[ExI] Abandon all taxes

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Nov 10, 2007 at 10:37:15AM -0800, spike wrote:

> This makes me wonder about the impact of the twin developments of eBay and
> PayPal.  In Europe, California and other high income tax states one could
> run a tax-free business that could easily crush one's competitors.  The

If you're willing to do it illegally, and don't mind a criminal record, yes.
If you're smart, you could register offshore (there are packages which
register everything for you, so you can run a pharmacy or even a bank, but
these are not that cheap), and thus have the activities
not trackable to you.

> governments that rely heavily upon income tax must be watching this with
> great concern.

In Germany, the local equivalent of INS can look in realtime at how much
bank accounts you have, without a court order. In case they deem you suspicious,
your entire financial track records at any local and cooperating banks will
be inspected. (If you thought that's invasive, after 1. January 2009 things 
get much, much worse).
 
> If governments ever manage to tax eBay and PayPal, I can imagine the

Do you think eBay, PayPal & Co are not answerable to local authorities?

> evolution of a new business in which people do not actually convert
> purchases into eCash, but rather trade goods directly.  One can currently

That's simple barter.

> have an eBay store for instance, filled with stuff that someone somewhere on
> this planet might want.  In my case, I have a collection of parts for
> antique motorcycles that I no longer own, and I own four antique motorcycles
> for which parts are scarce and precious.  I could imagine an eBay-like site
> in which people have their stores pages and wish list pages, that operate on
> buyer/seller reputations as does eBay.  One could browse their for-sale
> pages and their wish lists, see if we can work out trades that never involve
> actual cash, e or otherwise, so they are not taxable even in theory.

There might be a loophole if you pay in gold coin, but recently somebody
got arrested for that.
 
> Some of you extropian internet jockeys, get to work on this, forthwith
> please.  I would do it myself but I am too non-blackberry at computers.  I
> am good at fixing up old bikes however.  {8-] 

I'm reading "Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance". Have been wanting
to read it since mid 1980s.

-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
______________________________________________________________
ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE