We have laws for a reason. They're there to deter people from stealing, committing fraud, and other crimes. But even the legal system can't always be perfect. People find ways to trick the system and benefit in some way, whether it's through insurance, unlimited discounts, or just free pizzas for a year.
One netizen was curious to know whether people had stories about similar things. So they asked: "What's the greatest legal loophole you've found in life?" People flocked to share their experiences of finding real-life cheat codes. Some of them were just small everyday wins, while others had pretty significant changes in their lives. Check them all out below, and don't forget to upvote your favorites!
#1
Image credits: evil_burrito
#2
Image credits: PolarBearChuck
#3
Image credits: TK-Squared-LLC
It may seem that the law is the law, and that's that. There's no going around it, right? Well, according to legal professionals, sometimes, things can slip through the cracks. Laws may not be well thought-out, or they might be phrased ambiguously. Then loopholes are bound to appear.
There are some loopholes in U.S. laws that might seem untrue but are definitely legit. For example, in Wisconsin, underage (under 21) people can drink alcoholic beverages. The condition is that they have to be with their parents, legal guardians, or spouses who are of legal age. Some establishments might prohibit this, as the law states that this applies only "at the discretion of the licensee."
#4
Image credits: cordsandchucks
#5
Image credits: Igotthesilver
#6
Image credits: PUNCHCAT
There is a loophole to avoid repossession if you miss a few car loan payments. The Repo Man can only take your car if you parked it at your address. If you park the car, say, in the neighbor's driveway, they might not be able to repossess it. However, there is a small hiccup with this loophole. License plate numbers might betray which car is yours, so the Repo Man can still repossess it based on them.
You like getting naked and think walking around in your birthday suit in public places is your God-given right? If you live in North Carolina or Kansas, you might be able to do just that.
While public nudity is illegal in North Carolina, people can be nude on their own property. So, standing in your doorway with no clothes on is technically legal. In Kansas, however, you can walk around naked as long as there are no obvious signs of arousal or sexual behavior. So, you can strut your stuff down the street with no problem!
#7
Image credits: ramonnoodles2
#8
Image credits: Spindlebrook
#9
Image credits: queenoflimons
Do you know about the First Church of Cannabis? It's a legit church founded in 2015 by Bill Levin in Indiana. Levin says that the church was a direct response to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA).
At first glance, the law allows Hoosiers to exercise their religious freedom. But upon closer inspection, it also might allow businesses and individuals to discriminate against homosexual individuals based on their religious opposition to homosexuality.
#10
Image credits: No-Two79
#11
Image credits: urbandk84
#12
Image credits: jimbo5451
The congregation of the First Church of Cannabis, who call themselves Cannaterians, wanted to use cannabis during their service, but the courts dismissed their case. While they did try to find a loophole for smoking weed in a church during service, the court ruled that not allowing them to do so did not infringe on their religious freedom.
#13
Image credits: TheCountChonkula
#14
Image credits: omegabaryon
#15
Image credits: airwalker08
#16
Image credits: HopefulPaperFrog
#17
Image credits: pogulup
#18
Image credits: Earthsubstance
#19
Image credits: houserPanics
#20
Image credits: corbi20
#21
Image credits: Dice_to_see_you
#22
Image credits: Elfhoe
#23
Image credits: Plenty_Wash8190
#24
Image credits: Lulu_42
#25
#26
Image credits: rukoslucis
#27
Image credits: Jutter70
#28
Image credits: drleen
#29
Image credits: DAM5150
#30
Image credits: Pretend_Speech6420
#31
#32
Image credits: kittykittysnarfsnarf
#33
#34
Image credits: Goatgoatington
#35
#36
Image credits: TheLemonyOrange
#37
#38
Image credits: LexGlad
#39
Image credits: sun4moon
#40
#41
#42
#43
#44
Image credits: Ok_Spot_5629
#45
#46
#47
#48
#49
#50
#51
