This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.
E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/
But of course as you say it's largely semantics.
This assumes everyone acts in good faith.
A popular one these days is the "gun show 'loophole.'"
Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."
It looks like a loophole, it could be in the textbook describing them. You have a law that establishes a rule, then creates a small exception that in effect opts out of the rule entirely. The people who want this provision eliminated don't know it was intended. That's pretty in the weeds of congress' internal negotiations
Now, it might be reasonable to remove this exemption, but the only way it's a "gunshow" loophole is that gun shows are a place where gun fans wanting to buy are going to meet gun fans wanting to sell.
Making it trivial for someone to do firearms checks seems like an easy thing that everyone should support, but alas no one in power seems to actually want such a thing.
> You're assigning a single mind to a group of uncoordinated actors to create a hypocrisy that probably doesn't exist in any specific individual.
POSIWID
If we negotiate and make a binding deal, I need to believe you will hold your end of the agreement.
I have never seen this as anything other than the death penalty for evading taxes. If the tax were designed to reduce consumption across the population, it needs to scale with income or net worth. Otherwise, it's just a tax on the poor.
The post pointing this out has different content to yours, which reads as if your meaning is “this reminds me of another bad thing caused by tax policies” - even if that’s not what you meant.
But I also never said OP’s anecdote was a bad thing. (Why shouldn’t countries be able to tax video cameras coming in…). What’s the difference?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium is used to make it unpalatable. Fun fact: the same chemical is also coated onto Nintendo Switch cartridges to discourage children from putting them in their mouths.
Nowadays we just measure pressure differentials.
Methanol sales were banned in Finland prior to EU and Finland applied for the exemption already in the EU application in the early 1990s. It was finally granted in 2019. Probably around 500 people died and many got blinded meanwhile.
If you close your nose the taste is just bitter, but bearable. The additives are supposed to make you vomit, but for me I only had vomit reflex for ~5 seconds after swallowing. I could live with that if I was addicted and couldn't afford a regular alcohol. I'm sure many people do.
Not sure what the moral is. I guess that addiction is a really strong motivator, and tax evasion is not a good enough reason to justify killing people with poison.
I suppose wormwood is an acquired taste, but it's one I happen to like. They still put it in many different bitters here in Sweden.
This "oil" is basically diesel. It smells and feels identical to diesel. But it's about 70 cents cheaper per litre compared to road diesel. It's dyed red, and you are not supposed to put it in your car, but I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines.
The red diesel is not taxed like road diesel, and is much cheaper.
Though primarily done to trucks, there are occasional fuel tests done by police. Even if your tank is currently clean, they'll occasionally pull out the fuel filters and check those for dye.
There's always the risk of getting your fuel tank dipped if you're on road. Moreso for trucks, but some jurisdictions will set up inspections and check for dyed fuel and tear you an absolute new one when they catch it.