Category Archives: Taxes

The Mafia contra the Other Mafia, from Eric Peters

Posted on October 27, 2022 | Leave a comment

As I said in Everything I Know About Business I Learned From The Godfather, the government is Il Capo dei Capi (the Boss of Bosses). Eric Peters has the same take at ericpetersautos.com:

I have been reading Sammy “The Bull” Gravano’s book, Underboss.

Gravano was just that – underboss – second-in-command of the Gambino “family” of Cosa Nostra, also known as the mafia; also known as organized crime.

As distinct from legalized crime.

He worked for John Gotti, the “Dapper Don,” who was boss of the Gambino family back in New York, back in the ’80s. Gravano ended up turning on his boss – who (according to Sammy) had turned on him, first. Both ended up in prison.

But that’s not the real story of the book.

The real story is the parallelism of syndicates. Of organized vs. legalized crime.  Sammy was a “made member” of organized crime. He had to earn the approbation of already-made members, in order to be “made” – as by showing he could get the job done. And he did, which he describes at length in the book.

You get into legalized crime by getting elected – or appointed.

This is the source of the delusion that legalized crime isn’t the same thing as organized crime. Which is how – and why – it becomes a much worse thing. A demented and for that reason a much-more-dangerous thing. A politician or bureaucrat imagines himself to be a “public servant,” which is an interesting inversion given that servants are servile. They can be commanded – and are expected to obey – while “public servants” do the commanding and when not obeyed, have the legal power to punish those they “serve.”

These “public servants” also believe they “serve” by right – and that it is our obligation to obey (and hand over however much of our money they say). That it is . . . criminal to disobey them.

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The War on Crypto Privacy Intensifies. Automatic Reporting of All Trades and Transactions Soon Mandatory. by Wesley Thysse

Posted on October 24, 2022 | Leave a comment

The regulators are coming after cryptocurrencies big time. From Wesley Thysee at DecentralizedLegalSystem.com:

Massive overreach of international regulators to force all service providers in the industry to:

  • Record ALL crypto trades on exchanges, DEFI and DEXs;
  • Record (large) purchases from private wallets;
  • Record all transfers to cold storage and make lists with private wallet addresses;
  • Send all this info annually to the (tax) authorities;
  • And finally, force governments to pass these rules into domestic law.

The war on privacy continues. The aim: to tackle anonymous spending and exchanging of crypto.

As you’ll discover, these new regulations force upon us a system of complete surveillance and control.

This report explains exactly what to expect from the latest developments launched in October 2022…

What is Going On?

​ Last year, the crypto world was shaken to its core when the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), acting in behalf of the G20, released their guidance on virtual assets.1)

This document laid out a set of rules regarding stablecoins, distinctions between private and hosted wallets, extensive KYC requirements, the tackling of privacy tools, and more.2) FATF has also provided a final definition of the type of service provider tasked with reporting on crypto: the Virtual Asset Service Provider.

Fast forward to today, and these rules are quickly being implemented across the world.3) But as usual, it didn’t stop there. Another international regulator, the OECD, is already building on this framework in an attempt to massively increase the grip of authorities on crypo.

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Posted in Business, Civil Liberties, Currencies, Governments, Law, Taxes, Tyranny

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The “Free World” isn’t looking so free these days, by Jordan Schachtel

Posted on October 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

The West moves relentlessly towards totalitarianism. From Jordan Schachtel at dossier.substack.com:

The Anglosphere is completely captured by globalist interests.

The world’s English-speaking nations that share historical and ideological ties — commonly referred to as the Anglosphere — were once understood as the world’s most powerful beacons for the tenets of freedom. Through our elected politicians in 2022, however, this social contract has vanished, and its ideas are completely absent within the halls of political power. In today’s Anglosphere, it’s difficult to find a politician or policymaker, on either side of the dominant political factions of government, who genuinely defends the enlightenment principles that sparked the incredible and unprecedented human flourishing of past decades and centuries.

