Freedom of information or enslaved by it?

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Read this article. This will give you a sense of the extent to which understanding the Australian Tax Code has extended beyond the laymen notion of commonsense. The price of not knowing the meaning of significance of this information is probably:

1. Several thousand dollars in punitive fines a year

2. About $2ooo in company accounts, requiring an accountant - minimum!

3. Requiring a specialist accountant - depending on your activities you could spend $10,000 a year on 'statutory commonsense'

4. You could find yourself our of pocket to the tune of millions if you seek a ruling from the tax office......which will take months, and you might be none the wiser because they did not understand the implications of their own system, and they can't let you get away with the implications. If there are less than 20,000 taxpayers effected, you are toast.

5. You can spend up to a week of your life, i.e. 2% of your time doing your tax, collecting receipts, typing them up, photocopying them, mailing them to your accountant, having tax planning meetings with him, subjecting yourself to an audit. I don't participate in this crap any more. I am on strike. I'm not alone. There are many of you doing the same thing; just in different ways. The ones with money use accountants in Bermuda. Well, I guess that is a 'tax holiday'. Some go live in the Philippines or Thailand; some drop out of the workforce, and go live on a isolated farm. Some of you become homeless, and wonder the streets 'tax free'.

Read this article and just note the concepts used. There are concepts like "GDP adjustment factors" or 'dividend imputation". I just don't consider slavery an option. I am not prepared to spend a minute on my life living for the government. Jumping its hurdles. There are perfectly good moral principles of common law which apply in any particular context. I don't need a 4000-page tax code to understand these laws...they are perfectly intelligible to all people. They prevent extortion...at least from other people. But statutory law allows the government to engage in extortion...its called the Tax Code. I no longer participate in this racket, but I know many of you do. All I can say is 'Good luck with that'. The salary men among you are the greatest suckers in that 'unfair' tax system. But even for those among you who think you are free of it....it will eventually find a way to capture the information from those Bermuda banks which so treasure their secrecy.

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Author Andrew Sheldon| Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Thieving ATO targets Paul Hogan

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The Australian Tax Office has scaled up its extortion racket by extracting accusations by a tax advisor to Paul Hogan and John Cornell. Why do I say this? It has long been the practice of the ATO to target high-profile, wealthy Australians who clearly don't believe in paying excessive taxes to support regimes they don't believe in. One cannot say what justification Hogan & Cornell had for minimising taxation. I can only say that any law based on extortion, unconditional and 'initiated' coercion, whether it is the arbitrary law of a 'representative' government or some mob, is still theft. There is no moral legitimacy behind the law, and the fact that it is a 'tyranny of the majority' who condemn these men because of their own cynical acceptance of slavery, in no way admonishes them. Slavery is bad for everyone. Unconditionally funding government results in the worst form of public administration.

Send a message to the ATO that you do not support persecution of wealthy Australians for the sake of its self-serving power plays. Does anyone remember the efforts the government went in pursuit of Rene Rivkin. In the meantime, you can't even get the govt to look at disclosure issues. This is where it should be focused. Fraud and disclosure - to protect the legitimate interests of Australians...not stealing money from those who have 'made it'....why? Because they have more than you.

Japan Foreclosed Guide Mining Fundamentals eBook Resource Rent Tax Australia

Author Andrew Sheldon| Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

Seasonal tax threats care of your accountant

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Its tax season and as can be expected every season, the Australian Tax Office (ATO) is out with its own form of "shock & awe". By that I mean psychological abuse. Basically the tax office is the execution agency which implements unethical laws. By that I mean there is no logical defense or justification for forcing you to pay tax. Of course there are plenty of rationalisations. But since they have no great conviction and they don't expect to either, they use subtle threats in the media. The nature of the threats takes the following form:

1. Appeal to fear: They highlight the consequences of not delcaring your income. They have more diplomacy than the Nazis, but rest assured its the same form of extortion. "We are targeting [certain] tax evaders this year". This year the target is taxpayers who understate revenue. Last year I think it was people who do not declare all their capital gains. The media campaign has the same 'feel' as religions of old, with pastors trying to scare churchgoers into giving 'penance'. Its extortion that ought to have been repudiated centuries ago.

2. Appeal to guilt: There are those appeals to guilt as well of course, with claims that you are a 'tax cheat', or a 'tax evader'. Nonsense. They are the evaders, for the reasons mentioned below. You know what it takes to 'earn' income, whereas they have to rely on extortion.

3. Appeals to utility: There is even appeals to utility, such as the fact that revenue is a basis for valuing an enterprise.

In defense of those who do understate your revenue....I say keep it up! Well done! You are a great Australian! Denying the tax office your money is the equivalent of sparing a bureaucrat his heroin, or denying a politician a pretense that he is doing some good with some stupid, ill-conceived program. Great Australians unite! Taxation is unethical. There is a plethora of reasons why. No good can come from it which cannot be derived from a moral system. It does not even benefit the exponents of the systems. These extorters will never have the pride or sense of efficacy which you derived from 'earning' wealth. Such is the nature of their need to control you. That is the source of their efficacy, to the extent that they have any ambition. They just don't have the efficacy to produce wealth in a competitive context. Just look how they spend your funds, with such schemes as Home Insulation.

