Swedish Tax Office Targets Webcam Strippers

Sweden's tax authorities are cracking down on unreported webcam stripper income. They estimate that hundreds of Swedish women are dodging the law, resulting in a tax loss of about 40m Swedish kronor (£3.3m) annually. The search involves tax officials examining stripper websites, hours upon hours, for completely legitimate purposes. A slightly disheveled project leader said 200 Swedish strippers had been investigated so far, adding the total could be as much as 500. "They are young girls, we can see from the photos. We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules," he said.

Comments

Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are they, their pimps?

Re:Seriously?

[deraj123]

Isn't that basically the relationship we all have with the government?

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Furthermore, your "fair share" is determined on how productive in enterprising you are.

It's protection money for your... profit. You can be perfectly productive in a charitable or academic manner and your organisations will not have to worry much about tax. But if you want that money just to fund a larger house or private yacht, you're paying n% protection against the unwashed masses stealing the other (100-n)%. It's only right that the more personal wealth you amass, the more you should have to pay to protect it. If you want, we can move to an anarchy and see how long Gates gets to live safely.

The more you stimulate the economy, the more you're penalized for it.

The "economy" is just a bunch of people trading, not some huge singular blob. Just because x does a lot of trade benefitting set X, it doesn't mean I should care about x's successes unless I'm a member of X. But the government will stop me looting x because x pays the government protection money. Understand?

Re:Seriously?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

Furthermore, your "fair share" is determined on how productive in enterprising you are. The more you stimulate the economy, the more you're penalized for it.

This argument is based on the assumption that those who are payed more in our society are more hard working and productive. As any fool can tell you, in reality the exact opposite of this assumption holds. Typically the more you are paid, the less productive you are.

While there are exceptions, it is safe to say that those on the lower end of the payscale work very hard jobs for very long hours, whereas those in high paid executive positions are on a gravy train, with high salaries, bonuses, short hours, little responsibility and who actually do atrociously little work.

The truth, and it is something that many simply cannot bear to face, is that the wealth of many individuals has very little to do with their own productivity and labour, and very much to do with the productivity and labour of the many people who work for them. This notion was, and still is, denied by many, particularly whose at the top end of the pay scale, who struggle to find some rationalisation for why they, who spend most of their day idle, spewing out buzzwords, on telephone calls, making powerpoint presentations or surfing for porn, should receive an order of magnitude or more compensation for their day than the people on the factory floor who visibly sweat in order to make their living. It's a powerful juxtaposition and one which I'm sure people in top paying jobs are subconsciously uncomfortable with. Hence they rationalise. Oh do they rationalise.

Read Galbraith's book, "The Great Crash", where he analyises the 1929 stock market crash. Among other things, he argues that one of the main causes of the crash was the huge wealth disparity between the super rich and everyone else. Basically, there were a small number of people who had sucked up a sizable proportion of the money in the US, and gave nothing in return. When they stopped spending, the whole system froze up. They were essentially black holes which money flowed into, but never out of. Consumption taxes wouldn't have helped. Their money was idle and remained so.

So I don't buy this idea about the "injustice" of taxing higher earners. In my opinion, the true leaches in our society are the people in top positions who sit around doing nothing while creaming off the labour of others. they are the true parasites, and they are ultimately the ones who got us into the current crises we now find ourselves in. I'm not a communist, but I don't buy the idea that people should receive unlimited compensation simply because they had a rich parent, an expensive education and the right contacts. And make no mistake, those are the only qualifications that 90% of business managers have today.

Re:Seriously?

[Anonymous Coward]

Those hard-working people you love so much only have jobs because more business-savvy people are constructing environments in which their hard labor can be turned into something of value, and are directing the efforts of their employees toward appropriate goals.

Working hard is a very straight-forward proposition that doesn't require your labor to be *worth* anything. But as a result it doesn't guarantee that you will be creating any value - for yourself or others. You come across as a pure "means of production" communist. If you succeed in running your little experiment you will discover that everyone can be working their asses off and still producing jack-shit, if the people who are good at preventing that scenario are held back and the free market is tied up with taxes, regulations, protectionism and government-granted monopolies.

