[CU Tiger]

Originally Posted by thesloppy

Here's a silly, ignorant question that popped into my head whilst reading about corporate tax abuse:

Could American tax payers make an effective protest through the use of income tax withholdings (since we're not particularly effective at 'traditional' forms of effective protest)? Like, if folks basically took home their entire pay and didn't pay their taxes until the deadline, essentially denying the government the use of their money for an entire fiscal year, but without any risk to themselves or their lifestyle, would that loss of immediate capital (or possible interest earned from that capital) be a big enough hiccup to as to actually pose a problem/protest to the government? Clearly an individual effort would be worthless, and any kind of effect would probably require hundreds of thousands of folks to do so at the very least, but it seems like the kind of super-low-risk protest that could possibly take off on social media, in the hands of the right whackjobs/patriots.

Surely someone smarter and more informed that me has probably tackled this idea before, and although the idea of tax resistance has a long history, all the examples I can find of that resistance usually extends to not paying some/all of your taxes at all, whereas this idea is just denying the government your money (and any interest earned from its use) for as long as legally possible.

The problem is if you end up owing more than a certain amount at the end of the year, they actually penalize you and charge you an astronomical fee and mandate you go on quarterly filings the next year.