How wrong I was. It was their "creative bookkeeping" that worried them. When I offered to make that all possible ('zapping' as it is called now), they loved it. Based on their referrals I sold it many times over.
Come next customer / market: bookshops. Guess what the most important selling argument was, besides easy cataloging, inventory, searching, website publishing and reporting? Right: zapping.
Thought me an important rule: do not underestimate what your customer is NOT telling you.
Perhaps they thought they were saving the lives of innocents from collateral damage in wars of aggression?
It's odd how the people that think this are generally the same ones most likely to argue that “positive rights” that impose a cost on others are an incoherent concept, and positive entitlement can at most be a limited privilege granted by others based on available resources and expected utility of the grant. But they fail to recognize that the “right” to wall off goods from the commons and exclude others by force—i.e., property—is very much a positive right that has a cost for others.
Your error is starting from the assumption that land is owned in common by everyone, rather than unowned. If land were actually owned in common then you would need to obtain permission from every single person on the planet before using any of it. You would starve to death long before you obtained even a small fraction of the necessary consent. And no, the government cannot grant that consent on behalf of others who never deliberately and voluntarily agreed to permit the government to represent them. You would need the consent of each and every individual.
Don’t attack strawmen, it’s boring.
Merely wanting to be left in peace in the place where you were born without being compelled to pay for things you never asked for is not "freeloading".
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-sfVbXjODdRQ/T9-dLQR5yUI/AAAAAAAAM...
Your parents, as guardians of a newborn, made your initial decision for you to bring you into the society.
You maintained your consent by retaining your citizenship when you reached an age of majority.
Taxes are the price you pay for retaining the benefits of your citizenship.
Not theft.
even after that, the IRS can come back and harass you at any time if they suspect you of tax fraud, and most foreign countries will cooperate with them.
pragmatically, I don't object to the idea of taxation. the government provides some useful services and it needs a way of funding them. I'm also not actually interested in renouncing my citizenship, as I personally find US citizenship to be worth the tax obligations.
what I do object to is the common "social contract" argument for why taxes are legitimate. in particular, I strongly object to the idea that I "consent" to taxation merely by having been born here. I haven't consented to anything; I submit because an overwhelmingly powerful entity compels me.
This is also the "I don't want to be told what to do" argument, which PERSONALLY I find immature. Please don't misunderstand, I'm not calling you a name, we're having a reasonable discussion, I'm just saying that no one likes being given orders, but it's a part of life. You DO have the option of leaving and going somewhere without taxes. You're submitting because you have to in order to be where you want to be.
There is no written contract when you sit down to eat in a restaurant, and yet you are obliged to pay after your meal.
It’s not difficult to find people who believe, rightly or wrongly, the tax system is unfair.
On the other hand, black and grey market activity are also I think quite an important counter-balance to the possibility of totalitarian government. It creates "gaps" let's say for more diverse human and economic outcomes. Which is also potentially good.
I think it's one of those indefensible things that we should tolerate a tiny amount of. Kind of like a vaccine in the body.
This is true, and in addition, it's a very unequal crime. To properly evade taxes and get away with it, you need professional help. Most standard W-2 employees can't afford it, i.e., for most, the cost to hire professional help evading taxes is larger than the taxes they could save.
However, if you're very wealthy, then the calculus changes: saving 20% taxes on $50M/yr income is a lot more attractive than saving 20% on $200k/yr income. Effectively, the wealthier you are, the easier it is to evade taxes, further exacerbating at least the perception (and quite likely the reality) of inequality.
.
>than saving 20% on $200k/yr income
Erm, that's not a standard W2 employee's income. Not even close. The median U.S. household income was $63,179 in 2017.
40k of 200k doesn't make a big difference, 3016 of 15,080 (federal minimum wage @ 40 hours a week for a year) makes a HUGE difference as does 12,635.90 of 63,179.
