Creepy orwellian Pennsylvania tax amnesty TV ad "We Know Who You Are"

Run_to_da_hills

Straight out of George Orwell's 1984.

This add has been shown on PA tv regularly and has drawn up quite some contraversy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybcu2itqvEQ&feature=player_embedded

humanji

They're using scaretactics to try and get people to see their point of view. Is it any different to when you post this kind of thing?:



And it's basically the same idea as our tv license ads, and a darn bit better than our "We're not going to do it ourselves, so you go rat out your neighbours" ads that we have.

My name is URL

humanji wrote: »

They're using scaretactics to try and get people to see their point of view. Is it any different to when you post this kind of thing?:

Are RTDH's posts approved and funded by the Government?

Yitzhak Rabin

Giving amnesty to tax fraudsters is Orwellian?

digme

Run_to_da_hills wrote: »

Straight out of George Orwell's 1984.

This add has been shown on PA tv regularly and has drawn up quite some contraversy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ybcu2itqvEQ&feature=player_embedded

That's the funniest thing I've seen in ages, haha thanks for the laugh rtdh's
Hey tom

RGDATA!

yekahs wrote: »

Giving amnesty to tax fraudsters is Orwellian?

no, but the ad in question totally is in fairness. not everyone in the US who owes a bill of like $4k (as quoted in the ad) is a fraudster. big time tax fraud is rigged for the rich by their well paid lawyers and accountants.

I have no love for tax fraudsters, and there is even something refreshingly honest about the big brother tone of the ad! But it's a nasty ad. I'm sure they will find it more effective than the softly-softly approach, but if I was in Pennsylvania I would be writing to my congressman about it, and definitely if I had voted for him.

tax amnesties are interesting. you let a lot of cheats off the hook for years of abuse, and many of them will go on to continue to cheat the system as we have seen here after the one we had in 93. at the same time, you do get a big chunk of money back into public coffers, and save a lot of man hours investigating and litigating people.

what bugs me about this ad is that it is aimed at the guy who owes a few grand and doesn't mention the bigger fish. I'm sure if you review this in a few years you will find plenty of rich individuals and companies who cut favourable deals with the govt and wipe the slate clean for themselves, and plenty of ordinary folk who won't get relatively as good deals.

humanji

My name is URL wrote: »

Are RTDH's posts approved and funded by the Government?

Would it make a difference if they were?

RGDATA!

this has me more riled than i expected

i guess the reasoning behind targeting the small fries is that the bigger fish are going to take advantage of it however they can and pay something up, and even though they give something up they will have benefitted in the long view by their cheating

the smaller fry accounts for for far more of the cases of tax arrears, and collectively a big chunk of change, so lets scare the **** out of as many of them as we can so we don't have to go through all the hassle of actually tracking them down and taking action against them

the idea behind the ad is morally wrong. it's definitely straight out of 1984. even though there is a certain honesty - they do know where you live and what you owe etc, i'm sure it's not the kind of voice of government the people of Pennsylvania thought they were voting for, and it's an affront to the democratic ideals of reasonable people.