I mean, you could say the same thing about jail sentences right? Presumably this forced treatment would be done via due process. Maybe in cases where a medical sentence is issued, half the jury are psychiatrists or neurologists or have some appropriate qualification.
The due process necessary to put someone in prison is generally far more rigorous and affords the accused more rights than the due process necessary to institutionalize someone.
It's possible to construct a system that respects the rights of the mental health patient, but we have historically not been able to do so.
Before the 80s, we'd just throw people into madhouses and toss away the key. That system, and its myriad of abuses was torn down due to public backlash, and was replaced with... Nothing.
See my comment regarding 18 U.S. Code § 3553(a)(2)(D). Due process is superseded by 'treatment in the most effective manner' under Federal law, including losing your Constitutional right to be sentenced by a judge (a treatment provider, not a judge, determines the rules of your Court Ordered treatment imposed with the full force of the Federal Government).
Your third paragraph seems to contradict the first paragraph. If there is no system to institutionalize people, then how can it be less rigorous than the system to imprison people.
There still is a system to institutionalize people that haven't been breaking any laws, but it's very short-term. If you're interested in checking it out, a failed suicide attempt can give you a peek into it. They are unlikely to keep you for very long, though.
The long-term system was largely shut down in the 80s, because of the aforementioned abuses. The bar to get someone thrown in the loonie bin was very low, and once you're there, good luck proving that you're sane, or that you're being abused and mistreated.
> There still is a system to institutionalize people
why are we talking of "institutionalizing" people? Compulsory treatment of someone experiencing an episode involves depriving them of liberty, while staff ensure they take their drugs, and doctors monitor their effects. Institutionalization generally means that you've been incarcerated so long that the institution is now your home, and it would be a struggle to live back in the world. Institutionalization was a large part of the problem with the old asylums.
At least one mentally-ill person I've known had been taken off the street several times; she was bitterly critical of the abolition of the psychiatric hospitals.
There probably is, but as I understand, there are some Supreme Court rulings from 1970s to 1990s that make it very costly and/or require a high bar of proof that accused is a threat to themself or others.
The workaround to the very high costs of working within these rulings was imprisoning people for drug or other non violent offenses, which was much cheaper and easier.
To be clear, are you saying people who commit crimes should (in some cases) face forced treatment. OR. That mental illness itself should mean forced treatment?
Sentencing someone to a secure hospital rather than a prison for crimes is one thing. Sentencing them for not fitting in is another.
The case I was thinking about is something like, let's say there's a obviously mentally ill guy thratening to kill people. I'm talking hobo smeared with shit, reeking like all hell, tattered clothes, broken bottle in hand, screaming obscenities and frightening people with death threats in parking lots. You know, regulard tuesday evening in LA.
I think the police should be allowed to arrest this man. A DA might decide to file this new mental health charge against him. Assuming the crazy person doesn't accept the plea deal he would be offered, voluntary commitment in a mental health facility, this goes to trial. If the trial finds the defendant guilty of being insane, he is forcefully commited to said mental health facilty.
Are there issues? Sure. Is it somewhat ok because it's done via due process? Maybe. Is it better then letting potentially violent crazies in desperate need of mental health treatment run loose? Absolutely.
You can already be arrested for the things your describing, they're crimes. And if the judge feels it's appropriate sent to hospital. If that isn't happening it's because cities (understandably) cannot pay for the enforcement or treatment. I don't think we need any change in the law for this.
Whenever I hear about daylight saving I remember this thing I read on the internet. Apparently it’s a native american saying. “Only the white man think he can cut the top of a blanket, saw to the bottom, and get a longer blanket”. If it’s a real saying or not I don’t know but it’s a good saying I think.
Changing the time seems silly. I can think of better solutions just at the top of my head.
1. Instead of changing the time ( God, what an arrogant concept this is ) why not change your schedule/working hours.
2. Instead of changing the time or working hours, just keep going as it is. We have artificial lights we don’t really solely on the sun, and in most places it’s not like lights are not used anyway.
