxes. They do it to challenge themselves, to see if they could take on the royal guards and win. Because of how often this happens, you'd probably just get a tired guard asking you to actually pay them next time.
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> The Blood Elves, as a group of Warlocks that live in caves and spend all their time sacrificing and chanting, don't have taxes in the traditional sense. But if you can't give them a good reason why you're not bringing in sacrifices for Akravoc, you better be ready for a gruesome death.
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> Goblins are nowhere near advanced or lawful enough to have taxes.
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> Copperscales would suspend your engineering license for a while, maybe revoke some of the materials they provided for you. As a kingdom who rarely leaves their own walls and spends all their time building, it is very important that food is brought to them, and good food isnt free.
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> Flamescales would force you to fight. You'd likely have to duel the strongest royal guard. If you lose, you probably die. If you win, you get angry glares from the rest of the guards and tougher punishments for the smallest things. But at least you got away with tax fraud!
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> Nightscales would revoke access to the royal library. If you're not helping to pay to bring in scrolls and books, you don't get to read the scrolls and books.
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> The Funshu dont really have kingdoms or rulers. They're spread out in small villages, with only their morals and pure hearts to keep them from doing anything bad. They don't have taxes.
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> The Tsol'gus have no need for taxes and therefore don't have them.
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> The Ni'Bi aren't civilized enough to have taxes.
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> With humans, it depends on which kingdom you're in. It could be anything from decapitation to poison to CR (controlled rupture).
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> The My'staka have no need for money
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> The Ta'ghin and Sha'ghin also have no need for money."
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Just all of these are... Pure nonsense, unsustainable, stupid, or boring. Usual r/worldbuilding.

> "Considering that the Godomegan government's budget is basically infinite, nothing really."
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Speaks for itself.
Now for a comment thread. The cream of r/worldbuilding's crop.

> "At least in the Commonwealth, you don't commit tax fraud, because it's functionally impossible for you to do so. This is because the main tax levied, and the only tax paid by the majority of normal citizens, is a tax on the value of owned land minus the value of improvements on that land. Another way to think of it is you paying compensation to the rest of society for the work that society does to make the location of your real estate desirable - you pay more in tax for a plot of land in a town than you would for the same plot in the countryside, since that location is more in demand and thus more valuable due to the presence and work of people nearby, and the public goods (roads, courts, social bonds, public services) that they collectively support. Since you have to tell the government that you own the land in order for you to practically own it (it's land, you can't exactly hide it from view to stop others from putting their sights on taking it for themselves), and since regular government surveys and the buying/selling of property keeps them updated on how valuable land in an area is, it is impossible to dodge. If you can't pay the tax, the smart thing to do is for you to just sell your property."
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> "I can think of at least three ways to commit fraud under this system just off the top of my head, and there are probably many others.
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> 1.Misrepresent or otherwise disguise the value of improvements to the land.
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> 2.Disguise or artificially decrease the apparent value of the land itself.
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> 3.Conceal or otherwise obfuscate the ownership of the land.And this isn't even including colluding with/bribing the assessors."
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> "Doing 1. causes less to be subtracted from the total value for the land, leading the 'fraudster' to be taxed more. I think the government would be quite happy for citizens to contribute of their own volition, but I think this is a rather circuitous way of doing it.
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> Doing 2. sounds plausible, but a good estimate for the value of a piece of land can be simply and cheaply ascertained by looking at purchases of land and taxes paid for plots of land near too it. The gradient doesn't change that much across a whole street of a town, the ones that are paying less than the others stick out like a sore thumb. You could theoretically have entire neighbourhoods confederate to try and apply this 'disguise', I don't think it's possible given that everyone else is financially incentivised to keep everyone honest. Land typically appreciates in value, minus special events that depreciate the value of everybody's land temporarily, it is painfully obvious when one plot or an area of a town significantly drops in apparent value completely out of the blue.
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> And again, why would you do 3.? How do you even carry it out? Even if you succeed, somehow, it means you're taking some expense (this attempt at trickery has to be costing you something) in order to tell the government that it doesn't belong to "you", it belongs to someone else who they would track down until finding out it is you anyway. Whatever entity you create to mislead the government still has to pay exactly the same as what you would if you were honest, it might miss a month or two of payments while sieging the property out but the jig is up as soon as they catch the first person you send to try and get use out of that property and asks them to name names, and eventually get you to pay up on all those missed months."
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> "1.wrong direction, you make it seem like the improvements are more valuable than they really are, not less.
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> 2.In reality this is an extremely common form of property tax fraud. Assessing the value of a piece of property is actually pretty complicated, even with access to purchase price information which can be unreliable (what incentive is there for buyers or sellers to report the full purchasing price?) there are many factors that can significantly distort the value of property even adjacent to each other. Take two adjacent pieces of property, one which has a creek running through it, all else being equal which is more valuable? Well, what if the creek is only seasonal, present during the rainy spring, but not for the rest of the year. What if it's prone to flooding? What if someone further upstream dumps waste into the creek and it's very polluted and unpleasant smelling? small waterways like this can be pretty dynamic too, so the reality of all these situations could change even over the course of a year, maybe for a few years the creek runs across the other property even. Is the tax assessor a hydrological expert of some kind, able to tell which of these is really the case, or whether the property owner just dammed it up a bit and threw some trash into it to make the creek look smaller and smellier than it normally is?
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> 3.This is another pretty common form of property tax fraud in the real world, though less than 2. I mean, you've got the general gist of it, you just missed that the person using the property might be the owner themselves, merely pretending to be a tenant or employee of the 'true' owner, or they might not actually know who the real owner is, having been hired anonymously to work the land. In either case, not likely to give up anything.
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> Likely, there are multiple purported owners who are each claimed to have some share in the land, many of whom might be fictional, or dead, or outside the jurisdiction of the tax assessor, so that only a fraction of the assessed taxes can ever be collected. you might eventually unravel the truth of the situation, but it might cost so much to do so that it's not actually worthwhile. You could seize the property, but then you're missing out on even the partial tax payments, and the perpetrator of the fraud has gotten off mostly unscathed."
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And that's all for now, folks!
Alright time for one more! Fuck it, this one's too edgy to NOT go here!

> "The Uronexus Potentate possess labour camps, criminals go there. Those that fucked with the Administoris Uronexus in a particularly egregious way, go to the subterranean labour camps, to be worked to death.
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> In the Farion States, when the government finds you they will either take you away in one piece... or if you put up a fight... in pieces. Farion law enforcement officers notoriously have short fuses, and possess zero tolerance resistance. Should you be intact you'll be taken to a Black Site and auctioned, where you will be up for grabs by the corporations, once you are purchased you will be used in human experimentation for numerous projects by the winning corporation. If you are pieces they'll put you in their transports and leave you to bleed out, normally you'll die in the transports so when you eventually stop moving they'll kick you out of the transports and your body will left up to whoever it lands on.
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> The Avernius Republic live in mountains and underground because the frigid surface of their floating lands is too cold. Law Enforcement simply need to push your face against the glass on the "walls" of their cities, to remind you what is outside. If you refuse to listen or simply make things difficult for them, they will take you to the nearest Heat-Lock open the door, and push you outside into the cold. 30 seconds is typically all one needs before they're banging on the door begging to be let back in. Criminals who commit capital crimes are simply pushed outside and the Heat-Lock is locked behind them.
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> Eleiux law enforcement are liable to just shoot you. The country isn't as advanced societally as the other nations, and don't have the resources for a realistic long term prison system."
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Ow! The cyberpunk edge is slitting the wrists of my McCyborg arms! Actually this is just plain regular edge. I'm going home.