Subject: Re: Biden/s Sttatement on the Pardon
If the average person were to deliberately cheat the government out of a million or more dollars, and they have you dead to rights, they'd probably go to jail.

I'm not as sure.

Our tax system is based almost entirely on voluntary compliance. Yes, there's lots of reporting going on - 1099s, W2s, 1098s. But those are all for the "little people". The truly big dogs from a financial point of view have precious little of that kind of reporting. Walmart doesn't base it's tax filing on 1099s. Elon Musk gets a couple of 1099s and W2s, but the big money is in SpaceX and his other private ventures where there is no reporting. The same applies to every large business and every wealthy person running a business.

Prosecuting famous people is a deterrent for all of those less famous folks who might have an inclination to ... let's say fudge things a bit on their taxes. Prosecuting some well-off but unknown person for deliberately underpaying their taxes doesn't have nearly the same deterrent effect as prosecuting someone more famous.

Of course, there's also the tax prosecutions for criminals who are good at staying just out of reach for their crimes. Al Capone is the stereotype - the modern examples are probably drug kingpins. Can't quite connect them to other crimes well enough to get a conviction, but the books provide the avenue to get a conviction.

--Peter <== tax guy who went out on his own to get away from bosses asking him to bury the figurative financial bodies.