This isn't an illegal thing but more of a tip for the thing you hate. Most credit card companies will let you open and close virtual credit cards tied to your main account, but with a new card number etc. I make a new virtual card for every subscription I have. If I want to cancel the service and it takes more than 5m to do so through the company that provides that service, I just turn off the virtual credit card they will try and fail to charge for the next payment.
this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Non-profit scams. You can set one up, put out a call for donations claiming you do some blah blah blah work, and give yourself most of the money in the form of a salary/bonus. Only a small percentage of the money ever needs to go to anyone in need.
This happens in all sorts of corporate and religious charities. The NFL was technically non-profit for many years, and that should say it all.
Walking around absolutely drenched in water.
Spam calls. Like, if you're willing to spend, what, 50 dollars?, you can absolutely destroy people's sanity with never ending calls from disposable numbers
Technically this is illegal in lots of countries. It's just hard to enforce afik.
Ice cream, after you haven't had any for 2 weeks
Pretty much any tax avoidance loopholes. The more money I have the more I see how ridiculously skewed in favor of the rich everything is. My income is taxed at a lower rate than my capital gains, meaning that not only did I make several thousand dollars last year on stock sales I did literally nothing to earn, but I paid very little on taxes for it. There is also a scheme a friend of mine uses to reduce his tax burden even more by recording losses that only exist on paper by swapping between essentially equivalent assets. The system is designed to punish poor people for being poor and reward rich people for being rich.
A popular scheme I have seen is:
Owner registered and de-facto runs an incorporated Company. Company employs Owner and pays them a small salary (down to state minimum wage even), so Owner minimizes the income tax they pay.
The car Owner drives is owned by the Company for "business purposes", which allows the car to be operated within 50 miles of the Company (and farther with supplemental insurance). Company counts the car purchase/lease, maintenance, gas as expenses, bringing down the bottom line.
Flights, travel, meals could be paid by the Company, as long as it's tangentially "business related".
The house Owner lives in (or several houses for the family) is owned by the Company and is rented to Owner for very cheap, so Company pays the taxes, maintenance, etc, breaking even, or taking a loss on this house. Again, this brings down the company's bottom line.
Somehow, purchases for a Company can be exempt from sales taxes, too.
In the end, on paper, the Company is barely making any profit, but the Owner might be enjoying a nice car, nice house, and vacations. All for "business purposes" of course. While you pay taxes on your income and purchases like an idiot
It gets worse. CEOs take out zero interest, or exteremly low interest loans on corporate assets. They then use the money tax free.
I will say a lot of what you've discussed here is actually illegal but very rarely enforced. Pretty much every small business owner I know is pulling shit like this but it's basically never enforced even though it's illegal fraud.
I was always under the impression that the fraudulent intent (outside of extremly blatant cases) would be very difficult to prove in court or otherwise. If a car is used to meet clients or haul some company-related cargo, it is used for business. If a company is a real estate developer, it is expected for them to own and lease residential properties. If the owners' family members work for the company, they must collect salary. And so on.
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