The state does not need your taxes. The state needs another ...
Instead of the preface:My acquaintance, a downshifter who was ideologically crazy about anarchism, once proudly stated that he did not intend to feed “these gangsters in the government” and in principle does not pay any taxes. Thoughtfully examining his car with packages from the supermarket in the back seat and lowering the degree of malice to the lowest possible, I naively asked:
1. How did his technical inspection materialize without paying transport tax?
2. How does he charge his horse by avoiding fuel excise?
3. How does he manage to provide himself with heat, light, water, without participating in the business of natural monopolies?
4. How does he buy anything at all if the price of the goods already contains a fucking cloud of taxes and duties?
The “control shot” for the principled anarchist was the calculation of his personal participation in filling the budget of the state he hated in the amount of 60% of all his household expenses.
- God Damned .. Shirt! - he yelled like a sow before feeding - they laid it over, bastards !!!
It was necessary to open the eyes of a naive nihilist dreamer on the essence of direct taxes in post-industrial society, which have long been an irreplaceable source of budget filling and successfully mutated into an extremely effective tool for managing the electorate.
Taxes as an effective tool for population management
The absurdity of the system of charging direct taxes is easily revealed by the following example - imagine a dialogue ... well, for example, in a barbershop:
- How much is a haircut?
- 15% of your current income ...
It's ridiculous, right? But exactly the same situation exists at the macro level. Moreover, not only in the form of providing accurate and specific figures of budget expenditures by an unknown part of the income of an incomprehensible number of taxpayers. It looks even funnier to collect taxes from that part of the population, which itself exists at the expense of taxes - from doctors, teachers, officials, military ... About the military in general a separate conversation. I will highlight my sincere conviction: Taking taxes from those who shed blood for the Fatherland is embarrassing and unfair.
So, the State is perfectly aware of this absurdity, propping up the budget revenues with quite objective fees, which you can’t avoid, you will not go round. The government is not even trying to make the well-known figure of government spending depend on someone's completely unpredictable revenues, preferring to replenish the budget where it is difficult or impossible to get out of paying taxes.
It looks very clearly and convincingly on the diagram, where the personal income tax, around which so many copies break, takes modest 13%, and the corporate income tax generally looks like a mathematical error:
The modern state, which operates the instruments of the global market, controls the energy and infrastructure, can easily do without taxes. Fees "wired" into the price of natural monopolies, rent for the use of natural resources, infrastructure, border (customs) fees and duties make it possible to abandon the most scandalous methods of replenishing the treasury and focus on indirect, which are much harder to circumvent and much easier to pay.
The Russian state, as can be seen from the structure of the budget of the Russian Federation, does so, loudly confirming the Pareto rule, in full compliance with which 80% of revenues is provided by one fifth of the entire tax list, and 80% of all tax scandals - the remaining 20% of the "sacred debt of citizens."
But the state is not in a hurry to abandon them. And it's not a lack of means for existence. Simply, taxes have long been transformed from a tool of maintaining the state apparatus into a tool for managing taxpayers. And the more complicated and complicated the tax system is, the more efficiently it puts pressure on the population, forcing it to be cunning and mistaken, and therefore making it guilty and more controlled, ready to compromise with the government in general, and with a specific official - in particular.
I would add that taxes, like glamor, prevent taxpayers from uncontrolledly capitalizing their income and make it possible to quickly and effectively deal with disagreeable and disloyal ones.
Tax-free empires are not fiction at all, but reality itself.
The two most famous economically powerful powers - the Roman Empire and the United States emerged and were built as completely tax-free. The needs of the Roman budget were covered by natural rents, the needs of the US budget - by import-export duties.
