We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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Taxing Christmas This just in:
A boss who gives each of his staff a turkey every Christmas had the shock of his life when the Inland Revenue hit him with a £6,000 tax bill.
Turkeys are “benefits in kind” apparently, which they are now getting very hot on. Another of those stealth taxes, in other words.
This time there was a happy ending, because he complained and they changed their minds. Christmas turkeys are trivial, they said, perhaps after thinking about the publicity angle.
Good luck next year mate, and a Merry Christmas to all our readers.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Parliament warrants a visit from three ghosts.
“Parliament warrants a visit from three ghosts.”
Can Guy Fawkes be one of ’em?
Here in the US cash or near cash is taxable no matter the amount while there is a de minimis for in kind employee gifts (used to be $25.00 now probably more). Of course this all stems from the dislike of being taxed and the general ingenuity of mankind. Governments’ best bet as far as taxes is tax transactions that are based in cash and that is how the system is set up. But improvising businessmen attempted to get around this by giving in kind goods and services trying to get under the radar of ‘compensation’. But the bureaucrats, themselves resourceful soon figured this out and made laws (or had them made) to define compensation more broadly so that any relationship, and any transaction between an employee and an employer has to be reviewed and classified and is, by default compensation, unless an exemption applies (de minimis etc). The end result is a serpentine labyrinth of laws and regulations for an employer to get through and a miffed employee base who can’t understand why their jackass employer puts all this extra on their W-2 wage statement. All of this wouldn’t per se be a problem (any more than any tax is) but that employment taxes carry some of the most draconian penalties of any taxes (Federal anyway)and woe to anyone who doesn’t fully comply with the dizzying set of laws and regulations.