Matthew Yglesias would like some legal advice on how to cheat on his taxes.

Exaggeration? No. He’s clearly taking a vacation in Iceland right now. All of his posts up until the one above indicated as much. And he’s clearly now trying to figure out a way to turn that vacation into a tax write-off, merely by squeezing a short article or two out of his experiences — i.e. a write-off he doesn’t deserve. To me, that’s quite obviously a violation of the spirit of tax law. And I’m not so sure it isn’t a violation of the law’s letter, either.

Isn’t this a bit odd, coming from a guy who once composed a post entitled “Tax Everything!”, who has written about the “vital role coercions has to play in building a better tomorrow,” and who is generally in favor of massive increases in government spending across the board?

The wonderful government programs Matthew Yglesias dreams of are never going to happen if people like Matthew Yglesias continue to try to cheat on what they owe the government. Or does Yglesias believe that everyone except him should pay for those programs?

As I’ve suggested before, good liberals ought to figure out how they can pay more than what they owe, not figure out ways to pay less.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 15th, 2005 at 10:20 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.