Why do you think waitstaff and the like prefer cash tips? because they feel that no one will know if they don't report some or all of that income. Go ask any waiter, waitress, bartender, etc if they want you to give them that tip on credit card where they get taxed or cash where they don't. The same goes for electricians, plumbers, handymen, etc as they'll happily take cash first because they can fudge their numbers some.
At $200K, the tax rate is 32%, so the tax is really $64K, 160% of your estimate. (all for single filers or married filing separately; married filing jointly has wider bands, and the rates are less overall at the given combined income levels)
When people find a way to pay fewer taxes, it means money is not only not going to wars, but also being able to be used for better things for everyone.
Consider:
Person A is evading Taxes.
Person B is not evading taxes.
Government says 'Well, we aren't getting enough money', So they raise taxes on those who can't realistically evade. By a second order effect, Person A is causing Person B to get 'stolen from' twice instead of once.
They charge tax way higher than any of the services they provide truly cost (even if we put any efficiency concerns aside).
I'd even argue this impact is positive given that now money is freely circulating in society for other stuff. For me, society will eventually have other ways to finance infrastructure and social benefits that are not based on taxes, as it happens today – but this doesn't even mean something entirely new. Let's remember most fire companies, schools, hospitals, and other stuff we rely upon are either privately maintained (for-profit or not), the concept started like so, or both.
I don't really buy this: plenty of totalitarian regimes have illegal black markets, that governments often tolerate because they don't see a threat to their power.
A better way to counter a totalitarian government is via open communication and coordination of the government's subjects. Government's are far more afraid of this, which is why strict censorship and propaganda are the "go-to" tools for any totalitarian regime.
I would say it is often even opposite of it - black/grey markets help to stay in power. When everybody is breaking some law, buying something [almost] illegally, everybody wants to stay quiet.
And it helps [totalitarian] government a lot.
You think for example the North Korean government happily tolerates the black markets there? No way. If it would be easy for them to control them they would close them down. The black/grey markets happening in totalitarian countries are more like compromises - it would be too difficult to stop the activity without murdering half of the population or so.
They most certainly do. There are tons of articles based on satellite based cameras that track the rise and fall of small black markets in North Korea. Some markets lasted years, before being abruptly shut down for unknown reasons.
No. How about serial killers, real theft etc.
> You're stealing from everybody
No, tax evasion is not theft. It is primarily your earned income where you pay taxes from. Tax evasion is tax evasion, no reason to confuse it with other crimes.
Think about it this way: easiest way to avoid taxes is not to work at all. Are all those who are slacking off with government benefits, or living off from savings or inheritance stealing from us? No, they are just not working.
> You're creating a non-level playing field.
The playing field will always be non-level, you gotta deal with it. What about those who have a job at the government and are not doing any work? Are those also stealing?
Trust in society is a complicated issue. Often the industries where tax evasion happens are low-income jobs. I'm not saying it is right thing to do, but I don't think it is as serious crime as many others.
Income you were able to earn because infrastructure allows businesses to operate, police forces protect their property, physical safety and the shipment of goods, a court system allows peaceful resolution of conflicts, armed forces protect you from invasion, fire departments prevent entire cities from burning down by putting fires out early etc.
Taking the benefits without paying the democratically set price for a wide array of services is not that different from stealing.
Yes, but one of those benefits is privilege of excluding others from the use and enjoyment of goods—i.e., property—so if you reject it...
> Most companies protect their property by hiring security guards, not calling the police.
No, they hire security guards who call the police, not instead of calling the police.
That's not how democracy works. Many of these benefits only make sense if a whole area is covered (if your neighbor isn't serviced by to the fire brigade, that puts you at risk), so we instituted a voting system where people can elect representatives who set a tax rate and a budget detailing what that money is spent on.
If you feel like the selection of services is to your disadvantage you can also always go to another country. I hear Somalia has pretty cheap taxes, along with an accordingly small selection of services.
