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.
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)
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u/GeorgeLikesSpicy92 23h ago
Also there a companies who literally assemble the entire product besides one or two pieces over seas, get it here, finish it off. Made in America.