This is very much not true. In the US, prostitutes are very punctilious about paying their tax bills, because the having a discrepancy between declared income and visible consumption is a quick way to land yourself on an auditor's desk. Remember, they got Al Capone for income tax evasion.

The IRS is very open about this. A fellow HN commenter pointed me to this document [1], on which you should search for "Bribes" and "Stolen Property". Even if you don't want to trust to the IRS's confidentiality rules (for example, it won't share your tax return with law enforcement without a court order), it's still common practice to come up with another description for your income in order to pay tax on it.

[1] https://www.irs.gov/publications/p17/ch12.html#en_US_2016_pu...

In countries like Poland prostitution is actually tax-free, because if government took any money from a prostitute it would act like a pimp, which is illegal.

Once upon a time it was the best excuse for those who had undisclosed income sources (other than prostitution). Recently tax offices started demanding proofs, like names of the clients.

> Recently tax offices started demanding proofs, like names of the clients.

Huh? That makes no sense. Why would naming a client proove anything? And why would sex workers know names of their clients?

Have you ever wondered why you have to provide receipts for reimbursement, despite the fact that the vast majority of people here could put together a forged receipt quite easily?

It's not because the receipt proves anything. It's because if there was ever any question, it gives a validator something to actually validate, to call up the putative place of business and confirm the transaction and the size.

It's one of those deals where the mere threat of being able to validate tends to keep the system humming along fairly well, even to the point that many of the participants have forgotten the justification for the system. Presumably there's someone out there routinely forging receipts for fun and profit but it must not be that big a fraud considered across the entire system.

Same thing here.

I think it is more about getting the client's testimony confirming the deed. And you're right, prostitution is a business based on discretion, so most of the time prostitute would not know the name of her client. Bottom line is: they stopped taking a word for it and started demanding proofs.

That "John Smith" really makes the rounds, doesn't he?

Always fun to hear about these cat and mouse games of government vs. people who want to avoid taxes :)

Why not take the money and hard redirect them to charity?