Your mistake is that you think labor is intrinsically worth something. It's not. Supply in an environment of demand is intrinsically worth something. Pure laborers are just one cog in the production of the supply.

Entrepreneurs set up the equation to actually produce value and - as a result - wages; and they do so at great risk to their own livelihood. Risks pure laborers are disinclined or outright unwilling to take. Middle managers, while easy to pick on, exist primarily because pure laborers are so unlikely to efficiently produce things of value if left unmanaged, so if you hate them so badly you have only your workers to blame. It's true that they aren't setting up the value environment like the true business leaders, but it's not true that they are unnecessary. They may well be overpaid, but it's not *your* money they are being paid with so you don't have any right to deny it to them.

Re:Seriously?

[timeOday]

Very highly paid people do very little work for each dollar they earn. This is not my opinion, it is simple mathematics. The average CEO "earns" 250 times as much as the average worker. Let's assume the average worker is an overpaid, underworked union slob (as "wealth=merit" types tend to believe) and does only 10 minutes of actual productive work per day. The CEO would still have to work 104 hours per day to work equally for each dollar. Not even Ayn Rand can fail to see that logic. So you need to switch to something else, like "they're smarter and more disciplined than you and I," or, "sitting around in meetings is much harder than backbreaking repetitive labor," or something like that.

Re:Seriously?

[vux984]

Let's try 'the work they do is vastly more valuable'. God, you're an idiot.

Then the CEO should be fired immediately for not getting his thousands of wage slaves to do more valuable work.
If this 'vastly more valuable work' isn't actually 'harder', then why aren't more people doing it?

I mean, if its not actually intrinsically harder (and it largely isn't), than supply and demand pressures should put massive downward price pressure on 'vastly more valuable work', as everyone would be stopping harder less valuable work to do this easier and 'vastly more valuable work'.

God, you're an idiot.

Look in the mirror.

"We need to investigate this... closely..."

[Anonymous Coward]

"I'd like to volunteer for this job myself."

Hiring?

[natespizer]

Are they hiring?

Being informed about the rules

[Peter Cooper]

"They are young girls, we can see from the photos. We think that perhaps they are not well informed about the rules," he said.

People are almost never well informed about the rules. When I left school, I didn't get a book of laws that informed me I'd have to pay tax (and how). The only reason I knew what to do was because I took advice from other self employed family members, so I've paid all my taxes throughout the years, no problems.

But.. a lot of people sell things at casual sales, barter services, and do things online without paying tax. It's wrong, but I have a little sympathy for them, because this stuff just isn't taught in schools and the authorities don't go to any lengths to inform people about taxation issues. I mean, how many regular folks who barter things pay the tax on those transactions? Most people I know wouldn't even realize they have to!

Re:I Volunteer...

[Anonymous Coward]

Vulcan blood is green, you insensitive clod! And close the basement door on the way up!

Actual, direct quote from TFA

[CopaceticOpus]

"When we investigated the sites manually it worked better," he added.

I'll bet it did.

Re:I Volunteer...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Probably for roughly the same reasons that phone support techs think that users are "idiots" and "losers"...

Just as working phone support means dealing with the self-selected population of users-who-can't-figure-it-out-for-themselves, being in the sex industry would mean dealing with the self-selected population of men who can't, or don't want to bother, inducing people to see sex with them as something one doesn't need to be compensated for.

Re:Government goons hot on strippers tracks

[CRCulver]

Look at the Nordic countries before the introduction of the welfare state: massive emigration, with people pressed by hunger and poverty to go to some of the most deserted parts of North America. Now look at them after the introduction of the welfare state: economic successes, with high standards of living, a high level of happiness among the populace, and immigration. And this is a bad thing how?

Re:Queue Idiocracy

[xerxesVII]

The word you're looking for is "The".