More thoughts on the “State Office of Federal Tax Fulfillment”

Previously I started playing with the idea of a “State Office of Federal Tax Fulfillment”. The basic idea is that I would pay my federal taxes, but they would be routed through a state office that holds them temporarily, before forwarding my payment through to the federal government. The purpose is so that if we wanted to, as a state, we could collectively withhold our taxes.

We wouldn’t really even need everyone in the state to do it. It could be a voluntary system, perhaps with a minimum level of adoption before any potential withholding takes place. For instance, here in California, maybe nothing happens unless 16 million people enroll in the system (40% of the state, just to pick a random amount). Once that number is reached, we could collectively vote on whether the 16 million of us want our taxes sent through.

We would of course be assuming some risk, since the federal government could still come after us individually, but in this example, they would have to be coming after 16 million of us.

To extend this idea even further though, what if other states also adopted these measures? We could all work together to withhold our contributions in a unified voice if we desired to do so, increasing the power of the action, and reducing the risk to each individual tax payer.