Tax law is guilty until proven innocent.

Investor fraud is usually brought as a civil case and takes a balance of evidence approach.

Since enforcement is stochastic and rare these practices are pretty common. The freedom to do ‘whatever’ is really dependent on the discretion of the government and investors. Most companies can and do fly under the radar but have to be careful not to piss off the wrong people.

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philipallstar 2 hours ago | parent [-]

Okay but then why are we singling this out as tax fraud, if the justification is just "anything can be"? Why not claim that posting on HN is tax fraud?

	▲	cjbgkagh 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Barter counts as income by many tax jurisdictions, if you don’t declare the fair market value of the exchange you are in violation. Most people don’t declare this and it is rarely ever enforced.