3. But people want some sunlight. Well they don’t get it anyways in the north and they get it anyways in the south. Daylight saving is only partially effective around the 45th degree parallel. So, how about give people a midday break, make them go outside, touch grass. Productivity might actually increase.
I think people can come up with better reasons and ideas if they ponder more then the half minute I spent while offering a sacrifice to the porcelain god.
DST is (1) but synchronized. People could change their schedules to negate DST, and I'm sure some do.
Anyway, I don't want touch-grass time during my useless lunch hour, I want usable daylight hours after work during which to do outdoor things in the warmth of the sun. Where I am, people mostly seem to want year round DST (but of course it wouldn't be DST anymore, it would just be "the time").
Different places can and will do what suits their needs.
We have permanent DST in Argentina. We are in UTC-3, but we should be in UTC-4. It gives you more light in the afternoon. It's so good, that sometimes we apply DST^2 and get to UTC-2. (Note that the last time we applied DST^2 was in 2008 or 2009. But we may decide to apply it again.)
The problem is that once you are used to a permanent DST you change many of the schedules because there is plenty of light in the afternoon. Midnight is a prime TV time here! So DST^2 starts to look like a good idea.
We're not talking about someone who's doing better than you because they worked harder or had a better idea or took a useful risk that paid off. We're just talking about someone who paid less tax than everyone else in the same situation by using a trick that is potentially criminal tax evasion and getting away with it. Calling for any unintended loophole in the tax rules to be closed is hardly "spite" or "desiring punishment".
Lol. Are you for real? Try expressing any concerns about the excesses of the trans activists or concerns about the demographic replacement of europeans. People who do that wish they were treated like communists in the 50s!
>Try expressing any concerns about the excesses of the trans activists or concerns about the demographic replacement of europeans
People do this all the time. If their biggest complaint is being banned from privately owned social media companies, then they have it much better than the communists or anarchists of the past.
What you have described is nothing short of a horror dystopian hell scape. My God, listen to your self man!
> If no keywords were triggered for misinformation, and none of the eyeballs on that post marked it as misinformation or offensive
Keywords? Who decides the keywords? What are you going to do when normal words get a coded meaning. Remember “milk” and the “ok” sign. 4chan is going to have a field day with this! What about the ((( echos ))). You gonna write a regex for potential use of non letter characters?
Marked as misinformation. What, you’re going to ask the ministry of truth for input? Do you think this will achieve anything except build an echo chamber and increase division? The same for offensive. What’s going to happen when all posts by trans people are marked as offensive? Or that doesn’t count cause you’re ok with it. Should we establish a Ministry of Morality, perhaps with a morality police like the saudis to tell us what’s offensive and what’s not?
Everything you wrote is, I don’t even know how to call it. It’s evil. It’s evil, that’s what it is. You have though up an evil system whose only outcome will be oppression, division and resentment.
Yes! This is precisely what should be the standard. Everything that is not explicitly illegal is legal and protected. No corporation should prohibit legal things.
Good. This is especially welcome news in the context of the unprecedented attack on kiwi farms.
As I said in a different thread, we have laws preventing businesses from discriminating. We do not allow shops to put up “no blacks here” signs. Why do we allow infrastructure providers from doing essentially the same thing?
Censorship, of any kind from anyone, government or corporation is an abomination that must be stamped out. We cannot have a civilised society as long as censorship is accepted.
By your...train of thought. "Censorship of any kind" means that rejecting those leagues of boner pills and overseas wives ready to marry you is rejection of their right to speak freely to you
You can’t be serious. Are you serious? Spam is not censored. You have access to it. You click on the spam folder and you can read the spam email in all it’s glory!
And before you even mention auto deletion, you can disable that. I think that should be opt in not opt out but, yeah, spam in not being censored.
We have different definitions of censorship. To me that is not censorship.
Censorship is making information functionality unavailable or altering it. Delete it or deliberately make it very hard to access or change it’s contents.
If you click a button or even add a message ( apart from the content ) that is not censorship. That’s why for example I don’t consider it censorship when youtube added covid messages to certain videos.
