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Buenos Aires Issues a 'Netflix Tax' For All Digital Entertainment
New submitter DoILookAmused writes A few years ago, the Argentinean government implemented a 35% tax on all offshore buys using a credit card. In yesterday's press release, the city of Buenos Aires announced it will charge a 3% gross income tax for all streaming or media purchase abroad allegedly to bring it to "competitive prices with local media companies". This tax doesn't supersede the national 35% tax, which has sparked several reactions.
Argentinian here.
Please understand that policy in Argentina is usually just the result of the guys on top wanting more hookers or coke. Usually both. There is no justification to these taxes whatsoever other than "we want to steal more money for ourselves, but we already stole everything in sight... so we need you idiots to put more money in this account here so we can steal it."
Argentina is very much like your neighborhood friendly African nation, only with less ebola and civil war.
For those who don't know, Argentina is on the brink of economic collapse yet again. Their occupying government has ruined the currency with wishful thinking as if it didn't just happen a decade or so ago. They've been trying to negotiate away all the bad debt they've run up and not everybody is letting them off the hook this time. Like good bureaucrats they're probably looking to tax anything that moves.
3% tax on Netflix? pfft - last time they confiscated pensions and retirement accounts. Oh, sorry, they didn't confiscate them, they replaced the negotiable cash value of them with government-backed bonds. Which rapidly fell to zero value.
FWIW, the US DoL floated an RFC on 'protecting' retirement accounts by replacing them with bonds a few years ago. Nobody should be undiversified in their retirement savings jurisdictions.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
a 35% tax on all offshore buys using a credit card
With that kind of tariff how long till all out of country purchases are made with bitcoin?
---Saying gnome 3 is better than windows 8 not so much a compliment as it is damning with light praise.
Brazil is becoming Argentina
Argentina is becoming Venezuela
Venezuela is becoming Cuba
You see wrong. I have contacts in the financial services industry who believe that a significant partial appropriation through asset conversion to US bonds is unavoidable. When a knowledgeable, successful, financially prudent person who works in financial services forgoes the tax benefits of keeping retirement assets in a qualified account, you should certainly consider there's something to it.
35% Tax is a prepayment of income tax ("Impuesto a las ganancias") So, my credit card charges me that 35%, but then my employer discounts that from my income taxes. It is a stupid system, but not a new tax.
As for the 3%. All companies offering services here have to pay gross income taxes. Otherwise, every foreign company can come here, make profit and take it all to their home countries, leaving nothing for us. The netflix tax is tottaly fair.
U.S. Hikes Fee To Renounce Citizenship By 422%
To leave America, you generally must prove 5 years of U.S. tax compliance. If you have a net worth greater than $2 million or average annual net income tax for the 5 previous years of $157,000 or more for 2014 (thatâ(TM)s tax, not income), you pay an exit tax. It is a capital gain tax as if you sold your property when you left. At least thereâ(TM)s an exemption of $680,000 for 2014. Long-term residents giving up a Green Card can be required to pay the tax too.
Now, the State Department interim rule just raised the fee for renunciation of U.S. citizenship to $2,350 from $450. Critics note that itâ(TM)s more than twenty times the average level in other high-income countries. The State Department says itâ(TM)s about demand on their services and all the extra workload they have to process people who are on their way out.
You are no longer born a free person, you are born into slavery. You have to buy your freedom and the price will keep going up. At $450 the price was already 4.5 times higher than in most other countries. Now it will be nearly 24 times more than for other countries.
You should be able to renounce your citizenship and leave for free, instead you are going to be prevented from leaving at all eventually, they'll jack up the price to the share of your national debt that you are born into and that is borrowed on your behalf by your government and only the wealthiest slaves will be able to get out. They will definitely prevent you from leaving eventually if you have any debts at all, including your student debt. The 2350USD change is starting on the 12th of September 2014, you can still get out at a low low price of 450USD.
Those walls they are building on your borders, they are not there to keep others out, they are there to keep you in. IRS is part of that system.
You can't handle the truth.
I'm form Argentina and it saddens me that this post comments will fall among these categories:
Even the summary is wrong! That 35% is not a tax, just a pre-payment of the income tax that you can recover.
All hope is lost.
People cannot at the same time complain about debt and taxes. Debt is there because there is not enough taxes.
So lowering the spending is not an option?
The standard sales tax (VAT) in Greece is currently 23% for most things. (It varies, but that's the most common.) That's on top of the punishing property taxes, income taxes, taxes because you left your money sitting in a bank, taxes because it's Monday, etc. I jest, but only a little.
The thing with Greece is not the high tax rates, it's the high rate of tax evasion. They'd probably need half the tax rates they currently have if every person and corporation paid taxes... but you'd need to get rid of the government graft too... erm... good luck with that.
So I'm not sure if Greece is a good comparison to Argentina, I know they have the govt corruption but what's the tax evasion like?
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Yeah because protectionism is well known to be a great way to grow your economy.
I'll give you a hint- if you stop your people buying from everyone else, they stop their people buying from you. Then who the fuck do you expect to sell anything to to grow your economy? Unless you can become entirely self-sustaining at that point you're screwed, exactly as Argentina currently is.