US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins | Hacker News Reader

US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

bbc.com

36 pointsgiles34 comments

I was about to repeat the old story that (in the US) pennies are not legal tender in amounts over 25 cents, but it turns out that since 1965, pennies are legal tender in any quantity. However, payees are not obliged to accept them; for instance, municipal bus lines can refuse to accept fare payments in pennies. [1][2]

[1] http://www.snopes.com/business/money/pennies.asp

[2] https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/faqs/Currency/Pages...

This guy should have went down to the DMV to get his questions answered. He wasted more time going through all this mess.

Being self employed, I hardly have time to sleep, much less make a trip to my local DMV just to ask a "30 second question" so I tried to call my "local" DMV office by calling calling the only phone number listed on the internet for my local DMV.

When you make the government work for their share of your share... like a boss! ;)

Has been done (tried) before: http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.com/th/read/LITHUANIA/1999... , visual: http://new2.fjcdn.com/comments/I+_7ffbead1aa9217ad05eb5487c4...

If you play stupid games you will win stupid prizes

This seems to be a statement on the stupidity of still using pennies in 2017, more so than the point he was actually trying to make.

Whats wrong with using pennies?

They are worth less than they cost?

Imagine using coins worth $0.001 or $0.0001. You could use them, but why?

the question is a bit open ended, but for one: a penny costs more to make than it's worth (at least in terms of face value).

Take that cashless society advocates!

Wait...

US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of prepaid cards with pennies left on the balance.

Not legal tender in Australia. They could just refuse to accept it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender

The US really ought to do away with pennies, and probably nickels as well. This stunt would be 10x less silly with dimes.

It is even possible that dimes should go away.

"The United States abandoned its own most worthless coin, the half-cent, in 1857, when a half-cent was worth more than a dime is today." [http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/04/bringing-dol...]

We need to drop the paper dollar too. The biggest problem is that the new dollar coin is too close in size to the quarter and people get confused (especially elderly) but I think we have to suck it up and say tough. Some countries even have $2 and $5 dollar coins. As things go more and more digital, we need these denominations less and less.

As for the rounding or difference up to a quarter, make that a federal sales tax to fund currency production. If you pay with cash, you incur an additional cost of up to $0.24 per transaction to support the cost of money. If you pay digitally, you pay the exact amount. Just a thought...... :)

Canada did away with pennies: http://www.mint.ca/store/mint/about-the-mint/phasing-out-the...

From Wikipedia:

Production of the penny ceased in May 2012, and the Royal Canadian Mint ceased the distribution of them as of February 4, 2013. However, like all discontinued currency in the Canadian monetary system, the coin remains legal tender. Once distribution of the coin ceased, though, vendors no longer were expected to return pennies as change for cash purchases, and were encouraged to round purchases to the nearest five cents. Non-cash transactions are still denominated to the cent.

Many countries in the eurozone price round to avoid the smallest coins as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_coins#Price_rounding

Who has time for that?

> Nick Stafford's coin payment required 11 people who were hired to break open the paper rolls of the coins, taking four hours.

So you are telling me this 'Businessman' wasted 11 peeps x 4 hours x 10$ min wage = $440, to 'make a statement' to IRS and pay his $400 tax bill with pennies / coins?!

What kind of a businessman does that? What a waste of man power.

If he wanted to make a public statement and get publicity for his views, $440 to get on the BBC and various other news outlets seems like a good deal.

"$3,000 tax bill using five wheelbarrows containing 300,000 coins."

Right in the caption.

A smart business man. He has gotten a lot of free publicity out of it.

> A smart business man. He has gotten a lot of free publicity out of it.

I can do a lot of things for attention; it doesn't make me smart.

it is all about proper application and this guy executed very well by exploiting the well established dislike for taxes and snarky but lawful adherence to the law.

if payment can be made onerous then perhaps the taxing authority is itself

I'm still not seeing the exploitation here. Does he even own a business?

> free publicity out of it.

Ok what free publicity? For his business? Do we even know what his business is? No website. No name.

I meant that he wasted labor time (and money). That's not a smart business man. If he had had a plug for his business website or service in all the news, then it's smart and you can say "publicity for $440. Otherwise, it's just a stupid stunt that wasted everyone's time -- the IRS, the media, you and me (reading it and reacting to it).

He claims to pay $300k/year in income taxes; owns 3 houses and at least 3 vehicles. I don't think the cost of the stunt is material to him.

Surely he was also required to pay the extra costs for the transaction at the receiving end? I can't imagine the authority was somehow required to accept his coin payment, and not only accept but do it for free?

Yes, they were required to accept it. They are collecting taxes for the government (I'm not sure if the VA DMV is directly run by the government, or is a contractor doing business for the government, but it doesn't make a difference in this case), which means they have to accept legal US money, in any denomination, because of this section of US code, which he mentions on his website[0]:

As per section 31 U.S.C. 5103 of the "United States Coinage Act of 1965" Federal law specifically says: "United States coins and currency are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."

Even charging an extra handling fee for dealing with all the coins is difficult to justify given the wording of the law. Luckily, carrying around 5 wheelbarrows of coins is also inconvenient for the person who's doing the protesting, so you really only see this sort of thing when someone is really aggravated and has lots of free time and money, it's not like we have a rash of DMV offices being crushed under a singularity's worth of pennies.

[0]http://www.craftvinyl.com/page165 (He actually got the BBC to link directly to his site, wow, he just made another million I bet!)

I can see how US law requires public entities to accept cash, but it's not clear whether they are allowed to charge transction fees for "expensive" transactions (othewise those transactions are subsidied by others)

Also: does the law imply that every public entity that you pay taxes to in the US must have a physical office somewhere that you can go pay with cash? Mind blown.

"Legal tender, for all debts, public and private."

the armchair-lawyer in me feels like the status of being legal tender doesn't itself mandate the acceptance of any particular item of currency.

Its required by US law

one who is fed up with dealing with an overwhelming bureaucracy.

And one who solves his problems by harassing rank-and-file employees who have no authority to address his problem.

Exactly! He wasted the rank-and-file employees time and probably caused them aggravation. They should sue for bodily harm -- thumb and fingers and wrists sore from counting his stupid coins.

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