4 ms·

>The short answer is that Bitcoin works and TransferWise and PayPal don't. I looked into TransferWise a couple of months ago when someone else asked about it: h

by aixi 5y ago

>The short answer is that Bitcoin works and TransferWise and PayPal don't. I looked into TransferWise a couple of months ago when someone else asked about it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657391 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657391 Dude, just call a spade a spade and say what you really mean: You are using bitcoin to perform tax evasion in your country because you think taxes and the economy there are unfair.

kragen 5y ago
Nope, although the fake currency transfer rates that are the big obstacle here are structurally similar in their economic impact to prohibitively-high export tariffs, they aren't actually taxes; they don't go to the Treasury but to the Central Bank, and so they don't pay for social services but rather to subsidize imports, further hollowing out the Argentine economy and destroying our competitiveness. But the evidence suggests that, even if I'm willing to take the 38% haircut, TransferWise and PayPal simply don't work. They just don't have service here. Argentina does have a little bit of income tax, which I'm not allowed to pay (I tried, but the tax office turned me away because they don't accept income taxes from illegal immigrants), but most of the tax revenue here comes from the VAT, which I pay just like everyone else, because it's included in the price of everything. Exports of information technology services, which is what I do, are exempt from VAT. In fact, when I had a company here, before I was an illegal immigrant, I had to pay a lot of extra VAT that was supposed to get refunded, but it never was, because following that aspect of the law is too inconvenient to the government. (Because all my revenue came from exports, you see.) One accountant suggested that I bill a friend's domestic company for fake services in order to get the refund. I refused. (This may throw some light on why TransferWise and PayPal have opted out of doing business here.) I understand that if you've lived in a country all your life with a more or less reasonable government, all of this sounds ridiculously implausible. Government economic policy optimized to destroy domestic industry at the expense of imports? Tax offices refusing to accept taxes? Tax offices breaking the law by refusing to refund VAT? Accountants recommending fraudulent invoices as standard business practice in order to work around the tax office breaking the law? And before I moved to Argentina, it would have sounded ridiculously implausible to me too. Maybe I would have assumed that people were only interested in Bitcoin for tax evasion, if it had existed then! Hopefully I wouldn't have been such a fool as to accuse random people on the internet of crimes as a result of my misconceptions, but I probably would have done that, too. Anyway, that's the way things really are. Dude.
- sorbits 5y ago
  If I understand your situation correctly, you are working in Argentina, but not paying income tax because you are a non-resident, and the source of your income is outside Argentina. In that situation, I would look into setting up an offshore corporation with a bank account to hold the income, and then get a debit card that could be used in Argentina. This would be a hedge against the volatility of bitcoin (but maybe you see that as an advantage) and it would not require you to get cash from strangers, which I personally would be a little hesitant about, since there is a non-zero chance you are accepting dirty money and/or helping people circumvent currency controls, but I do not know the laws of Argentina, and whether or not you are violating any laws here.
  - kragen 5y ago
    > If I understand your situation correctly, you are working in Argentina, but not paying income tax because you are a non-resident, and the source of your income is outside Argentina. Very nearly—I'm working in Argentina, and the source of my income is outside Argentina, but I am not paying income tax because AFIP refused to issue me a CUIT without a work visa, but I'm not a non-resident; I'm an illegal immigrant. > In that situation, I would look into setting up an offshore corporation with a bank account to hold the income, and then get a debit card that could be used in Argentina. I have no idea how to do this, particularly without being able to leave Argentina. Also I don't think it's really a practical solution for the vast majority of people in either Argentina or El Salvador. (Also, most people bridle at taking the 38% haircut from the fake exchange rate, which at times has gone as high as 50%. In Venezuela it's sometimes been over 90%.) > get cash from strangers, which I personally would be a little hesitant about, since there is a non-zero chance you are accepting dirty money and/or helping people circumvent currency controls Any time you handle money, whether from a bank or anywhere else, you are accepting dirty money and/or helping people circumvent currency controls. The nature of money is that it is dirty and circumvents currency controls. That's the advantage money has over a gift economy: I don't have to worry whether the person I'm selling my car to, writing software for, or selling Bitcoin to is a good person or a bad person, whether when they return the favor it will be in spades or stintingly, or whether they will die or leave town before returning the favor. Of course I would like my money to fund good activities like education, family remittances to Venezuela, and abortion rights†, rather than bad activities like factory farming of livestock, constructing nuclear weapons, or exploitative garment sweatshop labor; but the nature of money is that it grants each individual the autonomy to make their own moral choices about how to direct their resources, rather than submitting each innovation for community assent. Sometimes they make the wrong choices, but that is better than not having the choice at all. Similarly, the ice cream shop down the street has no duty to inquire whether the young woman buying ice cream earned that money from masturbating in front of a webcam for strangers on the internet, which I think is an occupation in which bitcoin is now very popular. Indeed, it would be unacceptable for them to make such inquiries. I'm hesitant about getting cash from strangers for a different reason, which is what I thought you were going to say: they might shoot me or rob my house and take the cash back. With banks and Western Union this is a much larger risk. ______ † Abortion was illegal in Argentina until December. One of the things I did with my money in the past was to buy abortion manuals and give them away in the park. (It turns out there were legal drugs in Argentina which could produce safe first-trimester abortions.) Probably many people considered that money "dirty", but because we live in a money economy, the people who printed the books didn't have to worry about being turned out of their homes or going hungry as a result. Free abortion took a really long time to gain community assent.

