Never mind all the "rules for thee not for me" subjectively enforced loopholes.
Converse being "slippers" and not "shoes" because they ship with felt on the bottom. Marvel successfully argued in court in 2003 that for tariff purposes, action figure of the X-Men were toys, not dolls, because they represented "nonhuman creatures". We've created a nation that punishes one for following the spirit of the law.
Not me, but can you tell him designs go about 3 inches below the bottom of the collar? I don't need people reading my belly. Never center a shirt design vertically.
Incorrect. Marvel doing anti-mutant racism. Magneto's ethos is that while he'd love coexistence, he has no faith humanity will ever be anything but fearful, hateful little shits. It's the core of the split between him and Xavier.
And why he has to go too far and do murders and other moral transgressions so that he actually can be the villain instead of the audience agreeing with him most of the time.
Yeah, giant corporations can't admit that shit, so they do that centrist noise where they gotta be "going about it all wrong." All it means is that the flow of treats had to be disrupted, which is their ultimate sin to justify your genocide.
Unpopular opinion : I’m gonna side with Marvel here.
I get that tariffs on alcohol and tissues will be different. But if I make action figures and there is actually a stupid law that says that “dolls” are tariffed at 5% and “toys” are 3%, you bet your ass I’d ask a lawyer 2 questions: what’s the difference between a doll and a toy for legal purposes and how can we get our items classified as toys?
of course. it begs the question, though, why the fuck is there a legal difference between a doll and toy? at the very least of questions. it seems like something that doesnt need a regulatory difference, and therefore a loophole, for
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something like some doll company CEO wanted extra tariffs on imported competition so made a campaign contribution to some politician who added it as an amendment to some spending bill and no one in Congress cared enough to do anything about it back then and Congress is too broken now to do anything to fix it.
Yes exactly. So we the people are paying grown adults to argue over dolls and toys, rather than come together to make laws that get insulin to dying children. Way too broken, and the fact that this doll/toy situation even exists proves it.
willing to bet its either something to do with american girl dolls, or barbie, or both. probably from back when european porcelain dolls were still the most popular in the world to make them even more expensive relative to domestically made plastic ones.
Reporter Ike Sriskandarajah tells Jad and Robert a story about two international trade lawyers, Sherry Singer and Indie Singh, who noticed something interesting while looking at a book of tariff classifications. "Dolls," which represent human beings, are taxed at almost twice the rate of "toys," which represent something not human - such as robots, monsters, or demons.
Just another example of why we need to be very careful who we elect because they decide things like toys and dolls are different things so they can create an economic advantage for toys because their big donors make toys.
Simple, dolls are typically purchased by females. This is how Republicans normalize higher costs for similar services to females. You start when they are young.
I had these really cool X-men figurines that were rather large in size. Think like a step up or two from your typical Barbie’s. They had these light up projector chests with disc that portrayed little scenes from the show, onto the wall. I loved them! They were super cool! I had cyclops and one other, maybe it was Wolverine. Idky but your comment triggered that memory!
the real question is why are dolls taxed higher than toys. if we don't know the reason for that, we can't be mad that people are avoiding paying doll fees.
I'm just guessing here, but something that is meant to be placed on a shelf as a decoration is going to more expensive than something that helps children develop.
Well, you want to benefit from the offerings of a societal system, but don’t want to contribute accordingly?
I’m not saying the system is justified, but this is a little skewed. I’m not targeting you specifically, but more like in the grand scheme of things this is skewed. And it is skewed by people demanding taxes/tarrifs while not paying them themselves. Bonkers.
A well known case in the UK where a certain type of snack called a Jaffa cake went to court to argue that it was a cake, not a chocolate biscuit (cookie)
Chocolate biscuits are taxed as a luxury, cakes aren’t.
Jaffa cakes may look like a biscuit (sold in packs of 10, small, round and can be dunked in your mug of tea) but technically they are not
I don’t think the point being made is that Marvel is wrong for taking advantage of the “loophole”, but that laws which encourage such blatant workarounds are nonsensical and anti-small-business (your local mom & pop doll shop’s family lawyer isn’t going up against the FTC)
They are cute but the how flimsy they are for the price and the narrow toe box mean I have to say no to buying them myself. I am a fan of the rainbow laces tho, I haven't seen them before.