This morning, British Prime Minister Liz Truss announced her resignation after only 6 weeks in office.

Much of the legacy media cited a “Tory revolt,” leading the Free World normies to believe that perhaps some kind of freedom rebellion has occurred.

In fact, just the opposite is true. Truss, they say, stepped out of line by proposing a “risky plan” to cut taxes.

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Doug Casey on How Governments Could Soon Hit Investors With a Windfall Profits Tax

Posted on October 5, 2022 | Leave a comment

Governments are bankrupt. Never underestimate their rapacity. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

Windfall Profits Tax

International Man: What is a windfall profits tax?

It seems like a vague and arbitrary concept politicians use to justify taking more wealth from people they don’t like.

Doug Casey: That’s quite correct.

It’s defined as the taking of “unusual and unearned” or “exploitative” profits.

The application of a windfall profits tax always has to do with the concept of “fair.” Whenever you see the word fair being used, be on alert. “Fair” is among the most dangerous words in the English language.

Everybody approves of the idea of fairness in theory, in the abstract. But in practice, it’s a chimera, a will o’ wisp. Individuals of good will try to treat others fairly, i.e., with honor and justice; it’s a question of doing what you say you’ll do and not aggressing against other persons or their property. But the concept of “fair” usually connotes a sense of forced division of spoils. At the level of government, where coercion is overtly or tacitly in the picture, fairness tends to be no more than a political buzzword. They manufacture artificial notions of “fair” profits, “fair” prices, a “fair” wage, “fair” housing, and the like. These are arbitrary and pernicious concepts that tend to rationalize envy. This is entirely apart from the fact that taxes—the forceful taking of another’s property under cover of the law—are themselves immoral. But that’s a subject for another day.

Government takes it upon itself to tax what they consider windfall, or unfair, profits. Occasionally they pass out huge amounts of money to cover windfall losses on the part of favored corporations. Both windfall profit taxes and subsidies are symptomatic of the accelerating takeover of the economy by the political class. In a free society, profits are rewarded, and losses are punished by the market—end of story. In addition to moral benefits, that incentivizes businesses to create wealth, which benefits everyone. That’s how countries grow rich and stay free.

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The Time Tax, by Eric Peters

Posted on October 3, 2022 | Leave a comment

It takes a lot longer to charge an EV than it does to fill the gas tank of an internal combustion car. Think of the difference as a tax. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

They tax everything else, so why not time?

And that’s just what they’re in the process of doing, via what they style “electrification.” This (forced) “transition” to what isn’t “clean” energy and won’t salve the “climate crisis,” because there isn’t one. How could there be one, given that plus or minus a fraction of 0.04 percent – that being the percent of the Earth’s air that is C02 – isn’t going to “change” much of anything. Believing that it will being akin to believing that adding another grain or two of salt to a supper being cooked for 20 people is going to make it taste saltier.

But the Time Tax that will be imposed in the name of preventing this “change” by “transitioning” to what isn’t “clean” energy is very real, unlike the jiggered-with computer models and other misinformation-hysterics used to foment fear over the “climate crisis.” Which is fundamentally – psychologically – the same thing as the “pandemic” and before that “crisis,” the one fomented over “Islamo-fascism,” ad infinitum.

And the EeeeeeeeeVeeeee is their vehicle for it.

Everyone will pay this tax, too – not merely (and deservedly) the fools who did not practice due diligence as regards what owning an EeeeeeeeeVeeeeee will cost them – in terms of money. Many of these latter are also the same fools who did not practice due diligence when told they must wear a “mask” and then take a “vaccine” in order to “stop the spread.” Just as it is easier to hornswagggle a mark who has already bought a timeshare into buying another one.

