You can pay your taxes in cash — if you’re up for the challenge
You can pay your taxes in cash — if you’re up for the challenge
Tax Day falls on Tuesday, April 18, this year. And for those who haven’t filed yet and end up owing money to the government, have you considered paying in cash?
It may not be the first option many people would choose, but it is possible, if not challenging.
Jay Zagorsky, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, did just that this year. He joined “Marketplace’s” Kai Ryssdal to talk about the obstacles he encountered in paying the IRS in physical currency and the reasons we might want cash to be a more accessible option. An edited transcript of their conversation is below.
Kai Ryssdal: You wanted to pay your taxes in cash. My question, sir, is why?
Jay Zagorsky: Why? Well, first, Kai, I teach students about money. And I always ask them to look at the front of their bills. And on the front of the bills, it states: This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private. And income tax is one of our biggest public debts. And for years, I was wondering: Was it even possible to pay in cash? Because I’ve never heard of anyone who had paid in cash. And a couple of years ago, one of my students said, “Professor, I actually found it on the IRS website.”
Ryssdal: Sorry, like instructions for how to pay in cash?
Zagorsky: Instructions on the IRS website for how to pay in cash.
Ryssdal: So you cannot simply walk into the local IRS office and hand them, you know, $452.97 and be done with it?
Zagorsky: No. As a matter of fact, first, you have to make an appointment. And the lady I talked to said that I was very lucky that there were some appointments in my local office here in Boston available before Tax Day and that many of our other offices were booked all the way up to May. So if I had waited a little bit longer, I couldn’t pay in some other parts of the country in cash. After I made an appointment, I went down to the federal building — took a little while to get in because it’s pretty high security at the federal building. And then I sat there, and after about 30 minutes, they came up and they apologized. And they said, “We cannot keep cash in this facility because it’s not safe,” which I found a little bit ironic given how much effort it took to actually get into the federal building. And they said they needed to schedule a courier. I showed up a week later, and it took about 30 minutes for them to accept my cash. And they filled in what appeared to be a four-part carbon form, so the IRS has not yet automated this part of their business. And let me say, Kai, I was not trying to be a pain in any way, shape or form. There are stories on the internet of people bringing wheelbarrows full of coins. I went to the bank, I got crisp $100 bills, exact change. I wanted to make the experience go as fast as possible.
Ryssdal: Right, no, I totally get it. But let me ask you this: Other than the experience, right — and you’re an economist and this is up your alley, and I get that it was interesting for you and it’s interesting for me too — but why is it important that it’s so hard to give the Internal Revenue Service cash?
Zagorsky: I’ve been doing a lot of research into how people pay. And, you know, I’ve come to one very strong conclusion that a cashless society has some disadvantages that we’re not thinking about. You’ve probably noticed — especially since the show is from California — a large increase in natural disasters. Electronic payments depend on electricity and communications working. And, in the middle of a natural disaster, cash works, electronic payments may or may not. But more importantly, there’s a whole range of other reasons. There’s a large number of people who are unbanked in our current system. The latest [Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.] data show about 6 million households — not people but households — who have no connection to the formal banking system. And many of these people are working with cash. We are shifting to a cashless economy, and everyone is sort of going pell-mell for this. And there are some advantages of cash that we’re going to lose once we suddenly go to a pure cashless economy. So I’m advocating for a mixed-use society — both electronic means and for cash.
Ryssdal: Without casting aspersions on what it is that you’re trying to do — because I enjoy cash as much as the next guy — it does seem a fair bit quixotic, right, this experiment of yours?
Zagorsky: A fair bit quixotic. A number of people have said it’s ridiculous. Maybe I’m a little crazy and things like that. But let me just switch the topic just a little bit. Records, 20 years ago, everyone sort of said, “We don’t want vinyl records anymore.” And you know, last year, we’ve sold $1.2 billion worth of records. So records have come back because people said, “Wait, wait, we’re missing something here when we go to the sort of high-tech solution.” And there’s a whole bunch of reasons why, if we eliminate cash from society, we’re gonna have some problems.
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