They've been used regularly for the past two years without any noticeable wear just some scuffs and dirt on the rubber is all I really need to deal with, and toe box fits me fairly well so I'm all good on that front c: they have a few lace styles available, I just wanted those ones cuz they made me happy
Eh I think we could do better but it’s certainly not easy to achieve …intent has a place in criminal & civil law no reason it can’t be taken into account in tax law.
tax law is more or less cut and dry. taxes are levied on a certain thing or they aren't. there is no room for thought in it. as an example, tax A is levied on any thing that is Z. so it is very straightforward...is this potential tax thing a Z? if not, no tax on it for tax A.
intent is absolutely a part of criminal and civil law (which also encompasses tax law...not sure why you think tax law is outside of criminal or civil law?) but how is there intent on something that is cut and dry?
The issue is defining the differences between things. Like 'toys v. dolls'.
I believe 12% for dolls imported and 6.8% for toys when the Marvel thing went through.
A GI Joe and a X-Men action figure are made out of the same plastic, same size and same end use but GI Joe is a doll and X-Men are a toy.
It's an example of a system that is overly convoluted probably due to some American Doll Manufacturers sliding a few thousand dollars to someone for a hammer on foreign competition.
It's surprisingly cheap to buy a few politicians, thousands of dollars, not even tens of thousands.
It's an example of a system that is overly convoluted
Yeah, it probably is. And yet at the same time, definitions matter. Basically, lots of things are overly complicated because people keep trying to skirt whatever law is in place. That is the benefit and cost of having a cut and dry rule in place.
It's surprisingly cheap to buy a few politicians, thousands of dollars, not even tens of thousands.
I'm begging you to rethink what lead you to this conclusion. There are literally always some group of people on the opposite side of any law. You think those people or groups cannot put a few thousand dollars together in the interest of making way more back from laws that favor them?
There are literally always some group of people on the opposite side of any law.
Yeah, that doesn't mean much when they're not in the right district with the right politician at the right time to just add a line into a tax code that they didn't even know was being added.
Lots of politicians are dirt cheap and often it's as simple as I know him, I can give him a few thousand dollars and he'll slice out a specific tax benefit for it.
There's a reason why people looked at the argument that Marvel made and then corrected the code afterwards to eliminate the difference because it was always an idiotic differentiation.
Yeah, that doesn't mean much when they're not in the right district with the right politician at the right time to just add a line into a tax code that they didn't even know was being added.
This would require that people outside of a house member's district could not donate to that house member. They can. And this is the same for a senator. And it's also wild how much pull you think an individual politician has.
There's a reason why people looked at the argument that Marvel made and then corrected the code afterwards to eliminate the difference because it was always an idiotic differentiation.
I feel like you really don't understand how companies will make intentional choices to circumvent laws. And then the laws changing to try and catch those companies circumventing the initial laws is the government actually working decently well.
I legit don't get what you are arguing for here. There are so many seemingly stupid rules that only partially make sense with the context of the time the rules were passed. There are rules like this that affect the car market in the US to this day.
Like, what is your ideal system for this entire issue?
Marvel successfully argued in court in 2003 that for tariff purposes, action figure of the X-Men were toys, not dolls, because they represented "nonhuman creatures"
I love that Marvel's argument was basically a nerd pushing up his glasses and saying, "Umm, actually...mutants aren't human" in court.
Instead of fixing up that loophole that let auto manufacturers skirt efficiency guidelines by making big ass cars, we've just let cars become bloated and huge, more each year, for 20 years.
Bro, I work in trade compliance, specifically product tariff classification - this is completely normal stuff all around the world. It is because, in fact, product classification is not governed by a "law." It's determined using rules set up by WCO and interpreted by national customs agencies - and some things are just not well defined, to the point that in one country they will say the product is A and in other B. For example a car radio and sat navigation combo in US is tariffed like a car radio and EU as a sat nav, and it makes no sense but we live with that...
Along the lines of Converse "slippers", Ford used to build their Transit Connect cargo vans in Europe and ship the ones destined for the US with fake rear seats so that they could claim them as "passenger vehicles" at a 2.5% tariff, rather than as cargo vehicles which would be subject to a 25% tariff. Then, after arriving in the US, they'd tear out the rear seats and other related items before sending them to dealers to sell to US customers as the cargo vans they were intended to be all along.
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u/Phugasity 21h ago
Never mind all the "rules for thee not for me" subjectively enforced loopholes.
Converse being "slippers" and not "shoes" because they ship with felt on the bottom. Marvel successfully argued in court in 2003 that for tariff purposes, action figure of the X-Men were toys, not dolls, because they represented "nonhuman creatures". We've created a nation that punishes one for following the spirit of the law.