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How Detroit Deadbeats Taught Tax Collectors That Threats Really Work

Almost half of the city’s taxpayers have been ignoring the local income tax.
Downtown Detroit, Michigan, on Oct. 4, 2015.
Photographer: Laura McDermott/Bloomberg

For a while there, Detroit’s income tax might as well have been optional.

About 400,000 people—residents and anyone working inside the city limits—are required to file a tax return to Detroit. Almost half of them weren’t doing so. Perhaps that explains, in part, why the city filed for bankruptcy four years ago.