> That's not how democracy works.
That's exactly how democracy works. Unfortunately, a democratic society is not inherently a just society. It's just a bit more stable than autocratic societies due to integrating periodic small revolutions in lieu of less frequent but more severe transfers of power. The better versions have certain protections for minorities, which makes them less democratic but more just.
Moving to another country isn't a solution. That other country (yes, even Somalia) will already be infested with its own form of protection racket, and anything you could do to defend yourself against governments and wannabe governments in some other country you could do equally well right where you are. Moreover, why should you be forced to move away from the place where you were born just because someone else has drawn some arbitrary borders on a map and thinks it's too much work to create the system they have in mind without forcing everyone in that area to participate? How does their inability to exclude you from whatever benefit they think they're creating suddenly become your problem?
https://www.taxfairness.ca/en/news/j-k-rowling-paying-taxes-...
This reminds me of a joke I heard on Jerry Seinfeld's Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljaP2etvDc4
Even a lot of the things that are legal these days are extremely unethical. The system is a mess. Capitalism is destroying society, rewarding bad behavior and punishing good behavior.
All the good companies/projects I worked on over the years (e.g. education) are struggling in this economy while all the evil ones (gambling, finance) are thriving.
Communism is looking better with each passing day. Especially with the level of automation we have today.
Every day, automation is getting better but people are getting worse. The systemic inefficiencies caused by fraud and other unethical behaviors under capitalism has outpaced the inefficiencies of a communist society whereby everyone gets paid the same and each person does as little work as possible.
Would the creators of VPN software need to consider ethics since it could break government censorship? Or if the government requested I create a backdoor for them, would that also be an ethical issue?
Selling a tool with a law-breaking feature, in full knowledge that its main selling point is that feature, that your customers are buying it specifically to break the law? That ought to raise some ethical concerns. You can say that it depends on the particular laws being broken - but here we're not talking about ethical minutiae of censorship or surveillance. We're talking the usual defrauding of the commons through tax evasion.
Creators of VPN software definitely need to consider ethics when deciding who to sell to, what uses to tolerate, what information to store, and how to navigate local laws. Such a business has to deal directly with conflicting needs of citizens, criminals and governments, and thus whatever it does, it's making an ethics choice one way or another.
Giving ‘The Government’ less money is seen by some as a moral duty.
Governments do a whole lot of giving other people other people’s money. I’m sure there’s people who would argue this can be problematic.
(I've also seen people argue that they pay for more than they're using, but somehow the concept of derisking and variance reduction doesn't escape these people when it comes to buying insurance.)
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[0] - Ranging from healthcare and schooling to laws, defense and ensuring a safe and stable environment in which everyone can conduct their business.
It'd be kinda dumb to pay up and refuse service on principle.
Note that it is still pretty much impossible to run a business without paying any taxes, in the end you have to pay some but you might be able to evade some. In the end it is just endless debate about what level of taxes is felt fair. Changes from individual to other. When people don't feel their taxes are fair, they start to evade those. They might be also just greedy bastards, but I don't think that's necessarily commonly the case.
(* Having a job doesn't necessarily mean doing beneficial work, just receiving the salary.)
No, normal people do not. Tax evasion is a serious crime. People don't start doing criminal acts when they just feel something "isn't fair".
Right, but when you add a feature that does that and has no other major use, you move beyond 'seen by some' on to 'seen by me'
Also, ethics include one own integrity, it is not about sacrificing everything to others - at least not all ethical inquiries will conclude that.
The GST/HST system in Canada sort of serves the same purpose. It is an overarching tax system that seems redundant in that every business then can claim back every bit of GST they've paid out. But to do so you have to have receipts for everything, from every source, and when they randomly do an audit they aren't checking you as much as they're building a profile of every other business you interacted with.
Tax avoidance is a problem in every country.
