4 ms·

How is Japan not "a country with solid laws".

by ma2rten 13y ago

mschuster91 13y ago
"solid" being compared with the holy crap of regulations the US have. I (a German) laugh my behind off when I read that as a mail-order business one is expected (and fined if noncompliant to the letter) to the tax codes of villages so small that they would not even count as a village in Germany. And if you're shipping inside the European Union, well, just properly declare the VAT and be done with it.
- declan 13y ago
  As a German, you may want to brush up on your understanding of U.S. law. First, if you're a mail order business in California you don't have to pay attention to any other state's sales or use tax laws unless you have a business presence (such as an office) in that state. As a California shipper shipping in-state you need to look up the destination zip code's tax rate, true, but it's county-by-county and you can do it for free here: https://maps.gis.ca.gov/boe/TaxRates/ https://maps.gis.ca.gov/boe/TaxRates/ Second, if you want to avoid even this annoyance, you can start your business in one of the five states with no sales taxes including New Hampshire or Oregon, meaning you never have to collect any sales taxes. Third, if you do have offices in other states, you can buy some relatively cheap software that takes care of billing for you. I'm not saying this system is perfect or even that it'll continue given the pro-Internet tax forces in Congress, but nevertheless I don't think your description is accurate.
polymatter 13y ago
I read it as saying that Japan was not a country with solid laws that relate to Bitcoin. One requirement for having solid laws, would be some sort of compulsory security audit of the code by independent experts. Japanese law did not require this, so did not have solid laws relating to Bitcoin exchanges.
- nfoz 13y ago
  > One requirement for having solid laws, would be some sort of compulsory security audit of the code by independent experts. This doesn't exist in the U.S. financial system. Maybe it should, but honestly it is such a stronger requirement than anything close to what we have currently, and I imagine it would be impossible to enact on a resistant market (try defining "independent security experts"... oy).

How is Japan not "a country with solid laws".

by ma2rten 13y ago

How is Japan not "a country with solid laws".

"solid" being compared with the holy crap of regulations the US have. I (a German) laugh my behind off when I read that as a mail-order business one is expected (and fined if noncompliant to the letter) to the tax codes of villages so small that they would not even count as a village in Germany. And if you're shipping inside the European Union, well, just properly declare the VAT and be done with it.

declan 13y ago
As a German, you may want to brush up on your understanding of U.S. law. First, if you're a mail order business in California you don't have to pay attention to any other state's sales or use tax laws unless you have a business presence (such as an office) in that state. As a California shipper shipping in-state you need to look up the destination zip code's tax rate, true, but it's county-by-county and you can do it for free here: https://maps.gis.ca.gov/boe/TaxRates/ https://maps.gis.ca.gov/boe/TaxRates/ Second, if you want to avoid even this annoyance, you can start your business in one of the five states with no sales taxes including New Hampshire or Oregon, meaning you never have to collect any sales taxes. Third, if you do have offices in other states, you can buy some relatively cheap software that takes care of billing for you. I'm not saying this system is perfect or even that it'll continue given the pro-Internet tax forces in Congress, but nevertheless I don't think your description is accurate.

polymatter 13y ago

I read it as saying that Japan was not a country with solid laws that relate to Bitcoin. One requirement for having solid laws, would be some sort of compulsory security audit of the code by independent experts. Japanese law did not require this, so did not have solid laws relating to Bitcoin exchanges.

nfoz 13y ago
> One requirement for having solid laws, would be some sort of compulsory security audit of the code by independent experts. This doesn't exist in the U.S. financial system. Maybe it should, but honestly it is such a stronger requirement than anything close to what we have currently, and I imagine it would be impossible to enact on a resistant market (try defining "independent security experts"... oy).