btw
They tried in Ancient Rome (3 times.)
Didn’t work out well for them.
Ha I am an amateur (very amateur) Roman empire historian and did not know that. Now going off to educate myself.
Talking of reading, this is a fiction book but @Gaius it might interest you. I read it a few months ago and it certainly made me think.
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Eventually our progeny would be left holding the bag.
That’s a lie. He’s not cancelling debt. He’s dividing it up among everyone. Healthy or not.
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That seems like an involuntary default and transfer of obligation. There is so much borrowing in government spending, such forgiveness would simply transfer the obligation.
There is a lack of housing supply on the market, removing all tax-lien debt would certainly help fix that.
So … Under your tax forgiveness plan nobody would pay any taxes and the Government would just print money to match their budget. 
By the way, do you have any idea what “writing off bad debt” means?
Why couldn’t they just “write it off”? Is your tax debt forgiveness plan a one-shot deal?
To whom?
I don’t have a plan. I didn’t say I had a plan.
I said if they just forgave tax debt, the absence of that income to the fedgov would mean that future generations would be left holding the bag (for whatever that income was supposed to cover.)
We (and future generations) are already left holding the bag for endless deficit spending. Tax forgiveness would just lead to even more of that.
Sorry. I wasn’t paying close attention. I thought I was still responding to Gaius.
I think it should not be erased.
From the entity owing the back taxes to the taxpayers as a whole.
But what if everyone reneges on paying taxes because they know the debt will be forgiven? Then there are no taxpayers to transfer the debt to.
Well then, only past tax debt could be forgiven. So tax debt would not encourage anything bad future behavior.
Consider
“As of April 2024, there are approximately 734,318 active single-family and condo/townhome listings for sale in the United States” (MS Copilot)
and
Imagine the cumulative effect of this:
“As part of its tax collection activities, IRS reported filing more than 548,000 tax liens against taxpayer property in fiscal year 2003.” (GAO.gov)
With out adding a single new dollar to the debt or deficit, tax debt forgiveness would alleviate financial burdens to hundreds of thousands of American families and un-constipate the housing market.
umm no.
And it is crazy and condescending of you to imagine that is what I want.
Tax debt refers to a subset of debts from the past adding to that an imaginary 100% of all taxes past present and future is , well, pretty imaginative.
Actually it would lead to the very “moral” risk Samm@ is referring to. With no risk of adverse collection actions, why should anyone pay?
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Okay when I I talk about debt I mean past debt. (Debt that actually exists not imaginary debt form a hypothetical future
When Joe Biden said “forgive” student debt
neither @Samm or anybody said “'Oh he wants to make it 100% free for everybody forever.”
Same deal with medical debt.
Now somehow I am a low-IQ drooling idiot who meant that with tax debt?
.
.
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Guy 1 “Can you forgive me that $20 debt I borrowed in the past.”
Guy 2 “Oh you mean in the future you want to borrow 100% of all my money and never pay it back ever?”
Guy 1: “No that’s not what I said. You have a wild imagination”
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.
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Man: “I borrowed $500 from the credit card company and I can’t pay it back”
Company: “Oh, so you are asking for a permanently unlimited credit limit to permanently borrow millions of dollars from us and never pay it back?”
Man: “No that’s not what I said. You have a wild imagination”
