6 ms·

D) evading sales tax

• Mz 11y ago
  I thought about this overnight. I don't know Greek tax laws, but in the U.S., if you earn less than (iirc) $600/year from one source, you do not need to report it on your taxes. If you earn more than that, even from barter, you do need to report. A lot of people will not, a lot of people won't even realize they should, but at least in this country, you are supposed to. If you are using an online service for this, there are records. That makes it easier to report or to be caught if you didn't report. So I am not going to automatically assume that all people engaging in barter a) need to report it (maybe they are below the reporting threshold) or b) won't report it. Also, given that you can only get 420 Euros/week out of the bank, it looks to me like the main thing barter is doing is getting around that bottleneck. These transactions would not be happening at all without barter. So while in some sense, yes, it may make it easy to skirt around the question of taxes, it is not like it is some tax loophole and people are doing this to actively hide profits. They are doing it because they straight up do not have access to enough money to get their needs met. Perhaps over time the tax issue will get worked out. Perhaps not. But these folks are just trying to survive in spite of economic collapse impeding their ability to do so. I see no reason to act like they are just criminal scum, trying to screw the government of tax dollars.
• deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
• wutangson1 11y ago
  This. >"criminal scum trying to screw the government out of tax revenue." Umm, so you feel the same way about American Colonists with that whole Boston Tea Party thing, right?
  • LoSboccacc 11y ago
    well there was a war about that and winners decided it was fine :D we'll know how this play out in the next decades.