**avoiding taxes in the first place** - if you get paid with a w-2, there's not much you can do as far as exepsnses go - if you get paid with a 1099-MISC (1099-NEC this year), you can be very generous with your expenses when you file a sch C (lots of business miles, lots of advertising expenses (never donate, always "donate" via paying them for an advertisement), lots of supply costs, cell phone costs) - you can run a farm for many years with a loss. in most jurisdictions, a farm is any ag activity that generates $1k+ per year in *gross* income. this means you can spend $1000 growing hay, sell $1000 of hay (or chickens or goats or w/e. just dont pretend horses are a farm), and boom you're a farm. you can then get a bunch of juicy local ag exemptions and have a loss on your farm for your federal taxes - you can run a business for ~3 years without ever making money. rack of up tons of expenses & mileage, but make sure you follow all the regs. such as keeping records and having a reasonable business plan in writing in case uncle sam comes **getting money from the government** - if you're a single adult male, you're mostly SOL - if you're married with kids, then get divorced. single moms with kids get paid just to exist and paid handsomely. doubly so if they work a little bit. it's possible for a single woman with 3 kids who runs a household to get paid over $15,000 every year in tax refunds via child tax credit and earned income credit. - if you choose to leave your wife and kids this way, make sure you have a different address you reside in (perhaps your parent's house) and for her to pay all of the bills from an account that she owns herself. everything that supports the household and the kids needs to come from her. that said, there are no rules about you not being allowed to spend the nights with your ex and chill with the kids or give them money/gifts. - if you are found to have done this fraudulently then the penalty is you don't get gibs for a few years and have to pay back a portion of the gibs. - you get paid by the govt in some sense to put money into retirement. don't play the stock market like a WSB retard, just dump extra cash into either a work retirement plan or your own IRA. if you're poor now, put the money into a roth IRA (roth = funded with money that you've been taxed on). if you're making a decent amount of money, put it into a trad ira (funded with pre-tax dollars). the idea with both is that the earnings it makes aren't taxed, but at some point the principle will be taxed (either now in the case of roth or later in the case of trad) - if you have grandkids or whoever, you can set up a 529 education plan to pay for their private schooling or college/trade and the earnings aren't taxed. this isn't a very good tax break but it's something NB: nothing i said is illegal or fraudulent but it's so close to the line that there are regulations (circ 230) against accountants telling you things like these (such as how likely it is you'll be audited for doing X).