The Time Tax will, of course, affect them the most – at first – for they are the only ones who will be paying it, at first. They are the ones who will be spending time thinking about recharging . . . all the time. They are the ones whose trips will always be longer, because of all the time they’ll be spending recharging. They will be “taxed” every time they want to go somewhere beyond the range of their EeeeeeeVeeeee – and on the way back from there, too.

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Two Easy Predictions: Wealth Tax and Windfall Tax, by Charles Hugh Smith

Posted on September 21, 2022 | Leave a comment

Governments are broke and rapacious. From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:

Looks like we need another $500 billion or so. Hum baby!

Predictions are hard, especially about the future, but two predictions are easy: 1) governments that do not yet impose wealth taxes will do so within the next five years and 2) governments will impose windfall taxes on all outsized unearned gains, from any source, anywhere on the planet.

Glancing at the chart of federal tax revenues, we note a steep increase–hum baby! Governments have financial commitments, and these never seem to decrease, they only increase.

It’s nothing personal, we just need more money. We have responsibilities and we made promises.

A few nations already have wealth taxes: for example, Norway, Spain and Switzerland. In Switzerland, the wealth to be taxed is self-reported, and the top rate is 1%. The Swiss wealth taxes account for 3.6% of tax revenue. It doesn’t sound like much but every little bit helps, right?

That 3.6% of tax revenues applied to the U.S. tax revenues equals a cool $108 billion. That’s a useful sum.

Self-reporting isn’t going to cut it once tax revenues are viewed as inadequate. Third-party reporting will be required so wealth can’t be under-reported, and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) already requires foreign entities to report U.S. account holders’ data.

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Doug Casey on Class Warfare, “Eat the Rich” Sentiment, and What Happens Next

Posted on September 14, 2022 | Leave a comment

If you have a lot of money, probably a good idea not to tell anyone about it. From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

Class Warfare

International Man: Politicians looking for ways to finance their extravagant spending increasingly complain that the wealthy aren’t paying their “fair share.”

It’s a trend in motion that is accelerating. This rising anti-wealth sentiment seems to be taking the US into dangerous territory.

Our friend Rick Rule once said, “Eat the rich? Prepare to starve.”

What is your take?

Doug Casey: Once upon a time, government apologists liked to say that the rich had to be taxed in order to help the poor. That’s no longer the case. Nobody in America is starving. Even poor people have flat-screen TVs, air conditioning, and refrigerators. The poor live better than medieval royalty.

What’s going on is the institutionalization of envy, a terrible vice. It’s different from jealousy.

Jealousy says, “You have something that I want. I want one too. Give it to me.”

Envy says, “You have something that I want. If I can’t have it, I’ll destroy it, so you can’t have it either.” Envy is the moral flaw that underlies all socialist economic theories. Socialist feelings and morality underly the economic lies, race hatred, class hatred, sex antagonism, and political polarization tearing the US and the West apart. Envy and socialism have become secular religions. The country has been divided into two different and mutually antagonistic worldviews.

It’s a question of what’s right and wrong, what’s good and evil. It’s not a question of economics, about what’s more productive. This is a much more serious division. It amounts to a religious war between the Left, who want to overthrow and transform society, and the Right, who want to more-or-less maintain traditional values, but lack any real ideology.

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Inflation: State-Sponsored Terrorism, by Jeff Diest

Posted on September 8, 2022 | Leave a comment

Inflation is theft, which makes it criminal. It takes money from the productive and stealthily transfers it to the government and its cronies. From Jeff Diest at mises.org:

I. Introduction

Remember the quaint old days of 2019? We were told the US economy was in great shape. Inflation was low, jobs were plentiful, GDP was growing. And frankly, if covid had not come along, there is a pretty good chance Donald Trump would have been reelected.

At an event in 2019, my friend and economist Dr. Bob Murphy said something very interesting about the political schism in this country. He said: If you think America is divided now, what would things look like if the economy was terrible, if we had another crash like 2008?

Well, we might not have to imagine such a scenario much longer.