No you just loosened the definition of censorship to fit your terrible analogy, then you insulted the GP accusing them of doing mental gymnastics. You're projecting.
But since you do want to stick to the spam filter in your email box analogy I would like to propose a solution.
Would you prefer users be able to manage block lists, filters, and such themselves instead of content being removed for all users?
Do you really prefer this large social media oligopoly to have have final say in what the masses should see? Why not let the users manage what they see?
Do you feel the same way about all subjects? Do you support the right of ISPs blocking porn for example?
This wouldn’t be my first choice of examples. Unmoderated swatting forums (as I understand that it was) goes beyond free speech. The first amendment does not protect death threats.
You understand wrong what kiwi farms is. The moderation there is far better to facebook for example. Not in small reason due to the fact they don’t censor. They comply with the law. Unlawful content is pulled down immediately, lawful content stays up. Cloudflare lied to you when they said “human life is in immediate danger”.
In matters like this, it’s best to actually look at how both sides present the issue.
Swatting is illegal. If Kiwi Farms or its members are implicated in illegal activities then it should be handled through the legal system where due process is respected.
It doesn’t matter if it’s like the flu or something else entirely. That’s just a poorly articulated way of saying “it’s not so bad that it warrants the restrictions”.
Restrictions are all but gone at least in Europe and society is still functional. And it would have been sans restrictions too.
> Restrictions are all but gone at least in Europe and society is still functional. And it would have been sans restrictions too
Society was functional during the Spanish flu as well; that's really not the point. The point of the restrictions was reducing the overall number of deaths.
Which, in the case of COVID, is not exactly a great argument for the restrictions either considering that after two years of COVID the world has experienced less than 7 million recorded deaths [0] compared to, at a minimum, after two years of the Spanish Flu we were looking at 17 million deaths (though it could be closer to 50 million) [1]. And that's with a global population that is an estimated 3-4x greater than the world population of 1918 [2] and with far easier global travel.
I don’t get that argument, reducing the number of deaths is quite a good argument regardless of previous pandemics.
Also I wouldn’t compare Covid deaths with Spanish flu deaths. The access to health care and the quality of health care is totally different today than in 1918.
I think it’s wrong todo such comparisons as an argument against the restriction.
I could also imagine that the number of flu death went down due to restrictions (would be good to know if this is true).
We wouldn’t want those pesky commies, ahh sorry, that was the 50s and 60s, those darn uppity negroes, ahh sorry again, my bad, that was civil rights era, those blasted … err, commies again? They made a comeback in the 80s it seems. Ahh there it is. We don’t want those crazy islamist terrorists harming our people. We need to protect your freedom … by curtailing it, of course.
Sorry, sorry, I’ve just been informed, the boogieman is no longer islamic terrorists. Now, it’s called radical white supremacist qanon Jan 6 anti vax conspiracy incel nationalist. My bad. I apologise.
But the curtailing of freedom will continue and the surveillance will increase. In order to safeguard our freedom and privacy, of course.
If you cannot see the difference between civil rights movements attempting to change governing to be more even-handed vs expansionist authoritarian governments or movements attempting to destroy democratic governments altogether, you need serious help (and should at least stop broadcasting your ignorance).
It's less about the difference between these groups and more about the response to these groups. It is your politics showing in your response rather than the person you are replying to... do you think they don't believe that Islamic terrorists exist (which they mentioned)? At no point in the history of the government national security apparatus has the target and its veracity made any difference in the trend line of the government doing more surveillance and curtailing more freedoms. Don't believe me? Do some research on COINTELPRO.
Your argument, and that of many others here, seems to be that any govt surveillance is illegitimate, and that govt cannot have any legitimate reason to capture information on anyone.
There couldn't be any actual reason for intelligence operations. "It is your politics showing".
Any such view is hopelessly ignorant and naive, yet it pops up here often.
The person to whom I'm replying is blatantly implying that it is nothing but a variety of illegitimate excuses that form a false justification for intelligence operations.
This is even more ignorant than usual, as none of those are the source of intelligence gathering, which predates all of them.
