The US government lives on paperwork. One of the most important things one can do in the government is generate paperwork to prove you have generated paperwork. It seems like a hopelessly pointless exercise, until said paperwork is used to bury someone in court. It removes any doubt that the target of the action was aware of their obligations and the possible results of failing those obligations.

I understand that we don’t have a debtors prison in the USA, and that’s a good thing, because it would be unfairly used against the poorest.

Meanwhile, we’ve got to stop pretending people like this can and should be tried for failure to pay their taxes. It’s not like with poor people, where they simply don’t have the money to pay it, these people clearly have the money and have no intent to pay it. At that point we should be raising it to the crime of tax dodging and start actually fucking arresting people and dispensing with this pussy-ass strongly worded letter shit.

I hear you, but I think this might be a step up: It sounds like… they never event sent notices to wealthy non-filers in the past! (If I’ve misunderstood, please correct me. I’m embarrassed to admit I did not read the original article.)

And seeing as they’re sending notices now, perhaps this means they’ll follow through with making sure this gets done. One can hope…

If nothing else, it pretty well cuts off any claims they might make about not being aware they were not in compliance. It speeds cases along once they do get to court, plus there’s the prospect of fines, so on.