The rise of financial sovereignty — and why some Australians believe they don't have to pay tax - ABC News
The rise of financial sovereignty — and why some Australians believe they don't have to pay tax - ABC News
Groups spring up on social media, claiming to hold secret knowledge the Australian government is holding back from regular citizens: the Australian Taxation Office "isn't real".
The sovereign citizen movement rejects the legitimacy of the government. Its fast-growing popularity has had authorities scrambling to get a handle on how far its tentacles have reached.
Unfortunately, Mr Oxby was persuaded by this theory during the seminar, which I infer from his evidence, was presented in a persuasive and charismatic manner."
He was ultimately fined $14,000.
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Taxation is theft. That is just the way it is. However, one single individual or two standing out are going to get crushed. What really needs to happen is that a bunch of people like tens of thousands need to get together and all declare that they are not paying their taxes. They can easily go after one or two people, but going after tens of thousands is going to make things really hard for them.
Taxation is not theft if the money is spent properly on services that benefit tax payers. Poor taxation policy is theft, since public service quality will diminish over time. Like what we are currently seeing with lack of investment in public services, combined with an asset owning class that doesn't pay tax on its passive wealth, using that wealth to purchase more assets, which drives up prices and shrinks the middle class. If these people had better critical thinking they would rebel against that instead.
With taxation, the individual limits themselves to poorer quality services that could be provided better by private industry. The gang requires you pay them extortion money and then they take that extortion money and fund their friends and cronies and you get poorer services as a result. Even regardless of that, your extortion that you pay also funds foreign wars. Maybe not quite so much in Australia, but especially here in the United States. Our extortion money goes to kill people that we have no reason to kill and no beef against.
Dude, the last 30 years in Australia have proved that private industry does not handle public services better than the government. Since you do not live in Australia, you cannot claim to be as informed on this as a local. I wish Americans would stop chiming in on the state of Australia as though they are experts. Your country has the worst healthcare system in the developed world.
Which is primarily the result of people being willing to pay way too much for those services. We have insurance here and since it comes out of our paychecks we don't really think about it. The way to prevent $500 bandages or $1,000 ambulance rides is to refuse to pay it.
It's not a willingness of all people to pay those exorbitant amounts, they don't have a choice. I was hit by a car a few years ago and had to have ankle surgery and metal plates installed. I've also had to have hand surgery for a broken metacarpal. I didn't pay anything for those surgeries. It was provided on the public dime, which is not a significant hit to my pay check in terms of income tax. If I lived in the states, I would be in massive debt. I have private health care since I work for an American company, but I didn't even need it for life saving healthcare since I live in a country which still has some semblance of universal care for low and medium income citizens.
Well, unless you're going to be thrown into jail for not paying a debt, you actually don't have to pay it. Especially if the costs are not disclosed beforehand and are exorbitant. Enough people do that and market forces will prevail.
Look, I'm not going to argue with you on this anymore since you seem to be fairly dead set on this idea of private industry and market forces being superior, which they are demonstrably not. The overarching point is that basic human needs like health care, aged care etc. should not have a profit incentive. The only way to remedy that is to invest properly in government services and also hold the political class to account when those services are not adequately delivered.
Yep, we are going to have to agree to disagree.
Man you just can't get any first sentences right can you. Wrong again here. Completely.
poorer quality services that could be provided better by private industry.
That could is doing some heavy lifting there.
Fair, government funded services tend to lead to monopoly such as one single trash service, etc which allows the favored to charge higher prices than would be tolerated normally. Lots of small companies competing for business keeps prices low for as long as possible and inflation is the main source of increases.
"government funded services tend to lead to monopoly" I don't think you understand the concept of monopoly lol. We are talking about a service provided by the government, not a privately owned service subsidized by the government.
Six of one-half a dozen of the other. I still only have one trash service, one power company, etc. etc. They look no different.
So advocate for better government services, taxing the ultra wealthy to pay for it, and recognising that private industry is incentivised towards benefiting shareholder profits instead of the public good. If we can drive down wealth inequality through fair taxation policy, everyone benefits and society becomes healthier and the economy becomes more dynamic. Winner winner chicken dinner.
Okay, fine. If you tax the ultra-wealthy at 100% for example, then they have no incentive to work and therefore will no longer be ultra-wealthy and that will pay for what maybe 1% of what's necessary to fund these services and now there are no more ultra-wealthy people so who are you going to tax? The middle class of course.
The key thing to recognise here is that we're not talking about high income earners. We're talking about people who are wealthy due to owning massive amounts of assets which generate passive wealth, and they acquire that wealth because they belong to wealthy families. They don't contribute to the dynamism of the economy. These people don't earn money from working, they suck up all the money from the productive workers. If you're grinding it out and earning 200K that's fine, more power to you. Those people aren't the people I'm talking about.
Right, but the government is a very wasteful spender. As an example, the US government spends the market cap of Apple Incorporated every 100 days. If Apple did that, they would not exist in 100 days. But the government continues to exist. I completely understand that once you obtain a certain amount of wealth, you really don't need any more. However, with that said, I think taxation is the wrong way to handle it and that using another service is the correct way to handle it.
Your first sentence is simply a lie.