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A French teenager has been jailed after buying a PlayStation 4 for under £8 by weighing it as if the games console was a huge bag of fruit.
The 19-year-old man, named in the French media as Adel, picked the device off the shelf and took it to the fruit section and weighed it.
He then put a sticker with the heavily reduced price tag on the expensive console and went to the checkout.
Adel paid £7.86 (€9) for the 6lb bag of 'fruit' at a self-checkout at a supermarket in Montbeliard, eastern France, last September.
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Teenager Jailed After Buying PS4 for £8 by Weighing it and Paying for it as Food
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @07:37PM (7 children)
I won't necessarily disagree with this. The whole idea of the federal income tax seems weird, perhaps what should happen is that the federal government should only be allowed to impose a tax on the taxes that states bring in. This would incentivize states to tax less because if they tax more then more goes to the federal government. It shouldn't be assumed that the end goal of government should be to maximize tax revenue.
The state governments, for instance, should be allowed to impose things like sales, property, and income tax. Of the total tax revenue that a state government receives the federal government can impose a federal tax. For instance, it can impose a ten percent federal tax on state taxes. Perhaps it can even impose tax brackets on state taxes received. So long as the same rates apply to each state.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:15PM (4 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:50PM (3 children)
I call it an adversarial tax structure.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:54PM (2 children)
In opposed to the cumulative or additive tax structure that we currently have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @09:58PM
Aka a compounded or compounding or compound tax structure. Let's see if the names adversarial vs compound tax structure sticks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 06 2021, @10:01PM
Not to be confused with a bracketed vs a flat tax.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @01:24AM (1 child)
WRT tax brackets perhaps federal tax brackets on state taxes based on the number of residents (using a federal census). This needs to be done carefully so as not to incentivize states to accept more residents just to lower their tax bracket, then everyone will have multi state residency ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday October 07 2021, @02:33PM
(they can do it based on primary residents but consideration must be taken WRT states that may allow more and more people to immigrate in or encourage more and more births just to lower their tax brackets).
So to break it down
A: Governments naturally want to maximize tax revenue
B: It should not be the goal of government to maximize tax revenue
C: Taxes are necessary
B: We should create a tax structure that allows for the government to collect necessary taxes while disincentivizing them from maximizing tax revenue
An adversarial tax structure may help to meet these requirements in opposed to a compound tax structure (where you pay state income tax in addition to federal income tax in addition to local taxes in addition to whatever other taxes every government you are subject to wants to collect). You have the local government taxing you and you have bigger regional governments that the smaller government is subject to taxing the local government's taxes. So long as the local governments get taxed the same then the government wants to balance its interests in maximizing its tax revenue with its interests in reducing the amount of money that leaves its local community.
Care must also be taken WRT to inflation as that's also an undue tax by the federal government. Perhaps if the federal government prints money then the states should receive some of that money as well to use how they see fit? The federal government's ability to print money kinda messes this up as they can easily just print more and more money to try and spend how they see fit. This is also something that needs to be looked at.
(so the whole concept still needs work for a variety of reasons).