Yes, I'm familiar with COINTELPRO, a horde of illegal FBI operations, and many other excesses among the 17 intelligence agencies. I also note that these were ILLEGAL and shut down. I also note that intelligence has been twisted and abused by politicians, including bogh Bush presidents (Bush Sr. let exaggerated estimates of Soviet mil funding drive our mil funding, which did have the good result of collapsing the SU, and Jr abused intel to wrongly justify the Iraq invasion on WMD grounds).
I'm know enough to see that while the excesses and even abuses do matter a lot, they are not a justification for ending all intelligence, whether domestic or international. If you want to do that, we might as well simply declare anarchy, and let everyone deal with the criminals and warlords who will take over, and that's no exaggeration.
> If you want to do that, we might as well simply declare anarchy, and let everyone deal with the criminals and warlords who will take over, and that's no exaggeration.
Bruv …
Honestly I can’t tell if you’re for real or no. You already did that! California. People robbing stores in broad daylight, nothing happens to them. Chicago. Do I need to say anything about that third world enclave? Bloody hell man, chaz. A literal warlord took over!
What are you doing to yourselves? Snap out of it America!
It has already been tried, both the ages before govt, every time govt fell down, and in the case of San Francisco, just got way too lax.
The idea that we can somehow get away without governance (or intelligence ops, or policing) is born completely of very high privilege — it completely assumes that all the things that the govt does just happen automatically.
It is just like the idiot new manager who arrives and sees that the halls and offices are clean so fires the janitorial staff as excess cost or because they are inconvenient.
Of course there are overreaches and abuses of intelligence, and the very concept of policing and everything about it's training, practice, accountability, and results needs to be burnt to the ground and overhauled.
But that does NOT mean that we can get away without it. Because, as you noted, even a little time without it becomes a disaster.
The key is not to abandon intelligence. The key is to strengthen democracy, make sure that the institutions of democracy, lawmaking, executive, judicial, press, academia, industry, ngos, and individual people all have their own separate power base and independence.
In autocracies, all of these are bent to the service of the leader/oligarch.
In democracies, there are all kinds of visible flaws, but they tend to be self-correcting, because there is oversight and balance of power. That alone does not prevent overreach or abuses, but it does lead to them being eventually corrected.
As Churchill said: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all others."
Believing government acts on your behalf reeks of 'very high privilege.' If you think shop-keeps won't protect their stores once the chains of SF/Cali government come off, I have a bridge to sell you.
Edit: thank you for spelling correction. Wreaks changed to reeks
Of course the shop-keeps will attmpt to protect their stores. That is completely beside the point.
The point is that without a democratic government that is at least attempting to self-govern, the alternative is either a new autocracy comes in (see Russia, CCP, Venezuela, Myanmar, etc.), or it starts with anarchy, and quickly falls to the first crimelord/warlord.
Every one of those options is far worse than a flawed democracy.
Unless, of course, you can point me to the magical stable stateless advanced society where I can go live... (srsly, it'd be great)
And no, believing government acts on your behalf does not "wreaks of 'very high privilege.'". Aside from the fact that the word you want is "reeks" (as in smells bad, not inflicting punishment of vengeance), thinking that an attempt at democratic govt is less bad than being ruled by a crimelord, warlord, or fascist autocrat is not high privilege, it is simply a fact. Being able to live in such a democratic govt is, sadly, a bit of a privilege, as many are not so fortunate.
What is your test to determine whether a nation has reached the level of "flawed democracy?"
Is the US one?
I mean even anarchism could be considered 'flawed democracy.' The power is theoretically at the individual level, with the population of each government split down to a democracy of size '1' and the individual voting how to dictate his/her own life, although of course even that is flawed.
Then again, if you frame it as "flawed democracy" vs "everything worse than that" then almost by definition flawed democracy is going to win...
First of course is that the people elect their leaders and not the leaders selecting their "voters".
How independent are the various pillars of a functioning democracy? The Legislative, Judiciary, Executive, Press, Academia, Industry, Religions, NGOs, etc.? Are these institutions free to pursue their own course, or have they all been co-opted to serve the ends of an autocrat or oligarchy?