by aixi 5y ago

kragen 5y ago

Nope, although the fake currency transfer rates that are the big obstacle here are structurally similar in their economic impact to prohibitively-high export tariffs, they aren't actually taxes; they don't go to the Treasury but to the Central Bank, and so they don't pay for social services but rather to subsidize imports, further hollowing out the Argentine economy and destroying our competitiveness. But the evidence suggests that, even if I'm willing to take the 38% haircut, TransferWise and PayPal simply don't work. They just don't have service here. Argentina does have a little bit of income tax, which I'm not allowed to pay (I tried, but the tax office turned me away because they don't accept income taxes from illegal immigrants), but most of the tax revenue here comes from the VAT, which I pay just like everyone else, because it's included in the price of everything. Exports of information technology services, which is what I do, are exempt from VAT. In fact, when I had a company here, before I was an illegal immigrant, I had to pay a lot of extra VAT that was supposed to get refunded, but it never was, because following that aspect of the law is too inconvenient to the government. (Because all my revenue came from exports, you see.) One accountant suggested that I bill a friend's domestic company for fake services in order to get the refund. I refused. (This may throw some light on why TransferWise and PayPal have opted out of doing business here.) I understand that if you've lived in a country all your life with a more or less reasonable government, all of this sounds ridiculously implausible. Government economic policy optimized to destroy domestic industry at the expense of imports? Tax offices refusing to accept taxes? Tax offices breaking the law by refusing to refund VAT? Accountants recommending fraudulent invoices as standard business practice in order to work around the tax office breaking the law? And before I moved to Argentina, it would have sounded ridiculously implausible to me too. Maybe I would have assumed that people were only interested in Bitcoin for tax evasion, if it had existed then! Hopefully I wouldn't have been such a fool as to accuse random people on the internet of crimes as a result of my misconceptions, but I probably would have done that, too. Anyway, that's the way things really are. Dude.

sorbits 5y ago
If I understand your situation correctly, you are working in Argentina, but not paying income tax because you are a non-resident, and the source of your income is outside Argentina. In that situation, I would look into setting up an offshore corporation with a bank account to hold the income, and then get a debit card that could be used in Argentina. This would be a hedge against the volatility of bitcoin (but maybe you see that as an advantage) and it would not require you to get cash from strangers, which I personally would be a little hesitant about, since there is a non-zero chance you are accepting dirty money and/or helping people circumvent currency controls, but I do not know the laws of Argentina, and whether or not you are violating any laws here.
- kragen 5y ago
  > If I understand your situation correctly, you are working in Argentina, but not paying income tax because you are a non-resident, and the source of your income is outside Argentina. Very nearly—I'm working in Argentina, and the source of my income is outside Argentina, but I am not paying income tax because AFIP refused to issue me a CUIT without a work visa, but I'm not a non-resident; I'm an illegal immigrant. > In that situation, I would look into setting up an offshore corporation with a bank account to hold the income, and then get a debit card that could be used in Argentina. I have no idea how to do this, particularly without being able to leave Argentina. Also I don't think it's really a practical solution for the vast majority of people in either Argentina or El Salvador. (Also, most people bridle at taking the 38% haircut from the fake exchange rate, which at times has gone as high as 50%. In Venezuela it's sometimes been over 90%.) > get cash from strangers, which I personally would be a little hesitant about, since there is a non-zero chance you are accepting dirty money and/or helping people circumvent currency controls Any time you handle money, whether from a bank or anywhere else, you are accepting dirty money and/or helping people circumvent currency controls. The nature of money is that it is dirty and circumvents currency controls. That's the advantage money has over a gift economy: I don't have to worry whether the person I'm selling my car to, writing software for, or selling Bitcoin to is a good person or a bad person, whether when they return the favor it will be in spades or stintingly, or whether they will die or leave town before returning the favor. Of course I would like my money to fund good activities like education, family remittances to Venezuela, and abortion rights†, rather than bad activities like factory farming of livestock, constructing nuclear weapons, or exploitative garment sweatshop labor; but the nature of money is that it grants each individual the autonomy to make their own moral choices about how to direct their resources, rather than submitting each innovation for community assent. Sometimes they make the wrong choices, but that is better than not having the choice at all. Similarly, the ice cream shop down the street has no duty to inquire whether the young woman buying ice cream earned that money from masturbating in front of a webcam for strangers on the internet, which I think is an occupation in which bitcoin is now very popular. Indeed, it would be unacceptable for them to make such inquiries. I'm hesitant about getting cash from strangers for a different reason, which is what I thought you were going to say: they might shoot me or rob my house and take the cash back. With banks and Western Union this is a much larger risk. ______ † Abortion was illegal in Argentina until December. One of the things I did with my money in the past was to buy abortion manuals and give them away in the park. (It turns out there were legal drugs in Argentina which could produce safe first-trimester abortions.) Probably many people considered that money "dirty", but because we live in a money economy, the people who printed the books didn't have to worry about being turned out of their homes or going hungry as a result. Free abortion took a really long time to gain community assent.