Short answer: No, the language they use is a trick to tax more people than they have the legal authority.
This is a common misconception based on confusing language used by the IRS. The tax itself is not voluntary. It’s absolutely mandatory. The reason so many people don’t pay it is because it doesn’t apply to more than 90% of Americans.
“Voluntary Compliance” is the term they use that a lot of people confuse for the entire tax being voluntary. But this only means that it is voluntary for you to report it. This is their language for circumventing the 4th and 5th amendment. It’s like when the police ask if they can search your car – if you say yes, you have given them permission voluntarily. You can not later use the 4th amendment to claim that it was an illegal search and to suppress anything they found as evidence. Regardless, many people who don’t understand their rights will consent to the search, even if they know they have something illegal. The government intentionally circumvents your assertion of rights by calling it voluntary.
In the same way, voluntary reporting of income means that those who do not understand what the tax actually applies to, will voluntarily report much more than is required. They do this for fear that if they don’t, they will be punished. In this way, the government benefits by most of the country voluntarily declaring their income as taxable, when it would otherwise not legally be subject to the tax. To take this a step further, they complicate things by having the payer report it as well. Employers usually don’t understand the law either, so they do what their IRS trained accountants tell them to do, and report it. You’ll notice that even if they believe your income is taxable, they will still honor your claim that you are exempt on a W4. And even though they honor that you are exempt, they still report the income as if you are not. (Technically the exemption is only from withholding, but in order to legally check that box you have to have no tax liability.)