This all exists on a spectrum that can be measured. Hungary is, although nominally a democracy, tipping strongly to autocracy and is in danger of being expelled from the EU. OTOH, Iceland kicked out the bankers & politicians that caused the crisis a decade ago... Both nominally democracies, one strong, one weak. The US nearly fell to Hungary's fate, and still may, but things are trending better and a majority recognize that parts of one party are no longer a valid political party but are attempting to threaten democracy itself.
So, no it is not a self-defining tautology, but a characteristic that can be measured.
The US has not yet fallen, but is definitely under attack from within on two major fronts, one is masquerading as a political party, and the second was previously the greatest threat, which was corporate regulatory & legislative capture. Progress is being made against both.
I'd suggest reading a bit more about it with the Renew Democracy Initiative [0].
One of my hobbies is tax optimisation and finding and exploiting tax loopholes.
I’m a contractor, I work through my company. It’s way more tax efficient than being perm.
But, it could be even more efficient.
So, I did some research. Turn out, where I am, a business can have multiple business codes. Activities the company is registered as performing. Now, I was and still am a software development company. But I also added artistic production as a business code.
Why artistic productions? Well, because it’s the most liberal business code for expenses.
As a software company, I can expense travel for some things, the most useful for me being conferences. But that means I need to buy the conference ticket even if I’m not interested and can only expense accommodations for the duration of the conference. That’s good but a bit restrictive.
Now, as a artistic production company, I’m not limited by that. As long as I can prove I traveled in order to produce, well, just about anything that can be construed as being art, I can expense travel and I can expense accommodations for as long as I need. You can’t rush art, you know how it is.
So, obviously, first thing I did, I whipped up a blog, posted some random pictures every day and called it good. I’m not using company money to travel the world you see, I’m using company money in order to produce art. Haven’t paid a euro of my own money on accommodation or travel for close to a year now. And the best part, I get to deduce this from my profit.
I love the tax system. I really do.
But, doing this, I got curious. I thought, hey, why not make it better. So I thought let’s see what all the rage is with dalle and stable diffusion and all that. So, what I’m doing now is, I’m changing my approach. My art will no longer be just pictures taken quickly with my iphone. No no. I’m getting the picture and I’m sending it to an API I built. The API runs some computer vision, labelling what it sees, some classification, some stuff with the pic metadata, tries to put it all together and turns it into a description of the picture.
The description of the picture I took is used as a prompt for stable diffusion. And that result ends up being the art. I’d like to thank of my art as a modern commentary on the age old “is art imitating life or is life imitating art?” - At least that’s what I told my accountant and he concerned, it would stand up in the case of an audit!
So, yeah, tldr, I’m working on image to text and text to image to expense my nomad lifestyle on the company.
It makes me sad that all these spun cycles could have been put to use doing something productive if only the tax code were simplified and the IRS automatically pre-filled our taxes, as is done in other, saner countries.
Oh hey look its the "America backwards" trope again. How tiring.
Sure. The IRS could change things. But you're also able to do a lot more in America that they can't track. Other countries (e.g. Sweden, etc) are far "simpler", and homogeneous. For example, the depth at which one can trade various instruments, produce companies, etc is far far greater in America than almost anywhere else. This necessitates a somewhat (perhaps not as much as today) complicated tax code.
I would say this is very productive. The tax code isn't actually the problem. It's corporate interests like intuit who, through regulatory capture, make it impossible to truly solve the problem. Honestly, it cannot get easier than a 1040EZ which is what mostly everyone uses. In fact the 1040EZ is so easy you basically fill in the things to confirm the number the IRS already has is correct. OP, like myself, need more complicated solutions. I have a fairly vast portfolio of different investment types and OP has a business. In both cases, investing time into making the IRS's life difficult pays a return on par with bonds.
Not tiring at all, when it's not a trope. This forum contains a surprising number of posts of sometimes ridiculously blind US-praising that is rooted in simple ignorance of how things run elsewhere and in the US.
