Even worse is that a lot of these services block the google voice VoIP numbers, so you can't even get away with that.
The bigger problem with Google Voice is that Google's email gateway for SMS is awful. It cuts off outgoing messages after two carriage returns, strips out single carriage returns, and won't send me group messages, instead sending me a link to the message, and even that only rarely, usually not even notifying me that I received a group message.
I've found a few alternatives, and I wouldn't mind paying a few dollars a month for one, but every one I've looked into requires I upload a copy of my photo ID, and I'm definately not going to do that.
There are easily hundreds of comments on HN from people in Europe who assure us all that this is solely an American problem, and that it never happens anywhere else.