The first corporate tax in the United States was introduced only in 1909 year - through 133 year after the foundation, and personal income tax - only due to the need to finance participation in the First World War and was ... However, these rates should be brought in full (where not forget that dollar xnumx, this is xnumx dollar xnumx:
1% income tax up to 20 000 $;
2% on income from 20 000 $ to 50 000 $;
3% on income from 50 000 $ to 75 000 $
4% on income from 75 000 $ to 100 000 $
5% on income from 100 000 $ to 250 000 $
6% on income from 250 000 $ to 500 000 $
7% on income from 500 000 $ and above
The Russian Empire, too, would have been classified by current fiscals as tax havens, where there existed extensive tax-free zones and whole tax-free classes (for example, Cossacks). And it was generally considered a good form to exempt from taxes for services to the Fatherland. It would seem - take and use ready-made experience, however ...
All this modern statesmen know perfectly well, but still the fetish in the pockets of fellow citizens is not at all in the search for food, but exclusively and solely for the purpose of forming everyone guilty, intimidated, and therefore - controlled mass.
In addition, direct taxes — for those who understand their social rather than monetary nature — are a unique marketing tool for providing a global competitive advantage. The Anglo-Saxons, by the way, understand this perfectly, and therefore turned their countries into one big offshore zone with zero direct taxes for foreigners, and earn well on countries that stifle their own enterprises with heavy lifting and simply pushing them into the arms of caring "comrades" on Wall Street and the City of London.
Within these countries, the seemingly terrible taxes with highly-advertised fiscal discipline at first approximation lose their menace, since all these passions relate exclusively and only to really high-paying people.
And the taxation of wages, for example, in 60 000 rubles looks like this:
6.5% - analogue of the Russian PIT
4.4% - social insurance
The Russian level in 13% British taxes reach when salary passes for 115 sput per month
And only when the monthly salary rolls over 555 000 rubles per month, the British start to unfasten the "nightmarish" 34% income tax + 5% - social insurance.
Because British direct taxes do not pursue the goal of filling the budget, but solely - the goal of demonstrating British fiscal superiority in the foreign market and preventing the accumulation of capital in the domestic. The latter is solely as a protective barrier erected by the current elite to make it difficult for the plebs to enter its ranks.
Why do they know this, but change nothing?
Why change something that suits you completely? The interest from the unpredictable share of profits is in fact very convenient precisely because of its uncertainty, and the huge amount of all sorts of various taxes simply amazes with its complexity.
"Do you think that the main corruption is growing at the stage of distribution of budget funds? Naivnyak! How many taxes are actually collected in the state? How do you know this figure? From newspapers? Ok. And how can you check? On other newspapers? That is, someone somewhere then, after counting the revenues of the state treasury in a column, or simply pressing the "Total" button, someone says there: "Tell the press that during the reporting period millions of people were collected, which is 98% of the plan" ... Are you sure that kavyrnadat, and not two more? Where there is a simple, convenient, affordable and understandable way check these numbers? There are no such? Well, then let's remember the classic joke about Vasily Ivanovich and his victory in poker:
- And we are accustomed to believe each other's word ...
- Well, here, me, Petka, the map and went ...
When and who can change all this?
Only when the food supply of the current elite narrows to such an extent that the remaining feed will be less than half of it. It is then that a revolutionary situation will emerge, where, under the slogan of restoring justice, the deprived troughs of parven will find revolutionary passion and begin to offer truly revolutionary changes, in particular, a more open, competitive, understandable and friendly (in relation to the population) tax policy.
A change of the current government, by the way, is not at all necessary for this. Particularly sensitive (informed) managers usually initiate from above those processes that must be started in order not to be below.
It remains only to closely monitor the process of distribution and redistribution of resources under the carpets of the corridors of power and try:
a) not to oversleep the moment when they begin to offer something sensible.
b) do not die early, as the feed will be missed not only by the elite.
Judging by the dances and dances in these very corridors of power, it does not take long to wait, the movement is serious. So, "For Health!", Which is still useful for all of us. And our state definitely does not need taxes. Tested in practice, confirmed by arithmetic - even what is going is not used.
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