If You Steal, The IRS Wants A Cut

This is hilarious… who in the hell comes up with this crap? Do they really think some thief is going to report it as “Other Income”? And even if they did (which would be funny), wouldn’t the government sort of be an accomplice since they are benefiting from criminal acts? It almost makes me want to go out and steal a pack of gum just so I can put something in the stolen property section of my tax return. haha

This is clip from page 88 of the IRS handbook for individuals (PDF version here).

So what do you learn from this? If you steal a car, return it before December 31 so you don’t owe taxes on it! haha

Alternately, treat it as “borrowed property without the owner’s permission”, but that’s a little more grey area and might not fall under the IRS’ safe harbor guidelines.

28 thoughts on “If You Steal, The IRS Wants A Cut”

  1. hahah that’s hilarious. what a weird thing to put. I wonder how many ppl reviewed this section of the handbook before publication and thought it was something important to notate. wait… why are you reading the IRS handbook? Isn’t it happy hour time? πŸ™‚

  2. LOL nice find. Reminds me of a news item in a paper a few years back about burglars who raided a house in Sao Paolo. They nicked a hifi set and came back 2 days later to ask for the receipts since they had a hard time selling it.

  3. I like the “tax act” google ad. I wonder if the “stolen property” is a field on those tax forms. If you fill it in, does it alert the cops that you have stolen property?

  4. yuk yuk, i know its hilarious, but seriously, usually those silly (stupid) enough to steal would probably do something like this.

    I’m in Canada, and we don’t, to my knowledge, have antyhing like this.

    the “government” is just “the people” which means YOU….so if you want to pay hard earned taxes, and want to let some commoner get away with both stealing, and tax evasion, then go ahead mate!

  5. A while ago, in France, The French IRS (FISC) was suing a bunch of prostitutes over income tax.

    The prostitutes were protesting that this was illegal since there is a law against pimping in France…

    You could see them picketing with signs saying “The state is my pimp !” hilarious !

  6. Since you didn’t pay for these ten gallon gas at the misfunctioning gas pump, maybe you should put the amount in that section, could you not ?

    That one is REAL fun!

  7. Hear that?

    Its the sound of a tax loophole being close. πŸ™‚

    I expect someone once got away with not paying taxes because they claimed everything they had was stolen and not legally theirs to be taxed on. Or something like that anyway.

  8. Pretty sure that this has been there for a few years. I’ve also heard that the IRS is not allowed to turn over this information. Not sure I believe it though. πŸ™‚

  9. So… my question is:
    If you cheat on your taxes and pay considerably less than you really owe is it considered stealing from the IRS?
    If so you could report the stolen money and you would only have to pay taxes on a fraction of the “stolen” money (depending on your tax bracket)! Even better… now the IRS can’t turn you in, and if you get audited you have a strong case for Entrapment πŸ˜‰

    What do you think?

  10. Well I could think of the following:
    2 guys making nice business with each other, not wanting to pay tax. So they simply tell that they stole the goods or money from each other , because the penalty for this theft might be a lot lower than the tax.

    On the other hand about what Julien said:
    >If you cheat on your taxes and pay considerably less than you really owe is it considered stealing from the IRS?
    If so you could report the stolen money and you would only have to pay taxes on a fraction of the β€œstolen” money (depending on your tax bracket)

  11. This thig cut my text, I wanted to say:

    You could do this recusively again and again until your tax is only some cents.

  12. Hey, Shoemoney was asked for $200 only. It seems that such gang does some marketing research prior extortion.

    BTW, did you know that Al Capone is a DP member?, I have seen him lurking around.

  13. Relax folks!! No one is required to file federal income taxes even if you are a thief. If you haven’t read the internal revenue code and or the Treasury regulations then you will think that everyone must pay the federal income tax. Knowledge is power!!

  14. A lady in Montana just stole $888,000 from a bank and is being convicted of tax evasion for not reporting it. They really do this stuff!

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