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Taxes are not the problem. Billionaires grabbing the money on the other side are the problem.
Know the difference
The people most capable of carrying the tax burden are the people most likely to cheat their way out of paying taxes.
Taxes are also the problem in countries like the US and China wherein income tax only exists to remove currency from circulation. There's plenty of other ways to do that in a digital world.
The rich would just use crypto
Lol, when I was in China, I never saw the taxes, so I'm assuming they just tax the corporations who pass down the costs by raising prices.
Like there is literally no "sales tax" in PRC, at least when I left around 2010. I also never heard my parents ever paying any "income tax". So its probably all pre-deducted before you even get paid. When we first arrived in the US, my mom was so "frugal" that she whenever she see the "sales tax" she have like a mini existential crisis or something. 🤣
(This is in Guangzhou btw, just in case y'all are wondering)
There's certainly taxes, I paid income tax and they revised the rates at least once while I was living there. No sales tax that I noticed but that's not the only tax.
What city? I mean, most payments are done in cash (at least it was pre-2010), so its not like the government would have a good way to track everyone's income. I've never heard of anything about "filing taxes" like the US does.
If you are a foreign citizen working in China, that could be a reason why things were different
So I googled a bit and, although Wikipedia isn't a source, its a non-political topic so it should be accurate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_China
Apparantly, there is an exemption if you make under a certain amount per month, so my parents probably didn't make enough to get taxes or they just under-reported (i mean, its all in cash so... 🤷♂️)
Yeah, but that's not the argument you were making. You said there were no taxes.
Income tax is a tax even if you don't pay it at certain levels. In the US if you make under something like 20k a year that is also effectively tax exempt due to low income. Doesn't mean there are no taxes.
I said I never saw them in any visible form. Of couse taxes exist, they exist in every society.
Yeah having to do your taxes yourself is fucking archaic and stupid. They know how much you owe them. Either deduct that when people are paid (falls on the employer) or just tell people what they owe.
Well, again, the taxes are not the problem, but the bad design of the deduction process. The war on taxes, especially in the US but also in Europe, is a strategy from the right and neoliberals to cut down on social welfare and essentially redistribute money to the rich.
Taxes are good and important, but it's difficult to figure out what to tax and by how much, and how to use the money well.