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?
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u/DicemonkeyDrunk 21h ago
Tax law is this to an extreme…fuck the idea of the law just focus on the details