If all those "Cash Only" businesses and there's a lot of them, not only here, would pay their taxes like responsible citizens maybe the rest of us wouldn't have to pay so much.
The last year I worked as a contract programmer my wife an I paid $60k in taxes.
Do you think those black topped highways you drive on everyday were constructed for free? Have you given any thought to how much it is costing the people of the U.S. to support our role in the war against terrorism? Even the air you breathe and the water you drink isn't free. The government spends millions of dollars to help ensure those items are safe for us to consume. You may say that the government, that includes local, state and federal, wastes a lot of our tax money, but so does private industry.
You say, "It's only $10 here or $50 there that I'm not paying. What can that hurt?" This example is just for the sake of the argument, but let’s say that 25 million tax payers under paid only $500 a year in taxes or earned around $2000, that's less than $200 a month, of unreported yearly income. That's $12.5 billion dollars of lost tax revenue. My numbers aren't accurate or anything, I just used them to show how a little fudging on your owed taxes multiplied by the number of people who do under report taxable income can make a difference.
What
PathfinderGuy said is a pretty fair example of the attitude of tax cheats. How would you feel if you filled your car up with gas and the pump showed you got 10 gallons but in reality you only got 9.5 gallons? What if that 12 ounce can of soda really only had 11.5 ounces in it? What does that hurt; it's only a half gallon of gas or a half ounce of soda, that's not much.