Concerning taxes though, I'll have to (quasi) side with you. 1040EZ is as easy as it gets. One could of course argue that in that case, in which the IRS has the numbers already, why do you have to be forced to do your taxes at all (think Germany).
The greatest fallacy of the pseudo-intelligent is comparing different first world countries to each other without considering demographics. It's a fallacy you have committed, along with everyone else who says "America is backwards lol". That is why it is a trope. It has nothing to do with American exceptionalism and everything to do with a relatively poor understanding of how we arrived here.
America is a punching bag for the rest of the first world because it has problems literally no other first world country has to face. Problems that are too innumerable to list here. Without considering the various reasons America is a Special Case (TM) in many ways, you're missing the greater point. Sure we could have a German tax system for the simplest filers. We got to the 1040EZ because we believe in theory governments should stay out of our business. Fundamentally this is a driver of the majority of the policies in America, and when viewed from the lens of other western countries it seems backwards because every country listed in comparison has a stronger, more involved, and (in my opinion) more dangerous government. Perhaps not dangerous now but given enough power and enough reason could become dangerous faster than America's current government system. In fact, the unparalleled level of power corporations in America have over things like tax law parallels the level of dangerous power governments have over their citizen's taxes elsewhere. It's an iteration on the same old process of control. Missing how they're the same it's simple to arrive at the conclusion America is the only "backwards" one. Usually this argument devolves into tax utility, which I won't get into here because that's a philosophical argument beyond the scope of the mocking of America that ALWAYS comes with this nonsense.
You should try to read and understand posts before you try to pull out your own "pseudo-intelligence". Nowhere have I written "America is backwards".
You're using 'how we arrived here' as a cheap excuse of an excuse to justify a status quo that is worse than it is in other places. That's the trope of American exceptionalism right there, to somehow find consolation in 3rd world conditions through repeated 'but we are god's own country, screw that even China has a higher life expectancy'. Really, the trope here is how the proud patriots of the richest, most powerful country in the world simultaneously feel superior to everyone, yet feel butthurt and threatened by essentially anything else on this planet that doesn't exactly act/think/look like they do.
> Sure we could have a German tax system for the simplest filers. We got to the 1040EZ because we believe in theory governments should stay out of our business.
That makes no sense whatsoever. As you write yourself, 1040EZ simply lets you confirm what the government already knows. The difference to the German system is that you still have to jump through hoops, roll over, and catch the ball when the government tells you to. I guess you also see the 'Obey the speed limit' signs in Texas as manifestation of supreme liberty, contrasted to the oppressive German 'no speed limit'.
Most other Western countries have much more powerful (= effective) checks and balances, as should have become exceedingly clear by the failure of the American system to keep an even openly criminal President and his attempted coup in check. That game is still not over. Most of Europe learnt that lesson by studying what went wrong in Germany 90 years ago.
Clearly you think that the government should stay out of your business. I think the opposite. I am also an American citizen. There are a large number of Americans who believe that America is backwards in many ways. The fact that you live in America means that you have to deal with this reality to some extent. You're of course free to leave high-handed comments anonymously on an internet forum, but you should recognize that that's all you're doing. Being more strident will not increase the validity of your position, nor will it reduce the number of people who disagree with you. Probably the opposite, if anything.
"A person after my own heart," I originally thought. I, too, enjoy reading HMRC technical guidance, although I haven't actually taken it to such extremes, instead focusing on genuine deductions few people tell you about (like annual medicals).
Your post was entertaining, but there might be a fly in the ointment! Are you actually carrying on a trade? Your consulting work is trade, but there are rules around businesses having multiple lines of business and what is and what is not considered a trade (see BIM20090 and possibly BIM85740). If your art is not commercially available and making more money than it "costs" in expenses, HMRC would probably determine that this line of business is a hobby with no expenses deductible.
If, however, you are selling this art, it's a fantastic wheeze, and also a quite legitimate one as you would, indeed, be a professional artist. You could, too, perhaps find ways to use said art in your trade such that it would commercially justify its creation, even at a high cost.
