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Restaurant Owners Use Zapper To Cook the Books
Hugh Pickens passes along a NYTimes report on software programs called "zappers," which allow even technologically illiterate restaurant and store owners to siphon cash from computer cash registers to cheat tax officials. In the old days, restaurant owners who wanted to cheat kept two sets of books. But because cash registers make automated records, hiding the theft requires getting into the machine's memory and changing that record. "...the Canadian province of Quebec may be the world leader in prosecuting zapper cases. Since 1997, zappers have figured in more than 230 investigations, according to the tax collecting body Revenu Québec... In making 713 searches of merchants, Revenu Québec found 31 zapper programs that worked on 13 cash register systems. Only two known zapper cases have been prosecuted in the United States... The cash register security industry is focused on protecting patrons and owners from theft by employees, which may be one reason so few zappers are uncovered in the United States. No one hires security experts to protect the government from devious businesses... As hard as zapper software is to detect, it is easy to make, said Jeff Moss, organizer of the annual hacker convention Def Con. 'If it runs on a Windows system and you are a competent Windows administrator, you can do it,' he said."
Just one more example of how physical access to a machine can often circumvent any sort of software based security.
Read the summary again. The OWNER install the zapper to hide revenues to save on taxes.
I don't know why you were modded insightful. This ought to have been modded -1 what the hell were you thinking.
The reason why the taxmen are greedy is because they know that a lot of people and businesses cook the books or otherwise defraud the government of taxes. The government spends a certain amount and in order to cover that there needs to be income. Ideally it comes from taxes but particularly in recent years there's a lot which is borrowed via bonds.
Now the problem is that restaurants and businesses which cheat on their taxes, not to mention individuals, get the same benefits that those that pay their share without having to pay all of the money due.
I'm not sure what the exact amount is, but the figure I've seen some fairly large numbers thrown around. I'm not sure what the real number is, I suspect that nobody really does, but it is a significant amount of money due to people like your former employers cheating the other taxpayers.
The fact you suggested printing money to cover debts proves you wouldn't be one of those "best and brightest". Can you say rampant inflation? Study economics and history, particularly Weimar Germany. Beyond which, even if it wasn't bad economics it would be a poor idea- using taxes caps government spending by providing a maximum dollar amount, and makes the citizens aware of what it truly costs. These are good things.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
This seems thoroughly unsurprising. The higher the tax rate, the higher the incentive to cheat. Quebec has a sales tax rate of 12.875%, which is pretty high by south-of-the-border standards. The top marginal income tax rate in the U.S. from WWII until 1964 was 91%. Does anyone believe that rich people really paid 91% of their income to Uncle Sam? Of course not. They just hired people to find ways to avoid the tax. Action and reaction. Actually, Canada at least has made some efforts to harmonize their tax rates. If states in the U.S. wanted to increase the rate of collection of sales taxes, they would figure out ways of harmonizing their laws, and then it might be more practical to get rid of use tax, which is a joke, and charge the normal sales tax on interstate transactions. As it is, it's crazy. Every state may have dozens of different sales tax rates, and the list of taxable and nontaxable items is different in every state. For a small internet business with customers in all 50 states, it would be a prohibitive amount of work to pay taxes to all the states; you'd have to fill out 50 different annual tax forms, and calculate taxes on according to literally hundreds of local laws and rates. If they did that, they'd level the playing field, which currently treats bricks-and-mortar stores unfairly, and they'd also be able to lower their sales tax rates while still maintaining the same revenue.
Find free books.
People say "everybody does it" to try to relieve their guilt at stealing from the honest people. I don't cheat on my taxes, and I have to pay more because of the people who do.
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money as we know it would cease to exist
Money will never cease to exist as long as there is any kind of scarce goods/resource/property or skill that is needed by others. Sure, you can dream of a time when that isn't true, but it will remain a dream.
Still, there are many ways that economy could change in the future. A society can be run where everyone gets paid the same or based on effort put in. It may also be possible to remove common house hold items from the equation, and only require payment for "luxury items". Also, having a society where loans/borrowing is illegal is also possible, although that requires all expensive products (cars, houses) to be leased/rented instead of owned.
Sounds utopian? Why Not!!
