What should the response be to someone wanting to be paid in cash for a service?

[jberryhill]

111. I remain astounded by some of the comments here

Hey, I'm a liberal. I believe there are a lot of things we - us - the system in which we participate - pays for that are worth paying for. The US government is not some alien entity. It belongs to us. We decide who runs it. We elect representatives that pass the laws. Like it or not, its OUR government.

I pay every penny of what I owe, and it is quite a bit. In fact, I voted for the guy who was going to raise MY taxes. I did that out of some apparently idiotic notion I have about fairness.

I attended public schools. I have degrees from institutions which receive state and federal support. I have a disabled adult child who receives SSDI. Those things happened, and still happen, because people pay their taxes. Tax cheats aren't just "cheating the IRS", they are cheating everyone - including me, you, and everyone else.

Why the FUCK should I pay my share if other people aren't paying theirs? And I'm not talking about progressivity - our tax system should be progressive. And it should include credits like the EITC and so on.

But, godammit, if your problem is paying your taxes, the solution is to work to get it changed, not to cheat. Heck, if I got creative, I could hide more tax liability than most people have income. That's how well I did, thanks to the state and federal support of the institutions that helped me get where I am.

So I guess I should just cheat, right? That wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be good, and I don't want to do business with anyone who thinks they have some kind of privilege to cheat everyone else.