Haha I must say, HMRC has got to be the most well documented jurisdiction I dealt with. I think you are right with HMRC. But I incorporated in one of the tax friendly countries in Eastern Europe. The way I understood the rule is, I only need to try to make an income. And I do. I have a paypall button. But, there’s no rule on the cost/income. I’m just spending money to try to make money, which is what every body does. I just happen to do it with less success.
Ha, okay, if you're not dealing with HMRC, then different kettle of fish! :-) That's an interesting approach I'd not thought about before, having expenses being paid from an out of jurisdiction company.. good luck!
> Why artistic productions? Well, because it’s the most liberal business code for expenses.
> As a software company, I can expense travel for some things, the most useful for me being conferences. But that means I need to buy the conference ticket even if I’m not interested and can only expense accommodations for the duration of the conference. That’s good but a bit restrictive.
> Now, as a artistic production company, I’m not limited by that. As long as I can prove I traveled in order to produce, well, just about anything that can be construed as being art, I can expense travel and I can expense accommodations for as long as I need. You can’t rush art, you know how it is.
Clever. But given the IRS just bought more guns and ammo than many small countries I'm sure this makes your dog nervous.
There seems to be a false idea that only the USA has tax loop holes. I assure you. It’s not the case. And tax heavens are also way easier to use as a EU citizen because there’s no global income declaration required.
It's all fun and games, but can't the auditors just challenge your "artistic production" by asking for the actual invoices proving any sort of income from it? I mean lots of costs and no related income is questionable AF. Or do you actually sell any of this "art"?
Quite a bit actually ( for me at least ) seeing as there’s progressive taxation. I’d reckon at least 30k per year. Probably more.
I take out only 11k or so per year from the company as personal income. That’s the tax free bracket. The rest I use is just expenses. And I pay myself minimum wage as well. Also tax free, but qualifies me for national insurance :D
So you make enough and just don't really want to pay taxes, so it's a fun side hobby? Heh, that's such a foreign mentality to me, but to each their own.
Do you think the tax money serves any societal good at all? Is it worth paying any tax or would you rather avoid all of it if you could?
I will answer your questions but first I want to show you something. It’s the link at the bottom.
In the UK there’s something called IR35. Without getting into to much detail, the client will decide if you fall inside or outside. If you are inside or outside you will pay different amounts of tax.
Not that long ago I was offered £1000 per day inside. That seemed like a really good rate to me. Or so I thought. In a month, 21 working days, that’s £21k per month, how much can taxes be right? Let’s call it £17k - I mean c’mon, £4k per month in taxes is already ludicrous. I couldn’t possibly be more. Right?
Please go to the link and plug in £1000 per day. Look at what it says you get cash in hand at the end of the month and tell me, does that seem ok? Is that tax worth paying?
If I read the site correctly it’s the last bit that is of particular concern. Why on earth does one need to make 220,000 per year independently in order to clear the same amount as some making 180,000 as an employee?
Does that take into costs of employment of employee benefits (like providing healthcare, worker's comp, retirement income, various insurances, accounting, payroll, etc.?) Not sure how it all works in the UK.
In the US, at least, companies provide a lot of benefits that contractors don't get and have to buy out-of-pocket... but not sure if that's what the difference comes from in this case.
I am not sure how the UK tax code works, or what I'm looking at here (the "inside" vs "outside" part is confusing). At a glance, it looks like it wants to tax you 46% of revenue (52% of profit) at £220,000/year if you're a contractor, which (it says) is the same as earning £180,100 as a regular employee.
Those numbers don't seem particularly significant either way to me, coming from the US. Our tax brackets cap out at about 40% right now, but they used to be in the high 90%s decades prior -- and that's just the federal, and then some states have a bunch of other tax burdens on top of that. But personally, I'm economically pretty left-leaning and would prefer expanded social services rather than private wealth accumulation, so I doubt I'm representative of what the average person would consider reasonable vs excessive when it comes to taxes.
