New Gods of North America.

Chapter 601 Taxation
According to the etiquette of America at that time—or more precisely, the etiquette of the South, as Westerners didn't care about such formalities—it wasn't really appropriate for Wayne to directly visit the tax collector's daughter.

So in the morning he went to the cathedral to make his presence known (the monks seemed to be as friendly as ever, and even better, the Bishop of Tyrell wasn't there), and then he visited Mr. Russell, the financial backer of the office (to report that the agents of the second office had already gone to work).

In the afternoon, they went to the city hall and began to outflank Quinn, the tax collector.

Local tax officials are busier than federal tax officials these days. After all, one of the fundamental reasons the American Union was established was that people wanted to refuse to pay the taxes imposed by the Windsor colonists.
Therefore, having learned from past mistakes, at the federal level, there are only tariffs and specific consumption taxes on a few categories of goods such as tobacco and alcohol.

Local governments have many more taxes and fees to collect, such as the cost of building public facilities in urban areas. These are not officially called "taxes" and are not theoretically "mandatory," but they are expenditures that "must be borne if one wants to integrate into the local community."

The improvement over the past is that people who don't want to pay taxes are now free to leave and go to other states—it seems that having choices prevents everyone from taking up arms at the same time.

However, similar situations have taken a different turn, and the problems remain the same. Since "violent tax resistance" no longer has a popular base, "legal tax avoidance" has become a new field of study.

To give a rather exaggerated example, the alcohol production tax at that time was levied based on the "number" of stills. The tax on a huge number of stills produced in a factory was the same as that on a regular still used for home brewing in the countryside. This is why bottled liquor gradually became popular in the United States, as it was more cost-effective to transport it from a great distance than to brew it yourself.

When Wayne arrived, Tax Officer Quinn had just finished yelling at a bunch of clerks. After everyone else had left, he was sitting alone at his desk, suffering from a headache.

Seeing Wayne appear at the office door, he waved for Wayne to come in, and at the same time walked to the low cabinet to pour himself a drink, "Want a whiskey?"

Wayne nodded and thanked him, then sat down with Tax Officer Quinn on the sofa in the reception area and began to exchange pleasantries: "I just happened to be passing by, so I thought I'd drop by to visit you. It seems that being a tax officer is indeed not an easy job; it requires experienced and professional people like you to be competent."

Because the two had chatted at the mayor's ball, and Wayne had the honor of being seen that night by the Basque elder of the Beeton family and the mayor, Tax Officer Quinn was quite friendly towards Wayne.
He had helped Wayne with the paperwork for the workshop and restaurant before, so there was no need for formalities between them now; they were both working towards a "personal relationship."

Tax Officer Quinn was clearly taking a break from his busy schedule to change his mood, shifting to a more comfortable position on the sofa, rubbing his temples with one hand.
"While a booming business is a good thing, today's businessmen don't respect the law as much as the landowners of the past. There are more and more problematic tax returns, which is a real headache."

That is because large estate owners and wealthy individuals are often the type who have "a solid foundation" in the local area. They either have professional legal or accounting teams, or they will try to get politicians to change the law. They don't need to commit fraud to evade taxes.

Wayne was still thinking about finding an opportunity to freeload dinner at Tax Officer Quinn's house tonight, and upon hearing this, he continued the conversation casually, "With you in charge, they definitely won't have a chance to evade taxes."

"That's not necessarily true. Some problems are quite well hidden, and even I might not be able to discover them in time."

As he spoke, the tax officer reached over to his desk and took two of the tax returns. "Take a look at these two tax returns. Can you tell which one has a problem?"

Wayne took the two sheets of paper, quickly scanned the forms on them, and then handed one back. "This should be it, right?"

The tax officer, Quinn, glanced at it, then his eyes widened in surprise. "How did you figure that out? And so quickly?!"

Hmm... because these two tax returns weren't placed in the "same stack"... I arrived just now when you were scolding people. The one that's obviously problematic is the one that gets picked out and shown to the clerks.

But that's not the case; if the trick is exposed, the magic trick will lose its appeal.

After a moment's thought, Wayne quickly came up with a reason: "I have some talent in mathematics. Because of some minor academic achievements, Professor Maisel in the 'College' applied for an award from the Federal Institute and a scholarship from the College for me. Therefore, although I don't understand taxes, I can see some mathematical problems."

The tax officer, Quinn, was indeed intrigued. The two tax forms were placed side by side on the coffee table: "Tell me in detail, how exactly did you figure that out?"

Wayne has already "shot the arrow," achieving the desired effect for the show; now it's time to "draw the target."

He carefully examined both tax returns twice, trying his best to find the differences:
“Based on my experience with mathematics since childhood, in normal statistical reports, numbers starting with '1' should appear most frequently, accounting for about one-third of the total. The numbers filled in on this tax return clearly do not conform to this pattern; there are too few numbers starting with '1,' which suggests that it has been tampered with.”

This principle isn't something Wayne made up; it's mathematically known as "Benford's Law," and it contains exactly what Wayne stated. Indeed, it's widely used in modern society to detect the falsification of various data.

However, in practical applications, this law actually has a minimum requirement for the "sample size". The more data there is, the more consistent it will be. Since there are only so many numbers on the tax return, exceptions are very likely to occur. It can only be used for preliminary screening and is not considered "conclusive evidence".

Fortunately, it was indeed an objective law. When Quinn, the tax officer, first understood, he was a little skeptical. He stood up, went to the bookshelf next to his desk, pulled out a large book, opened it, and flipped to the two pages filled with numbers, carefully examining them.

Wayne, on the contrary, was not afraid of him producing a large number of figures to verify, and calmly sipped his wine and waited.

After waiting a while, Tax Officer Quinn looked up with slight surprise. "Although the proportion didn't reach one-third, the numbers starting with 1 are indeed the most numerous..."

Wayne nodded and pointed towards the bookshelf. "If you're still not sure, you can have someone check for you. Theoretically, if I randomly pick a bookshelf and you have someone flip through all the books on it, the pages starting with '1' will definitely have the most pages. I don't know the exact principle, but it always seems to be true."

The tax officer Quinn's upper body had involuntarily moved closer to Wayne. "Have you discovered any other patterns? Like this one, where you don't even need to know the basic tax laws to make a preliminary judgment about whether a tax return is fake."

Wayne deliberately kept everyone in suspense: "There are other methods, though... but they might be a little more complicated."

The tax collector, Quinn, seemed quite inquisitive at the moment, taking the bottle and pouring Wayne a few more drops. "You know," he said, "I'm very interested in them."

Hey, it looks like tonight's dinner is definitely happening.

(End of this chapter)