Of course government services need to be funded...but they do not need to be provided at your expense, and nor should they be provided unconditionally. If the funding of these services was conditional, they would be provided with care, rather than indifference. If they were provided by the private sector, the provider would be accountable because you are a customer or a potential claimant in a compensation/legal case. For government, which is a middleman, they evade responsibility because they don't want accountability under their administration. That is why war pensioners wait half a century for compensation, when all the sick have long since died. This is the nature of their rout.

If you wonder why an accountant might be extolling the virtues of taxation, think no further than the fact that arbitrary tax systems create loopholes, which create a need for more complex tax systems, demanding an 'ever-increasing' number of tax exemptions, special provisions....sooner of later you end up needing an accountant, paying more tax than you should because you can't be bothered chasing people up for stupid receipts.

The psychological impact of this burden might slip easily off the more successful among you, but regardless, there is no question that such extortion precipitates repression. You simply don't want to consider the validity of these actions because you feel powerless to deal with them. Repression is a common response of slaves and simply people who are having problems coping with stresses they cannot resolve.

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Author

Andrew Sheldon

Resource Rent Tax Australia

Applied Critical Thinking | www.SheldonThinks.com

The appeasement of the business man

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There is no more resounding acknowledgement of slavery than the resignation of a businessman. Quote:

"None of us like paying Income Tax or GST but it is a fact of life and we adjust our pricing to recognise those deductions".

This statement possesses two contradictions:

1. A dichotomy between what he wants (whether it is legitimate or not) and what he feels compelled to do in order to satisfy the external standards of government, the majority of voters, etc. This appears to be a justification for slavery.

2. Primacy of social values. The implication of this statement is that social values are superior to personal values, and that social values are not simply the sum of personal values, but that they transcend the sum of us. i.e. It matters little that 'none of us' like paying tax, the issue is that you are compelled to do so.

3. Moral values are actually not facts or 'facts of life', they are conceptual value judgements. In order to assess the legitimacy of moral imperatives requires a process of reasoning. They are not self-evident. The notion that 'none of us' like paying tax appears to imply that no one likes a gun in the head, and yet no one challenges the underlying justification for slavery. They just accept it. In truth, perhaps this businessman does not mean to imply all people dislike slavery. He simply feels compelled to be a slave because the majority 'in fact' desire that he should live in servitude to them.

Some people might reject this interpretation for two reasons:

1. They might not interpret their situation as slavery. I would respond that a slave is a person whose labour is the product of another. Whether you pay 30% or 100% taxation, it is still a matter of slavery, its just a matter of degree.

2. Some might argue that they are a beneficiary of their 'enslavement'. Actually this is not true because you pay a huge opportunity cost for your enslavement, and the enslavement of your fellow men. Irrespective, it is just a matter of degree. I will address the issue of opportunity cost in another post.

Assuming that he does not literary believe 'none of us' like slavery; that in fact the majority of people support slavery, either because:

1. They have some practical interest to derive from slavery

2. They believe slavery results in the betterment of those who cannot support themselves

I reject both of these premises because:

1. No one benefits from slavery for a number of reasons. The notion that because you have some pecuniary interest in some outcome ignores the greater benefits which would accrue if you were not a slave, and if you your compatriots were not similarly enslaved. i.e. Consider public education. You think you benefit from public education because it is free, but because it is free people will place less value on what they study. They might even become a 'professional student', in the profess deferring their ultimate responsibility as a human being to themselves. That is just one aspect of the inefficiency of taxation. Consider also the impact of the psychology. It is no accident that the education system is run by career socialists. It is a safe government job, but it is also an opportunity for the deluded unthinking, non-conceptual collectivists to indoctrinate your kids before they develop their own minds. Did you think you raised your kids to be 'thinkers' and wonder why they married a plumber? Probably because he had 'big hands'. He was so masculine. Because using your mind is so impractical by contemporary standards. Even money is not made with the mind, but because you have 'inside information', or a special bond with family, friends, or government. How social standards can change when you control the public education system. Oh, and if you thought you were safe with private education. Guess again. What is the standard of value for them? The public system. They don't even have to be marginally better, you will assume it without critical evaluation.

2. Helping others to help themselves. There is no question that we can give people help. I would however suggest however that it does not occur when you are obliged to give to beneficiaries. As soon as you are forced to do anything it ceases to be appreciated, and it starts to become an entitlement, and with it comes the expectancy that you will take care of them. Don't expect appreciation. Instead they will recent you when it is rescinded. The only way you can help people is if you have the power to rescind. The only way they can improve is if you have that power, otherwise they have no power to attain some form of self-discipline. Were you counting on their character? What made you think the education system or their abusive parents would give them any? What made you think the culture of enslavement would do any better for their children, than it did for their parents? I find people impossible to help unless there is a culture or 'ethic' of justice. If values or even 'love' is not conditional, then people are not accountable or rewarded for being good. i.e. Earning love/reward. I know - on some level you agree with this...but on another level you are thinking that 'love is unconditional'. Actually its not - but see my parenting blog for an explanation.

It is however not enough to renounce bad values, you have to stand up and defend the good values. It is not enough to vote for the conservatives. That will not change anything. This is an intellectual battle. Voting for conservatives is like playing craps instead of poker. Either way the game is fixed against you. The only way is to find like-minded people and organise to make a difference. More ideas on this here.

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Andrew Sheldon www.sheldonthinks.com