That's not really the question though. I get that a lot of people (probably most?) wouldn't pay more taxes than they have to, and frankly I can hardly fault them for that. Everything from our genes to our industrialized capitalist societies encourages in-group prioritization and selfish behaviors. That's just how this world that we've made works, and even the most fervent idealists dare not dream of making the entire world pool and share income. We just ain't built that way, and that's just opening the floodgates to insane corruption.
The more interesting question, IMO, is whether ANY of it is worth paying for collaboratively. If I could design my own tax system (and have a billion minions happily working in it...) the upper bracket would be insanely high, like 99% or some such, but there would also be a high degree of choice, per taxpayer, for some portion of their funds. Like there might be a mandatory % going to roads, defense, schools, health -- basic infrastructure, broadband -- but then each taxpayer would get to choose where the rest of it goes (say, space, basic research, the arts, land trusts, energy development, whatever). Two millionnaires would maybe each keep 50% of their income, spend 25% on basic infra, but be able to choose (within constraints) how the remaining 25% is spent. One than decide to split his 25% among various pet causes, the other might give all of hers to increase defense R&D. Basically a democratic Robin Hood, where an armed bandit takes your money and gives it to charity, but asks you, "Which charity?". Heh.
That's just me.
My question to you, as someone who goes out of their way to avoid paying taxes, is... how would you do it? Is some of it still worth it, after all the pork-barrel spending and corruption and inefficiency and bureaucracy? Should it all be private? Like take what you're doing, how would you ideally scale it up to country-level with a few million taxpayers?
So, the reason I sent you that link is if you look at the numbers, that 21k per month pre tax turns into 8k cash in hand per month after tax.
That is nothing short of insane to me. That is almost 3 quarters of your money taken by the government. Maybe you can live with that. I can’t. It’s insane to me. I simply refuse to participate in that.
As for taxes, I get your point. Sounds good in theory. Until you realise people like me are not that uncommon. That 25% I still have a say on is going to go to my charity. A social change sort of charity. A charity aimed at offering educational alternatives to promising young leaders. The sort that will grow up to question the justice of your tax regime and advocate for it’s dismantling. And with a bit of luck and push from other rich people, give it a few decades and it will go away.
But to answer you:
1. 1% flat tax, applied to income for people and profit for businesses.
€1000 goes into your business -> you’re left with €990 -> you take them all out as dividends, you’re left with €980.1
This will provide an annual bulk income.
2. Flat transaction fee. Every time money changes hands, the government skims 0.1€ from it.
This will provide a steady income stream.
You buy a laptop, you pay €1000 for it, the vendor only gets €999.9 - This is not something operators worry about, this is done automatically by the banks.
But this won’t be enough to <insert something here>. Well, tough luck. Better start prioritising. Start by cutting foreign aid. Start by cutting aid to ngos shipping migrants from africa, start by cutting welfare to illegals, get rid of the useless government bureaucracy like “period dignity officers”, plenty of stuff to cut.
Make do with less, that’s what I would tell the government.
It's not quite 3/4, is it? More like 1/2? And that's if you're earning 1000/day (sorry, can't type that currency symbol)... which is like 10x the UK median wage. At lower revenues you're paying much less. But still, your point stands -- it's taking money away from you that you want to keep and spend your own way. Whether that exact percentage is 46% or 66% or whatever doesn't seem quite relevant if you'd rather it be as close to 1% as possible :)
Are there any examples of a system like you're describing working out in reality? Doesn't have to be a country, but maybe a local government, a private community, a membership club, etc.?
Sounds like a libertarian fantasy out of Atlas Shrugged or Bioshock... but hey, we all have our dreams, and my utopia would be your dystopia, lol.
He probably still pays more than an average person in absolute terms, and almost certainly more than he uses in public services. I bet society is better off with him being around than otherwise.
this is absolutely bonkers, but one of the more unique things i've read on here. i'm sure there are a ton of tax loopholes that exist, but how do you find these? just reading the IRS website?
IRS equivalent of the jurisdictions I fall under, talking to friends, talking to people who are into this, forums. I’m lucky to have a very good account who often gives me suggestions and who is happy to validate or invalidate my crazier ideas. The same way you get into any hobby I guess.
