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Curse those meddling governments who want to tax you to pay for roads, hospitals, and schools, and social welfare. At least, speaking as a European, this is wh

Curse those meddling governments who want to tax you to pay for roads, hospitals, and schools, and social welfare. At least, speaking as a European, this is where the large majority of my tax euros go. If your government spends your tax on less useful things then maybe the solution is to work towards a better government, rather than trying to hide your savings in untaxable havens. (Actually I have no idea how easy it is to hide money from the tax collectors using crypto, but I assume that's one of the appeals). EDIT: user above me edited their comment to reference Russia and Venezuela. My comment about working towards a better government still stands although I recognize it's not an easy task.

tengbretson 4y ago
Other governments out there spend money on roads, hospitals, schools, and social welfare regardless of the amount of tax dollars they collect. It would be understandable for people under such a system to view their taxes as purely punitive.
klabb3 4y ago
> (Actually I have no idea how easy it is to hide money from the tax collectors using crypto, but I assume that's one of the appeals). Depends on which one but let's take pure bitcoin because that's what the post is about. Governments have 3 main tools, tracing, freezing and recovering. The breakdown is different in crypto vs fiat. In BTC, the blockchain contains all previous transactions, everything is public. If you send your BTC through middlemen it'll be mixed in with their assets but you can still follow the trail perfectly. So tracing is easier with BTC than fiat, because you won't have to convince some Cayman island bank to hand over the cash. Next, there's freezing, which is harder. You can't block transactions to Iran on the chain, but you can block entry and exit points when trading with fiat, on most exchanges. Since freezing is technically equal to censoring, it's a feature. Recovery is almost impossible, to the point of you can even lose your own private key, let alone someone who stole from you. The government can't produce a valid private key any more than your quad-core IOT fridge. TL;DR avoiding tax is hard to do for retail people, simply because the regulators are watching the entry and exit points. So even if you tornado cashed and zcash yadda yadda and your funds are untraceable you eventually need to buy fiat for them, because you'll need the fiat for the Lamborghini. > rather than trying to hide your savings in untaxable havens. Kinda OT, but why suddenly is tax evasion a problem with retail crypto of all things? We have institutionalized tax avoidance for the biggest players (megacorps & ultra rich) to the point where nobody raises an eyebrow anymore. Seems inconsistent to me.
throwawaymaths 4y ago
> this is where the large majority of my tax euros go. Actually this isn't true. your tax euros go to paying down the debt on loans taken out to pay for these things. Under this system ultimately one of two things happens -- it's either unsustainable and you lose those niceties, or, the euro gets devalued and the only way you get those niceties is by absolutely routing the lower class (even under European gas and water socialism the divide between rich and poor is increasing. Get ready for a big hike in this divide over the next five years as the euro loses its PPP and needs to start defense spending to safeguard trading relationships). Especially hurt will be underprivileged Europeans, like stateless Turks in Germany or immigrants living in banlieues in France.

tengbretson 4y ago

Other governments out there spend money on roads, hospitals, schools, and social welfare regardless of the amount of tax dollars they collect. It would be understandable for people under such a system to view their taxes as purely punitive.

klabb3 4y ago

> (Actually I have no idea how easy it is to hide money from the tax collectors using crypto, but I assume that's one of the appeals). Depends on which one but let's take pure bitcoin because that's what the post is about. Governments have 3 main tools, tracing, freezing and recovering. The breakdown is different in crypto vs fiat. In BTC, the blockchain contains all previous transactions, everything is public. If you send your BTC through middlemen it'll be mixed in with their assets but you can still follow the trail perfectly. So tracing is easier with BTC than fiat, because you won't have to convince some Cayman island bank to hand over the cash. Next, there's freezing, which is harder. You can't block transactions to Iran on the chain, but you can block entry and exit points when trading with fiat, on most exchanges. Since freezing is technically equal to censoring, it's a feature. Recovery is almost impossible, to the point of you can even lose your own private key, let alone someone who stole from you. The government can't produce a valid private key any more than your quad-core IOT fridge. TL;DR avoiding tax is hard to do for retail people, simply because the regulators are watching the entry and exit points. So even if you tornado cashed and zcash yadda yadda and your funds are untraceable you eventually need to buy fiat for them, because you'll need the fiat for the Lamborghini. > rather than trying to hide your savings in untaxable havens. Kinda OT, but why suddenly is tax evasion a problem with retail crypto of all things? We have institutionalized tax avoidance for the biggest players (megacorps & ultra rich) to the point where nobody raises an eyebrow anymore. Seems inconsistent to me.

throwawaymaths 4y ago

> this is where the large majority of my tax euros go. Actually this isn't true. your tax euros go to paying down the debt on loans taken out to pay for these things. Under this system ultimately one of two things happens -- it's either unsustainable and you lose those niceties, or, the euro gets devalued and the only way you get those niceties is by absolutely routing the lower class (even under European gas and water socialism the divide between rich and poor is increasing. Get ready for a big hike in this divide over the next five years as the euro loses its PPP and needs to start defense spending to safeguard trading relationships). Especially hurt will be underprivileged Europeans, like stateless Turks in Germany or immigrants living in banlieues in France.