My little brother got a job at Harvard. He didn’t have a college degree. He was allowed to take one class a semester (or something like that). It took him ten years, but he got a degree from Harvard in archeology.That if you’re rich enough, most laws that are punished by fines simply mean those things are legal for a price.They say most people eat 8 spiders in their lifetime, but really you can eat as many as you want. Treat yourself!While in college, I won a “free pizza for a year” contest from Papa John’s on a radio station. It was really one pizza per month for 12 total. I called in and told the guy I had the little card they gave me and he said no problem and sent the delivery guy over who confirmed I had the card and gave me my pizza. Next month I did the same. Then it dawned on me… they’re not taking my card or marking it in any way so I called a different Papa John’s and told them my story and sure enough it worked and they didn’t do anything with my card either. I started working 4 different PJ’s near me to get one pizza per week every month without arousing suspicion. With leftovers, I could stretch it to two or three days easily. I did this for almost two years before I was sick of PJ’s pizza and gave my card to my roommate as I finished college and moved out. For a broke a*s college kid, this saved me. But to this day, I can’t eat PJ’s.I missed out, but I loved the gold dollar fiasco. In 2008 the US mint produced more than a billion new gold dollar coins. Nobody wanted them. So they figured maybe if they offered free shipping then people would order some online. Some clever folks ordered bookooos of them using credit cards that gave rewards, frequent flyer miles, etc. When the coins were delivered they just deposited them into their bank accounts, paid off the credit card bill, and went to Hawaii with their free frequent flyer miles.You know, you can just order a happy meal for yourself as an adult. No one actually checks.Oregon doesnt care about misdemeanors from other states
I had arizona ruin years of my life for small weed charges
Oregon cops run my name, hear i have a warrant, and then we have a laugh and then we split ways.A co-worker had a car where it would come with a 30 day free trial of Sirius XM. He never signed up, but after getting a new battery installed he found that the trial renewed itself. Eventually he figured out that all he needed to do for free Sirius XM was to disconnect the battery every 30 days and the trial would automatically reset.Air BnB related:
If someone messages you about having more guests over than what you specified on the booking and claim they have you on camera, check to see if they disclose cameras on the property. If not, you do not have to pay for the nights you stayed.It used to be cheaper for me to take a class at a nearby university and get student health insurance that way than it was to just buy health insurance. If you get really lucky, you can find a professor who’ll let you do a one-hour independent study, and it’s even cheaper, and if they’re cool with your reasons, you won’t even have to work that hard. Haven’t checked out the prices or done a comparison lately, but it’s always an option, as long as you don’t pick an online class that doesn’t qualify for health insurance.Cruiseship casino: I was gifted 200$ in credit to pay for ship extras/activities when I ordered my cruise package.
When I got to the casino I realized you could load that credit into the slot machines.
After one round of testing with depositing a small amount and immediately cashing it out worked, I went back and came out of the casino with 2 crisp 100$ bills never placing a bet.I tried and failed to get tickets for the London Olympics via the main ticket application site. A small number of tickets are also sold by national associations and so I went through every single European countries' Olympic websites. Every one was in high demand or required being a resident except one. On the Icelandic website, the English version mentioned nothing but if you went to the Icelandic language version, then you could buy tickets for almost any event.
So I immediately bought the cheapest tickets for the 100m athletics final, the tennis finals, and the swimming finals.I got a refund on a non-refundable flight with Delta. Normally if you cancel a non-refundable flight, they will only give you the value back as a voucher to use on another flight.
I booked a non-refundable flight that I didn't need to take then cancelled it and got the voucher for the amount for that flight. I used that voucher and booked a refundable flight then cancelled it. It gave me the option to refund it back to my credit card and it let me do it so I got my money back instead of it being applied as a voucher again.GameStop ran an promotion where they bought used games for 50 euros. Specific games tho. Anyway I ran to nearby outlet stores bought the stock for 20-30euros per game and threw them to GameStop and got cash. I got about 900 euros out of that before they fixed it.I once got a speeding ticket for driving 52 in a 35 (mph / USA). I was driving on a stretch of road that was only about a mile long (intersections at both ends) and there were no speed limit signs on the road. All adjacent roads had a posted speed limit of 35, so one would assume that the speed limit on the road I was stopped on should be 35. BUT state law dictates that the default speed limit on county roads when not otherwise posted is 50 mph. I took pictures of the road at several places to show that there were no posted speed limit signs, and brought those pictures to court when I challenged the ticket and the judge dropped the ticket.