If you think Americans are divided today, and at each other’s throats—metaphorically, but more and more literally—imagine if they were cold and hungry!

Imagine if we had to live through something like Weimer Germany, Argentina in the 1980s, Zimbabwe in the 2000s, or Venezuela and Turkey today? What would our political and social divisions look like then?

Ladies and gentlemen, we live under the tyranny of inflationism. It terrorizes us, either softly or loudly. I suspect it will get a lot louder soon.

As the late Bill Peterson explained, “Inflationism, in today’s terms, is deficit-spending, deliberate credit expansion on a national scale, a public policy fallacy of monumental proportions, of creating too much money that chases too few goods. It rests on the ‘money illusion,’ a widespread confusion between in­come as a flow of money and income as a flow of goods and services—a confusion between ‘money’ and wealth.”

Inflationism is both a fiscal and monetary regime, but its consequences go far beyond economics. It has profound social, moral, and even civilizational effects. And understanding how it terrorizes us is the task today.

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Posted in Banking, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, Taxes

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Biden’s IRS Auditor Army Will Disrupt Economic Recovery, by Julio Gonzales

Posted on September 1, 2022 | Leave a comment

The inevitable target of Biden’s army will be small businesses and their owners. From Julio Gonzales at realclearpolitics.com:

Biden’s IRS Auditor Army Will Disrupt Economic Recovery

(AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

The Biden administration’s decision to recruit nearly 90,000 new IRS auditors could have a chilling effect on small businesses and economic growth, permanently impeding our nation’s ability to recover from its current economic malaise.

As part of the misleadingly titled “Inflation Reduction Act,” President Biden and his allies secured roughly $80 billion in new IRS funding to hire 87,000 auditors. This is bad news for the American economy.

One of the many ways that small businesses can succeed and help grow the economy is by taking advantage of tax credits and deductions which leave more money in the hands of owners to reinvest in their businesses and offer more competitive pay for their employees.

But with the looming threat of a veritable army of auditors being mobilized by the Biden administration, it is highly likely that many small businesses will decline to seek the benefits of those credits and deductions, lest they face the costly headache of aggressive audits from the IRS. In fact, my firm, Engineered Tax Services, specializes in working with businesses to understand and utilize those credits and deductions, and some of my firm’s small business clients have told me this is the case.

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The US is about to go full Louis XVI, by Simon Black

Posted on August 31, 2022 | Leave a comment

The U.S. government is broke and the IRS will be further turning the screws on American taxpayers. From Simon Black at sovereignman.com:

On September 3, 1783, after nearly a year of excruciating back-and-forth negotiations, all sides had finally gathered together in Paris to sign a historic peace agreement.

It was a pretty important peace deal. Because the Treaty of Paris, as it is now known, is what formally ended the American Revolution, and when Great Britain legally recognized the United States as an independent nation.

The treaty was signed in Paris because France had been a major supporter of the US war effort. And just as soon as the ink was dry, French King Louis XVI ordered his finance minister to prepare an accounting of exactly how much money France had spent on US independence.

The result was nothing short of astonishing—more than 1 billion livres.

To put that number in context, the French Treasury’s entire annual revenue only amounted to around 200 million livres.

So they had basically sunk FIVE YEARS worth of their tax revenue fighting someone else’s war.

Granted, Britain was still one of France’s main rivals. And the French did not care for British King George III.

But the American War was simply too costly, and France had already been on very shaky financial footing well before this point.

Louis XIV had nearly bankrupted the country a century before. His successor, Louis XV, had to drastically slash expenses and could barely hang on financially.

Then, in 1774, just prior to the American Revolution, Louis XVI became king at a time that France was rapidly deteriorating.

You’d think that with so much economic turmoil at home that he would have focused on his own national interests… and, in lieu of money, weapons, and ships, he would have instead sent the royal thoughts and prayers to America.

But no. Lucky for the United States, Louis XVI courageously fought the American Revolution down to the very last French taxpayer.

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