Trope-a-Day: Intimidating Revenue Service

Intimidating Revenue Service: The Imperial Revenue is really quite happy and fluffy as an organization; it helps that thanks to the Empire’s by-explicit-act only citizenship and please-agree-to-this-to-enter border crossings, the tax really is opt-in for almost everyone; that the Empire Services Fee really is The Tax, a single one which applies to individuals and organizations without distinction; and that The Tax is limited to no more than 20% by the Imperial Charter and is currently hovering around 3.6%.  Needless to say, given all this, the degree of actually, genuinely, not-a-euphemism voluntary compliance they achieve is… impressive. Hell, you don’t even have to fill in an intrusively detailed tax return – just work out the appropriate amount and send ’em a check. They trust you.

(They can be quite intimidating to people who are determined to cheat their way around paying that 3.6% they agreed to up front, but popular opinion is that those people pretty much asked for it.)