This isn't truly great in the grand scheme of things, but for a moment I felt like I had just won the greatest legal case in history.That you can get a divorce by default.
I legit cried after 2 years of struggling to get the papers signed, a divorce that he asked for too!To help build your kid's credit, make them an authorized user on your cards. Don't actually let them use it but your use and payment on your card seems to transfer to the kid. Step-son had a 730 credit score at 21 without ever taking out any cards/loans himself.
Another credit tip...if you file bankruptcy and need to build credit AND have some cash, take out a secured loan with a bank/credit union. You have to front the money in a savings account and make payments but there is no reason to get turned down and it rapidly builds your credit back.Pay off a insurance company 5 dollars a week untill it took so l long they settled the debt 2k less than what I owed. They couldn't take me to court as long as I paid something.I went to Hawaii all expenses paid for a job interview that I was not qualified for. 3 nights at a decent hotel and free airfare.In college, I found out that placing a dime in the dorm basement vending machine and pressing the coin return immediately returned a quarter. Paid for a lot of laundry with that hack.I had Domino's pizza app and they had a short lived code for a week mid pandemic for 50% off. They pulled the coupon but I saved the code. I manually input it every time I ordered. It worked for a year and a half and I saved a bloody fortune on pizza. It did sting alot afterwards having to look at regular price for a pizza. I did Friday pizza night every week for the family so it added up quickly.Old LL tried charging me a cleaning fee when i moved out for some very minor things, like hair on the window ledge? I had spent the whole weekend before i moved out cleaning the place so i know it wasnt in bad shape at all. I’m guessing they were going to have cleaners come anyway and wanted to find any reason to charge me.
Long story short, I fought it and won because local law said they had to send a claim via certified mail within 30 days, and all our communication was done via text or email.My dad got a parking ticket, on the ticket it said the car was black. My dad's car was dark green. He contested and won. This was before they took photos and I guess they just didn't press it, but still, no charge!At one point, there was a statute in Virginia that essentially said if there was no one manning the booth to get on the toll road, you were not responsible for a fine if you ran it (because otherwise you had to have exact change). But in my area, they ended up completely unmanned after a certain hour, so I had a letter I provided my friends as a template so that they could completely avoid this hefty fine. Worked for all of us.“I know a guy” who worked at Outback Steakhouse as a server/bartender in college. Before his shift, he would go to giant eagle (grocery store that also has a gas station) and he would buy a bunch of Outback Steakhouse gift cards with his own money. When he did this, he would earn a bunch of discounts on fuel. He would keep the gift cards in his pocket during his shift. If a customer came in and paid for a meal with cash, he would put the cash in his pocket, then use one of the gift cards to close out the check. The customer paid cash… their bill was paid. Outback got the check paid for, just by gift card instead of cash. And that handsome young server/bartender got a free tank of gas about once a month.Obscure high end and totally overpriced food onlineshop had a rating feature that gave you reward points for the store.
Don´t remember how many points per review and they only accepted about 1 in 3 reviews that I wrote, but I was in school and had time.
Got about 200-250€ in overpriced food out of it, but hey it was free (since my time wasn´t valuable back then, or at least i thought so)
I was scared about the legality so i did not exploit it, by using multiple accounts.
I stopped after some months when they dropped the rewards feature.
Looking back, I am still amazed that nobody ever noticed that one person wrote about a 1000 reviews on expensive food items, but never bought anything (apart from the 3 or 4 orders I did, when I reached about 70€ in bonus points).Dismounting my biscycle near a zebra crossing turns me into a pedestrian who suddenly has the right of way, because I'm at a zebra crossing. This superpower will stop a Dodge friggin RAM! (btw I'm Dutch).Fines just mean legal for a price.In college, I lived with my gf. We had renters insurance that I managed.
I left for 6 months to go to grad school in a different state, but only took a portion of my things.
She moved into a different place with a friend of hers. They decided that her friend would keep her rental insurance because it was cheaper.
They had a pipe burst while they were out of town for a few weeks and lost everything.
Turns out, her friends policy was cheaper because it was capped at 10k.
I'm lazy. I never called my insurance company to cancel my policy.
