Tax evasion

Tax evasion is the statutorily-prohibited act of evading or defeating a tax. 26 U.S.C. § 7201 provides that under U.S. federal law, tax evasion is a class D felony. An anonymous contributor to The Voluntaryist notes: "Most people want to be upright and meet their voluntarily-assumed obligations. They willingly pay their rightful debts in order to maintain their own self-esteem and to maintain their reputation in the minds of their friends, neighbors, and countrymen. So if taxes were really voluntarily contracted debts as the Internal Revenue Service maintains, then why does the government need to rely on force and its threat to collect the money? The very fact that the government must resort to this supports my argument that taxes are not voluntarily-assumed obligations."