Life
What It’s Like to Stop Paying Your Taxes
I was most startled by what didn’t happen.
Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by smartstock/iStock/Getty Images Plus.
In What It’s Like, people tell us, well, what it’s like to have experiences many of us have not even imagined. In this entry, we spoke to Jim, a medical professional who hasn’t paid his taxes in a decade. (Jim, understandably, asked to be identified by first name only.) Jim talked to us about how his delinquency started, how it snowballed, and why he’s finally decided to come clean. In addition to being anonymized, this as-told-to interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I haven’t filed my taxes for a decade. Well, that’s not entirely true. I did file in 2020, but that was only so I could get the stimulus checks. I’m in my late 40s now, so I’ve been living tax-free since my late 30s. I was living in California, where my expenses are high, and I’ve worked a bunch of odd jobs: call centers, food service, hospitality, bartending, and so on. But most importantly, for a long time, I was an alcoholic. I needed to pay the bills, and the rest of my money went to alcohol. It was a vicious cycle. The IRS would ask me for money that I didn’t have, because I’d already blown it.
I wouldn’t advise anyone to do this. I knew, from the very first time I didn’t file my taxes, that I would need to face the music someday. But, simply put, I needed the money, and I was at a place in my life where I didn’t really care about the potential consequences. I have a middle-class lifestyle now, but when I first skipped Tax Day, I was making $30,000 a year. And when I looked at all of these billionaires—Bill Gates, Elon Musk—who were getting all of these tax breaks, while I was struggling, it was easy to justify my own delinquency. Those men were getting all of these write-offs, but when I’d go file, I’d either have to pay more or it’d be a wash.
For a while, I would claim nine dependents on my paycheck so my income wasn’t taxed as much each month. It was something I learned from an acquaintance years prior. You’d say that you have nine people dependent on you for half of the year, and for the remaining six months, you switch and say that you’re single—you know, before you actually have to file your taxes. But I never did that latter part. I just rolled through the last decade like I was supporting a gigantic family, without ever actually filing to the IRS.
And you know what? I basically got away with it. The only time I received a call from the IRS was after I filed to get my stimulus check.