Mid way through their flight over the money, I called my company and said hey, I moved but didn't tell you, am I still covered? They were like 'sure, we insure your stuff, not the building '.
The claim ended up being close to 50k and was a nice way of replacing all my old c**p from college before starting real life.
Also, for the same claim, the adjuster got so tired of reviewing receipts they just paid the max and let it go.Health insurance policies regulated by my state (VA) require the value of pharma company coupons/rebates to count towards my deductible and max out of pocket. So I can blow through my HSA eligible level deductible for $25 with the first 90 day fill of a qualifying medicine.Not a legal loophole, but a business one.
The New York Yankees in their late 90s heyday had a trick to get playoff and world series tickets. Since orders were taken over the phone and batch processed over night, there would inevitably be data entry errors or over limits that would kick a sale back and those tickets back into the available pool.
Simply calling at opening the day after tickets went on sale got us tickets to every post season game we wanted to go to for years until they switched to real time credit card processing.You can get college credit in high school and you don’t have to pay for it.If you move from the USA to another country, your credit score doesn’t transfer and you can start over without whatever medical/student loan/any other debt you have. Obviously not an option for a lot of people, but hey.Lying on your resume is fine.My brother is one to always look for deals. Years ago he stumbled across this deal for movie tickets to a certain theater chain. But this was large number of tickets that were all about to expire the next day and be worthless. Sluething around online he Somehow found a way to renew all these movie Tickets at no charge. He bought $1500 worth of movie tickets for about $5. We saw so many movies that year.UK focused, I have zero idea about other countries.
Paying yourself dividends from your company is taxed at 8.5% if you're a basic rate tax payer (below 33.x thousand a year), 33% when you're a higher earner. So it's sensible to pay yourself dividends instead of a wage in most cases. As someone with a full time job and 2 small businesses I operate, it has made my year to learn this. Now I can top up my pay from my job with dividends and pay less tax than if I paid myself a wage or worked more hours as my traditional job.Not a legal loophole… but my parents had an incredibly strict rule that if a sport required a helmet or any safety headgear then that sport was too dangerous to play and was forbidden for me to participate. So no football , no ice hockey, no baseball or lacrosse, even squash and racquetball were tenuous(safety eyewear requirement); I could only play tennis and golf. But as a teenager, I really wanted to play a contact team sport. That’s when I discovered rugby. My parents had never heard of it and when I told them that it didn’t require a helmet, thus satisfying their rule, they signed off on it, and I played for a local men’s club my senior year of high school before I moved out to go to college where I played for another four years away from their judgement.You can experiment on yourself all you want and don't need legal permission to do so.Work for lawyers and get paid to get legal advice.You can legally buy magic mushroom spores on the clear web.
Growing them from spores>mushroom is the "illegal" part, and it's also trivially easy (they grow in cow s**t for crying out loud).
For $50 of supplies you could - in theory - have a lifetime of medicine. r/unclebens.A cop in Toronto told me this one, and it worked. Not sure if it still works with apps.
I parked on a street many years ago in Toronto with a machine to put in money and get a receipt.
If you don’t pay at all, they tow your car.
If you pay for 15 minutes, you get a ticket.
If you have US plates on a car, the parking ticket doesn’t cross the border. .Have everything put into an irrevocable trust.
If your car is damaged by a pot hole, go to the cities website and search for the road maintence and car repair portal and you can get reimbursement, just document and keep records.When I turned 18 in Louisiana, it was illegal for me to buy alcohol BUT not illegal to be sold alcohol.
So everyone 18 - 20 could buy drinks no problem - and did. No problem with bars, drive through daiquiri, beer barns etc.