In those cases it's typically about preventing the employees from not ringing up the sale and just pocketing the cash. The receipt proves that the order was entered into the system. Same idea, just a difference of who's stealing from whom.
Hm, I suppose that scam is less of a problem in the era of credit cards.
and how did procurement for that contract go?
Where I live at least not reporting activity like that could result in a few years in jail.
> Yes if the government can prove that you knew about it without telling, you can be charged with it.
That's not generally true. In the vast majority of cases, simply knowing about a crime and not reporting it is not a crime in itself. You only become liable when you aid-and-abet or join in a conspiracy to commit the crime.
However, it depends very much on the specific crime. Tax evasion may be entirely different than say selling drugs.
EDIT: Apparently, your illegal income is regularly taxable, and expenses related to (most) illegal activity are tax-deductible. Cool!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_of_illegal_income_in_....
"The U.S. Supreme Court in Tellier reiterated that the purpose of the tax code was to tax net income, not punish unlawful behavior."
I do appreciate this sentiment. Separation of concerns.
I’d assume tax fraud is much more common than money laundering. Maybe drug dealers and the like create enough of a market for “reverse zappers” to exist; not sure.
I was there for one instance, 2 guys had asked him for a meeting to get some advice on opening a pizza place or something and wanted the input of a non-competing experienced business owner in the area so he agreed to meet with them and I was there so I sat in just to see if I could learn anything from the exchange. Like we're in some cheesy movie, these guys make small talk before one sets a briefcase on the table and opens it to reveal gobs of what appeared to be 10s and 20s and proceeded to tell him they actually wanted to buy a percentage of the club cash and he shut them right down and asked them to leave. After they left he told me he was approached multiple times in the first couple years of business with such offers. People wanting to dump a bunch of cash in his lap that, presumably, he would then trickle into the coffers via fictional sales as a way for them to launder some money via their cash infusion and potentially get far more back if the club remained successful. At the time I legitimately thought they were friends of his and he was pranking me or something, it was so absurd. I came to realize though that those selling drugs definitely love clubs as we'd have kids in their early 20s coming in 1-2 times a week and buying bottle service at 300$+ a bottle to impress friends/girls week after week with no realistic way of having that much disposable income.
This guy was super shady in general, and his shadiness is why we ultimately parted ways, but even that was too much for him.
It would not surprise me in the least if there was a market for this for bars and clubs that had "creative" income streams on the side. He would regularly have the bartenders pour house shots (An "IV" of OJ/shot of soda water/cheapest well vodka) for free for a group of people to get them to stay (often it was bridal parties) to make the club appear busy and doing stuff like that would certainly be a way to legitimately burn through some cheap liquor that you could ring up as premium-priced cocktails. I could see restaraunts that do free refills on drinks also being able to do this by ringing up some extra drink/burger/fries sales and fudging the numbers several percent, if not ten percent, to similarly sneak illicit money in.
Isn't this super easy to discover if you use any sort of electronic payment? Salons and restaurants might be cash based, but who pays their mechanic in cash?
Lots of places will do it anyway on a cash job if they think they can get away with it, because it's relatively easy money. A shop replaced my failed catalytic converter ($1200+ replacement) with a straight pipe ($20 pipe and $200 of time) many years ago because they (correctly) assessed me to be a broke-ass student who wouldn't tell on them.
> replacement) with a straight pipe ($20 pipe and $200 of
> time) many years ago because they (correctly) assessed me
> to be a broke-ass student who wouldn't tell on them.
The mechanic may have even made even more money by scrapping your catalytic converter.
In the UK, swapping the exhaust out for a straight pipe is a common (illegal) modification for greater performance and sound. To get the car through the MOT, you either need to find somebody willing to "look the other way" or re-weld the original exhaust in place.
I've seen in many scenarios "boy racers" dipping the clutch and coasting the car by the police. If your car is making a sound resembling a Spitfire you're sure to get pulled over, where they'll use a road side test kit and confiscate your car.
