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.
This entry was posted by Shawn on January 5, 2007 at 3:52 pm, and is filed under Law, Weird Stuff. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0.You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.
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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!
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#13 written by maffiou 6 years ago
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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
What do you think?
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#20 written by Alex Graf 6 years ago
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 “stolen” money (depending on your tax bracket) -
#22 written by JGrimes 6 years ago
This is solely so that they can pull an ‘Al Capone’ on people.
Al Capone was arrested for Tax Fraud, since they couldn’t get anyone to testify or enough evidence for any of his other (many) crimes.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Capone#Federal_income_taxes_and_downfall
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#24 written by Alvis Jenkins 6 years ago
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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?