Anything is possible to those who wish it.
Yes, too utopian. And no, anything isn't possible.
There is nothing wrong with utopian visions, but aiming towards them and thinking you will reach them with just wishes is the act of a fool.
A good visionaire needs three worlds. One is the utopian world that he wishes for. The second is the nightmare world where everything he implements fails. And the third is the real world where he tries to make progress towards the utopia while avoiding the nightmare scenarios.
Communists as well as libertarians both aim for the utopia while ignoring the nightmares, and that is a recipe for disaster.
Also, make sure that the utopia is actually an utopia that everyone wants. The communist utopia is far to restrained to be called an utopia. It is way too much about individual sacrifice, which is a very non utopian thing in my and many others meaning. I much prefer the social liberalism utopia.
How could this be possible? when we (humanity) realize that we are all the same deep down and we all want peace and prosperity, regardless or politics and religious beliefs.
Yup.
What's the biggest hurdle?
Us the people, which is part being lazy and part resisting and fearing change, and
those who right now, are in power and truly benefit from this unfair world as it is.
I definitly don't agree on laziness. Being lazy is a virtue. It is the lazy people who try to do more with less effort that make the world go forward.
It is the working ants that are satisfied working 40+ hours a week in stressful hierarcical systems, doing unproductive work (bueraucracy, marketing) spending borrowed money on shiny toys (that they only buy because other working marketing ants convince them to do so), while their bosses takes the big profits that are the real problem.
what happens when you just go printing money willy-nilly
do you want to pay 100 billion dollars for 3 eggs?
TIAEAE!
Educated work force, power, phone, a military to avoid invasions, and a government to support free trade.
Yes these are very expensive and roads cost A TON of money. The government pays verizon to put in your phone lines and subsidizes them to a certain extent.
It costs $7,000 per year on average for each school aged child to stay in school. Multiple that by 12?
Without electricity, roads, and a workforce that can read and write you are screwed if you own a business.
Yes taxes are a necessary evil and anyone who uses governmental services needs to pay and corporations need to. I am conservative myself on this issue but realize its unrealistic to have businesses have a free ride when they use government the most.
http://saveie6.com/
Minimum wage laws generally only result in layoffs and law-breaking. They also make it much more difficult for students and youth to find part-time and summer jobs, which not only deprives them of spending money and experience, but also seems to correlate with increased youth crime and delinquency.
And this experience is based on which time when there was a high minimum wage in the US? This is theory based on a complete lack of research and encourage by big companies crying poor.
Most sensible countries (i.e.: any "western" country apart from the US) have tiered minimum wages. So when you need a school kid to fill in on the weekend and cover vacation leave of your full timers, you can pay a low wage. But when you need reliable adults to work full-time jobs, you are going to have to pay adult wages.
Did I mention those countries all have lower youth delinquency rates than the US too? An I certainly never had any trouble finding work for spending money and experience as a kid! In fact, I don't know any kid who wanted a saturday or summer job that was unable to get one.
Yeah and most "sensible" countries also have a 50-60% tax rate
You are quoting the top bracket, most people are not in that and actual tax rate is much lower. The interesting number is tax as percentage of GDP and the US is quite low, but not *that* much lower.
The evidence is in the fact that standards of living for the majority of people in those countries is higher and with fewer people below the poverty line.
It also pays for things like university education, health care, pensions and such that most people in the US have to shell out for themselves.
So there is a lot more to it that just saying that the taxes are too high - governments generally do use these to pay for things that benefit the tax payers. One could argue that as percentage of revenue the US is a lot more squandering than most other countries - in things like defense spending, especially the past few years!
Plus there is the issue of economies of scale - 300 million is a hell of a lot of tax payers!
It's not how much tax you pay - it's about how much value you get out of it. And on that count most high-tax european countries are doing quite well.
In Germany, the minimum wage for most people is unemployment benefits! There is no point in trying to pay someone less then what they would get for sitting at home. I have met people there that had been unemployed for years because they could not find work in their chosen profession. ("Wildlife manager" - talk about a niche!)
Read the parent, he made the comment that high minimum wage in the US would lead to higher youth unemployment and higher delinquency. I was merely debunking that claim.