Some other popular cheap modifications include completely removing the air-filter (dangerous), stretching tires to create low-profile wheels (extremely dangerous if they let go [0]), putting the car on a diet (ripping out all interior, seats, etc), running contaminated fuel (either diesel/petrol mixes [1] or running farmer's diesel) - the list goes on.
There are also some processes for purposely causing the car to backfire regularly (especially on a down change, with quite large flames) and getting more "bang" from the fuel. At one point we were also experimenting with the idea of using the starter motor strategically to aid engine acceleration - but nothing ever came of it.
[0] We had a car crash on the motorway into the central barrier, which then caused all of the tires to instantly disintegrate - all at ~90 mph (~145 kph).
[1] We once had a vehicle literally explode when unburned fuel collected in the catalytic converter/exhaust and suddenly decide it wanted to be on fire. This in itself wouldn't have been an issue if a) somebody noticed and b) it didn't then ignite the fuel lines.
Oh, certainly. Not to mention that removing it would have been a larger & more difficult job, which I'd have to pay for... OR they can get less money but it's (very) easy money.
>completely removing the air-filter (dangerous)
Good god... Who the hell does that? What ricer would willingly risk killing their motor from eating some leaves (or a piece of gravel!) for a minuscule performance increase? The risk:reward scale there is just bananas.
Before scrapping it I decided to drive it around as a "risk free" car. The exhaust fell off (so not even a straight pipe), the battery was dead (had to push start it everywhere), the clutch was teetering on death, brakes were merely a suggestion to your speed (it had drums), the radiator leaked, the oil was probably as old as the car, tires were barely legal and it had no working headlight bulbs.
We ripped out all of seats, removed the air filter, filled the tank with contaminated petrol (had diesel in it - added a small amount of nitro-car fuel to balance it out) and drove it very hard.
I ended up using it for quick 20 minute journeys (that's about how long it took for all the coolant to leak out). We would leave it unlocked with the keys in the ignition - I think it was more hassle to whoever tried to steal it. The car survived long enough to drive itself onto the back of a flat-bed lorry to be taken to the scrap dealers once the MOT and tax ran out.
This is not uncommon either, many people get "traders plates" just so that they can drive barely legal cars around before getting rid of them.
> willingly risk killing their motor from eating some leaves
> (or a piece of gravel!) for a minuscule performance
> increase? The risk:reward scale there is just bananas.
A lot of people do it. In the UK you've also got tonnes of rain regularly too, meaning all sorts of crap is sprayed into the engine bay area, both dry and wet.
The performance gain is surprisingly high given how simple the action is, the throttle becomes more responsive and you can audibly hear the engine taking gulps of air. Of course that comes with the associated risk. If you're a student with a £300 car and you want to pretend it's a race car, little tricks like this cost nothing for a little speed boost.
Also, Sheetz is a regional gas station (once) popular with street and track racers. I guess it still is, but their food quality has gone through the floor.
Wawa for life.
Statistically nobody but every mechanic remembers the story of "that one idiot".
This is how the hybrid car was born.
Yes :) We were quite amused to have had the idea a few years before it's popularization!
> just reduces performance by fucking up the O2 sensor
> readings unless you also dump a grand on a new ECU
You can also get a piggy-back ECU for the purpose of sending false sensor data - it's quite a bit cheaper.
I new a guy who was developing hacked firmware for POSes in the 90ies. One of the cool features he had is that at the end of the day the owner could unlock secret mode, enter amount of sales he wanted, and POS would create entire fake log spaced through the day and print it on tape, update electronic counters and then lock, and again behave like normal terminal ready for inspection.
You check other proxies relating to services rendered vs. money earned for an initial estimate.
Genuinely curious, if the US has managed to implement effective anti-tax avoidance solutions, could they be implemented here?
I read that as the OP saying they had specific experience/knowledge of it happing there, rather than intending to imply it happens there more than anywhere else.