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Comment by sfrechtling | Hacker News Reader

I'm no economist, but isn't that congruent with how similar things like Gold are treated?

Absolutely, in most parts of the world, these days.

Essentially, it comes down to two things -- what are taxes paid in (they don't want a 10th of your apples or cattle these days) and what final settlement is enforced by law in contract disputes. Even if you have a contract stating I owe you 4 pork bellies or chunks of gold or bitcoins, if we end up in a court of law, they'll only enforce settlement in currency.

So yeah this comes as no surprise. People can (depending on jurisdiction and subject to details and scale and taxability etc) by and large "barter" in other media of exchange all they want, especially on a small peer-to-peer scale. Just don't expect too much legal protection / contract enforcement in anything other than legal tender. ;)

The issue here is that Norway adds vat (value added tax) on assets when sold to private citizens. Vat is added to most assets, including gold.

This makes bartering more expensive when bartering with foreigners. For example if a Norwegian where to trade 1000 USD worth of gold for a new pc with someone in the us, the Norwegian would have to pay 1250 USD for the same gold (1000 USD in gold, 250 USD in vat). Same for BitCoin. One will need to pay vat when buying them.

However one can buy 1000 USD in gold coins for 1000 USD because the coins are considered a currency, and thus not subject to vat.

Norwegian here. Would you also have to pay VAT on the product itself? I.e. 250USD in VAT on the gold, 250 on the PC? Or is the latter part dropped? Because if this is the case, it doesn't really matter since you need to pay VAT on products you buy from abroad regardless.

I am not a lawyer. But I think you would pay custom duty of 25% on the pc. It even worse, because your 1000 USD pc is now not a 1000 USD pc, but a 1250 USD pc because that is what you paid for it.

I believe it would go something like this:

* You want to barter for a 1000 USD pc located in the US and pay 1000 USD worth of gold.

* In Norway you then pay 1250 USD for that weight in gold (1000 USD for the gold, 250 USD in vat) and send it to the US.

* The pc is sent to you, but is now worth 1250 USD because that was what you paid for it, so you pay an additional 312 (25%) in custom duty.

* Making your 1000 USD pc costing you 1562 USD.

So bartering with assets like gold and now BitCoin may not be a good idea as a private citizen. Companies of course are exempt from vat, so other rules apply.

> Companies of course are exempt from vat, so other rules apply.

If a company buys a 1000 USD computer to sell it, then the ultimate buyer pays the VAT. However, what happens when a company buys a 1000 USD computer to replace a server rack? At what point does "consumption" happen?

Only private citizen pays vat.

In practice it works so that everyone, both private citizen and company’s pays the vat, but companies can fill out a form and get the vat returned if the product was for internal use. They then add vat to their end product.

For example:

* A company buys a 1000 USD server and pays 1250 USD (server + vat). It sells it to a private citizen for 1250 USD (no profit). It can then keep 1000 USD and must give 250 USD to the state.

* A company buys a 1000 USD server and pays 1250 USD (server + vat). It sets it in a rack for internal use, and can then ask for the 250 USD vat back from the state.

VAT is a tax on "value added". So a (VAT registred) company only needs to pay VAT on the value it provides. Eg: you sell services for 1M NOK/year, you then have to claim VAT from your customers, totalling 250K NOK. But, you also pay for hosting, hardware etc, for say a total of 300K NOK -- so you subtract the VAT on that 300K (7.5K NOK) from the VAT you have to pay the government, and pay 250K - 7.5 K in VA tax.

(In reality you might do a lot of these deals b2b, and not actually transfer/invoice the VAT -- but that's the basic idea).

Oh, yeah, also not a lawyer, but a Norwegian.

Ah interesting so Norway doesn't follow the same rules on VAT from the EU then as they are part of the European Economic Area.

What is to stop a Norwegian going to an EU state and buying gold there as the EU treats investments such as gold and stocks and shares as exempt from VAT (sales tax)

You'd have to smuggle it into the country. If you want it to be done legally, you'd have to declare it and pay VAT.

This is a common problem. When the gold crosses the border it becomes 25% more worth.

Just in March this year someone was arrested for smuggling in 421 kilo of gold: http://www.aftenposten.no/nyheter/iriks/Politiet-Nettverk-sm... (in Norwegian).

I guess one could also melt gold coins to obtain the gold without paying vat.

For those (like me) who were confused, mars = March.

Thank you. Fixed now :)

coins dont attract VAT - thats why they have a face value

These rules are fairly new, the UK used to tax gold too. Presumably there would be a tax on reimport to Norway if you bought in EU.

You could of course buy the gold from a bank in the EU, and leave it there (in a safety deposit box or something).

I don't know what the legal (tax) status of that gold would be (Norway has a modest tax on savings/holdings (1.1% for a total net worth above ~142.000 USD) -- so as a private citizen you might have to pay tax on that -- or, where you're keeping it if tax is applicable there)).

As others have mentioned if you want to import it legally, you'd have to pay VAT.

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