I don't think it changed for decades or more.Local online retail store (think H&M) ran a competition to win a 150 bucks off coupon. I naturally entered with my account, my sister and my moms. All three of us won and the coupon code sent to all of us was the exact same. So I figured if I created a different email every time, I'd continue using it. Which I did, for the whole year until the expiration date, and by that time I had spent over 5000 bucks without them noticing.My wife got a red light camera ticket with her picture taken but it was issued to me since the car was registered under my name. I did some research and decided to fight it. Went to court and said the magic phrase, mistaken identity. The judge took a look at the picture and at me. Dismissed the case. .This is more malicious compliance, but at our old office people used to openly snack at their desks. When we changed offices, snacking was strictly prohibited outside of designated eating areas. The loophole was that I would just regularly snack by eating out of a coffee cup of trail mix.I am convinced at this point that jury duty is voluntary and the legal "threats" for not showing up are completely empty. Given that nearly half of Americans just throw the summons in the trash, there is no real way for the legal system to realistically crack down on this.Estate and Gift Tax Portability and the Deceased Spousal Unused Exclusion
Let's say a very, very wealthy woman with kids doesn't want to pay estate or gift taxes when transferring her enormous wealth to her children. Right now, you can transfer $13.61 million to your kids estate and gift tax-free (there are some additional amounts I'm leaving out for simplicity), and the estate and gift tax is only on what's in excess of that. The first $13.61 million that you're not taxed on is called your estate and gift tax exemption. But this lady has $100 million plus and she doesn't want to pay estate and gift taxes on any of it when transferring it to her kids.
What she can do is go find a poor geezer on his deathbed, marry him, and when he dies, she is allowed to transfer his unused $13.61 million exemption (he's poor and didn't use any of his) to herself. This transfer of the exemption is called portability. Now, she can give ~$27 million to her kids, estate and gift tax free. This is a bit of a loophole - a $5 million dollar loophole, which is the amount of tax saved by electing and using portability.
But here's where the REAL loophole comes in. Your exemption is determined at the time of the gift, and the portable part is based on your last deceased spouse at the time of the gift, assuming you took the steps to transfer their exemption to yourself. So what she can do is then find and marry another poor geezer on his deathbed who hasn't used his exemption. She can then transfer his exemption to herself when he dies. Now he's her last deceased spouse. She can then gift another $13.61 million to her kids' tax-free using his unused exemption that she transferred. Rinse and repeat, and she can essentially gift unlimited amount of money to her kids, estate and gift tax-free, and the only thing slowing her down is how long it takes the poor geezers, whose estate and gift tax exemptions that she's farming, to die.Not really a legal loophole but more a poorly programmed mobile app. Me and my coworkers used the subway app for our lunch, it would generate 1 coupon per day. Most of these coupons werent that great however there was a rare 50% off coupon that had like a one in 10 chance of 'spawning'. The trick was this app just checked the local device time so if you switched the date a day forward you would get a new chance. Needless to say my coworkers and I always showed up with the 50% off coupon untill they deprecated the app for a new system. Was fun while it lasted ?.Refinancing your home for more than you owe to get cash to "pay down some bills" lowers the equity in your home...thus you don't have to give your ex as must as he thought he'd get when you decided to sell it.
It's only me on the mortgage and title but since *I* bought it after we were married it is a martial asset as far as my state is concerned and he was entitled to half the equity (despite paying $0 into it at all). The divorce was written that he'd get half the *current equity* when I decided to sell or $50k...whichever is lower. I had it worded that way because I wasn't about to let him take advantage of the appreciation over time because the market here has been crazy...didn't realize I was building an out for myself when I did it. I offered him $30k at the time of the divorce to buy him out but he refused saying he'd rather wait and get $50. Little does he know, that gave me time to learn a thing or two.
ETA: Good grief, I didn't really expect this to see any attention or get comments back. This isn't who I am. I wish it were, but it's not. He'll, sadly, get his $50k because I'd actually feel bad and be too paranoid to pull it off. It has come up in conversations as a revenge fantasy, as someone put it, but I wouldn't actually do it. I'm not an idiot to post a real plan online. Just to further clarify who I am as a person: my fiance was rear-ended by a corporate owned snow plow this winter, it totaled his car and he was upside down on the loan since it was a new car. Everyone, including our insurance agent kept telling him/us to sue the company for s**t tons of money. We asked the company if they would settle for the balance of the payoff that he owed, plus the down payment for his new car plus an extra $500 for the hassle of it all.If you own a business that manufactures goods especially clothes or whatever you should have 2 companies one in the states (assuming you're american) and one in the cayman islands.
Your american company will make the product then pay huge fees to your shell company on the island to use their logos on your products thus sending the majority of your money over there where you pay basically zero taxes on it and the IRS won't be able to do s**t about it since all that money is in an offshore account.
