10 ms·
>Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can learn their citizen's total income and thus collect sales, value-added or income taxes Wow
by kybernetyk 10y ago
>Unlike BitCoin or cash payments, Taler ensures that governments can learn their citizen's total income and thus collect sales, value-added or income taxes
Wow, what a feature ...
- brudgers 10y agoFor some people, the overhead of separating segregating income streams into declared and undeclared doesn't make economic sense. For some people, a conscious decision to act illegally is inconsistent with their values. For some people the potential appearance of potential improprieties outweighs the benefits of cryptocurrency. To me, that's really the rub. Many of the potential benefits of cryptocurrency are independent of how it may or may not facilitate slush funds.
- akerro 10y agoFor many it might be more attractive than BTC.
- vertex-four 10y agoBitCoin is political - it holds an anarcho-capitalist ideal where taxes are entirely immoral. Taler holds the opposite political ideal.
- mindslight 10y agoBitcoin lacks untraceability. USG implementing taxes for bitcoin will be relatively straightforward. KYC focus on exchanges, merchant wallet registration, and then a gradual tightening of the screws.
- vesak 10y agoWell, the world ain't black and white. Taxes are immoral, but evading taxes is probably more immoral. How low the scales are on both these is dependant on who is ruling you at the moment. Managing to build our societies around a non-cheatable taxation system would be a huge step forwards for our species. Just think how huge systems we have built just because most people don't want to pay. How much freedom and creativity and goodwill would be unleashed if nobody had to spend energy around that problem at all. If it all would just work. Perhaps Taler won't give us that, but at least they're trying. Perhaps some future project that stands on its shoulders will.
- typon 10y agoWhy are taxes immoral?
- abritinthebay 10y agoSpoiler: they aren't. It's an incredibly naive position that many "libertarians" hold. It ignores the direct and indirect benefits that governments provide that support an entity being able to make money that can even be taxed. It's quite a silly position. Now specific taxes could be immoral and debate about the correct amount that it should be all you like... but the concept? No.
- maloney 10y agoSo... Your argument is, if the thing taking your money provides you with some benefit it's moral?
- vec 10y agoNo, the argument is that humans are tribal creatures. Imagine going off to live in the woods with a handful of other individuals, 100% off the grid and with only the tools you can carry. Inevitably, it wouldn't be long before you start insisting that everyone help out with farming or hunting or repairs or something. It's literally built into our DNA that individuals should contribute some labor to the betterment of the tribe in exchange for the security and comfort the tribe provides. Now, fast-forward to the modern world. We have much, much bigger tribes called countries, and we have a way of talking about and trading human labor that we call money. But it's still true that you should contribute some of your labor (i.e. money) to the tribe (i.e. your country) in exchange for security and comfort (i.e. civilization). Taxes are moral so long as the taxed individuals consent to be part of the entity imposing the taxes, and there are very few individuals throughout history who have actually been willing to opt out of civilization. And, since you're reading a page on the internet you are clearly not one of them.
- 10y ago
- Frondo 10y agoIndeed, that is an excellent feature. Money transfers without the banks, but I can potentially get buy-in from my government and use it to pay my taxes (which I am happy to pay, because I am buying civilization with it)? Sign me up!
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- exstudent2 10y agoIt's funny that you think you're buying civilization with your taxes when the vasty majority of the money you give the government is used to actively destroy civilization. Bombs aren't cheap.
- sbierwagen 10y agoVast majority? Military spending is only 15.75% of the US federal budget. And that's just federal spending, citizens also pay taxes to states and municipalities, which rarely field combat aircraft.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- dragontamer 10y agoAnd one of the biggest Military Deployment in the past 10 years was 5,000 troops to Japan to assist in Fukashima. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/fukushima-navy-health-problems_n_2855529.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/11/fukushima-navy-heal... Even if you think that "Fighting ISIS" is destroying civilization (erm... ambiguous. They're destroying civilization. And we are destroying them. I'd say that's a net-gain), there are plenty of good-will projects from the military. Like GPS, Nuclear Power, and more.
- talnet 10y agoAnd OSI and many more.
- golergka 10y agoWell, apparenty HN readers want universal basic income and punish tax evaders, so payment anonymity is bad, right? I mean, either these two kinds of stories (UBI and privacy) have completely different sets of people who write and upvote comments, or majority of them just don't realize how at odds these ideas are.
- sievebrain 10y agoTaler is being designed at Inria, in France. France is not a country with high levels of distrust of government or taxes.
- shrugger 10y agoGNU projects are really awesome until people start implementing them.
- sametmax 10y agoWell, right now the banking system is transparent in a way that the gov can look at your bank accounts, but you can look at bank accounts on people at the gov. So it's an improvement.