3 ms·

Money laundering?

• gjm11 8y ago
  It's tax evasion, not money laundering. The two are quite different things. Tax evasion: You get some money. (Legally or not; the tax system doesn't care.) You are supposed to pay taxes on it but don't want to. You find a way not to, e.g. by hiding the income from the tax authorities. Money laundering: You get some money by illegal means (theft, blackmail, whatever). You want to be able to use the money without having the authorities notice it, get suspicious about where it came from, and discover your crime. You find a way to pass the money from place to place so that by the time you actually do anything that might be noticed, it's difficult or impossible to trace it back to anything illegal. [EDITED to add:] Also different from both: tax _avoidance_. You get some money. You don't want to pay taxes on it. It turns out that the law actually allows you not to, and you take advantage of that. But this feature of the law is unintended, or blatantly unfair, or clearly the way it is because of someone lobbying on behalf of people in situations like yours.
  • dickeytk 8y ago
    Yes, and usually when someone launders money the goal is _to_ pay tax on it. That way it looks like legitimate income.
  • tim333 8y ago
    Tax avoidance doesn't have to be unintended or unfair. You can avoid income tax in the UK for example by investing in official schemes like SEIS. Or in this case he could accept crypto but forward it to charity and argue the money was not his but customer charity donations.
    • gjm11 8y ago
      Yes, perhaps I should have said something like "looks unintended or unfair". Usually something only gets called "tax avoidance" when it has something loophole-y about it. I suspect your second suggestion would actually get classified as tax _evasion_, though.
• astura 8y ago
  No, tax evasion.