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Tax evasion is rife: How many tradesmen fixing stuff around your house for cash will report that income on their return ? Governments can get most of their rev

by nroets 3y ago

Tax evasion is rife: How many tradesmen fixing stuff around your house for cash will report that income on their return ? Governments can get most of their revenue with little economic distortion by taxing stuff where evasion is much harder: Fuel taxes and property taxes.

ryan_lane 3y ago
Tax evasion is people stealing from you, just in an indirect way. Just because some people already steal from us doesn't mean it's OK for other (richer) people to steal even more from us. You may believe there's a better way for the government to tax us, but that's not how the system works currently. Crypto being used for tax evasion is a good reason for it to be regulated out of existence.
- elzbardico 3y ago
  Tax is the burden of the middle class. If you are Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi, other rules apply to you, because they are the ones who write the rules or lobby for them.
- nroets 3y ago
  You can make the same argument that governments should ban physical cash.
  - ryan_lane 3y ago
    Crypto scales a lot better than cash, and allows for considerably larger amounts of fraud, and not just locally, but also internationally. I also think that businesses avoiding tax by not reporting cash are putting themselves into an unfair position against businesses that are legally operating, and I'd have a preference that businesses doing this should be shut down. If you're running a thin margin business and your competitor is able to price themselves better by committing tax fraud, then you need to also commit tax fraud to compete, and that's a race to the bottom that's not good for anyone.
  - mrguyorama 3y ago
    You cannot, because the two systems have entirely different sets of pros and cons, for entirely different sets of people. You can also compare apples and oranges, but the comparison might not be useful.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    And many countries are moving in that direction, so what's your point?
    - stale2002 3y ago
      So the point is that a large amount of people think that banning cash would be completely absurd and therefore this isn't just some issue that is relegated to obscure crypto fans.
    - nroets 3y ago
      For millennia governments survived with cash in circulation. Crypto is no real threat to their existence. Regulating it with a heavy hand will do more harm than good. Those innovators will just move offshore.
      - ryan_lane 3y ago
        > Those innovators will just move offshore. Yes, let them move offshore. Being able to more easily commit tax fraud and money laundering isn't the kind of innovation we need to keep.
      - TeMPOraL 3y ago
        The difference between cash and crypto is like the difference between building a room on top of a tall tower, vs. strapping a few jet engines to it and pointing them downwards. Both methods solve the same problem - but one does it mostly passively, while the other one wastes absurd amount of energy simulating the same thing you normally get for free.
      - forgetfreeman 3y ago
        Crypto's been a think for almost 15 years now. I think we can dispense with the narrative that there's anything innovative going on.
        codetrotter 3y ago
        Money of account (debits and credits on ledgers) have existed for 30,000 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money But a system that takes the concept of ledgers, and makes it tied to pseudonymous addresses instead of persons, is distributed across the world, resilient to tampering, and which gives its users control over their money, and which has been in use for 15 years is 1. “Not innovative”, and 2. That in the span of 30,000 years that 15 years is enough time to really tell if this is something that will survive or if it’s just a dumb idea that will die out. I think that Bitcoin is a wonderful system, and I think that more people should take time to study Bitcoin in detail. Do not let the crypto bros and the people that only care about measuring Bitcoin in dollars distract you from the real point of Bitcoin.
forgetfreeman 3y ago
The subject of tax evasion comes up and invariably some flathead has the gall to point at folks that actually work for a living. Like they aren't a rounding error compared to corporate interests and oligarchs in this context.

by nroets 3y ago

ryan_lane 3y ago

Tax evasion is people stealing from you, just in an indirect way. Just because some people already steal from us doesn't mean it's OK for other (richer) people to steal even more from us. You may believe there's a better way for the government to tax us, but that's not how the system works currently. Crypto being used for tax evasion is a good reason for it to be regulated out of existence.

elzbardico 3y ago
Tax is the burden of the middle class. If you are Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi, other rules apply to you, because they are the ones who write the rules or lobby for them.
nroets 3y ago
You can make the same argument that governments should ban physical cash.
- ryan_lane 3y ago
  Crypto scales a lot better than cash, and allows for considerably larger amounts of fraud, and not just locally, but also internationally. I also think that businesses avoiding tax by not reporting cash are putting themselves into an unfair position against businesses that are legally operating, and I'd have a preference that businesses doing this should be shut down. If you're running a thin margin business and your competitor is able to price themselves better by committing tax fraud, then you need to also commit tax fraud to compete, and that's a race to the bottom that's not good for anyone.
- mrguyorama 3y ago
  You cannot, because the two systems have entirely different sets of pros and cons, for entirely different sets of people. You can also compare apples and oranges, but the comparison might not be useful.
- flangola7 3y ago
  And many countries are moving in that direction, so what's your point?
  - stale2002 3y ago
    So the point is that a large amount of people think that banning cash would be completely absurd and therefore this isn't just some issue that is relegated to obscure crypto fans.
  - nroets 3y ago
    For millennia governments survived with cash in circulation. Crypto is no real threat to their existence. Regulating it with a heavy hand will do more harm than good. Those innovators will just move offshore.
    - ryan_lane 3y ago
      > Those innovators will just move offshore. Yes, let them move offshore. Being able to more easily commit tax fraud and money laundering isn't the kind of innovation we need to keep.
    - TeMPOraL 3y ago
      The difference between cash and crypto is like the difference between building a room on top of a tall tower, vs. strapping a few jet engines to it and pointing them downwards. Both methods solve the same problem - but one does it mostly passively, while the other one wastes absurd amount of energy simulating the same thing you normally get for free.
    - forgetfreeman 3y ago
      Crypto's been a think for almost 15 years now. I think we can dispense with the narrative that there's anything innovative going on.
      - codetrotter 3y ago
        Money of account (debits and credits on ledgers) have existed for 30,000 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_money But a system that takes the concept of ledgers, and makes it tied to pseudonymous addresses instead of persons, is distributed across the world, resilient to tampering, and which gives its users control over their money, and which has been in use for 15 years is 1. “Not innovative”, and 2. That in the span of 30,000 years that 15 years is enough time to really tell if this is something that will survive or if it’s just a dumb idea that will die out. I think that Bitcoin is a wonderful system, and I think that more people should take time to study Bitcoin in detail. Do not let the crypto bros and the people that only care about measuring Bitcoin in dollars distract you from the real point of Bitcoin.

forgetfreeman 3y ago

The subject of tax evasion comes up and invariably some flathead has the gall to point at folks that actually work for a living. Like they aren't a rounding error compared to corporate interests and oligarchs in this context.