Today's news is talking about a renewed push to lower the GST threshold so all small items $20 and above will be assessed and charged.
I suppose if you are going to pay any tax then GST is the least worst of them all. How they go about spending it is not something we can control. How hard is it to minimise tax when you are making a purchase? Frugal people would be rewarded. Big spenders would be benefiting the country better. GST on petrol could replace road tax or registration fees etc. The more you use the roads the more you pay, people who don't own a car won't pay for a service they aren't using, it will be added on to their shopping costs by the haulage companies but if you buy local you can reduce costs. If GST could replace all the other taxes and fees we pay then I would welcome it. Sadly I feel that if GST went up there would be more incentive to buy overseas to save money and that would lead to fewer jobs in retail and fewer small businesses in a position to compete with cheaper imports. Idaho had a tax on gold and silver bullion after "Coingate" but they are now voting to remove it as it is not inline with any other investment product. The UK taxes silver but not gold, a clear indication that silver is an industrial metal and not an investment.
I'm fortunate to live in a place that does not tax the purchase of PM's. I have no doubt that someday if gold and silver ever really went super crazy, like maybe $500+ per ounce of silver- this could happen in a true currency collapse type situation), they would come up with some sort of special "windfall tax" to get their share when people sold (instead of the normal tax rate that applies now to capital gains for PM sales). Jim
In the UK the cost of petrol was 83% tax, Brits, who own oil fields in the North Sea, were paying more for petrol than Spaniards, who don't have any oil fields. But even so, we still have to pay extra for roads, and now toll roads in Brisbane. It seems that however much we are paying, it is not enough to satisfy the people who want to spend it, politicians should get a job.
Yes, that's a given with ebay, but the point is whether or not you'd have to add 15% GST on top of all that. I don't think you'd have to, as it would be a private 2nd hand sale of a "used" product.
Gambling profits are tax-free. They have to be, otherwise gambling losses would be a tax-deduction. Lord knows the government can't afford that :lol:
People who say that, calling it a tax on people who can't do math, a stupid tax, a hope tax etc, they just don't get it. Buying a lottery ticket is buying a ticket to dream. If you don't buy the ticket you can't realistically dream about winning it. That's what it's all about. Sure the odds are 76,767,600:1 for winning powerball, and 8,145,060:1 for lotto etc, but the point is no matter how unlikely, someone wins one nearly every week. If you don't have a ticket than that person will never be you. Some people like to dream.
Buying a ticket to a dream....isnt a dream another word for a hope? I prefer getting my money in on something with better pot odds. Besides my partner plays lotto so I will just mooch off her if she wins.
"Dream levy"? My dreams are more ambitious than personal wealth, and probably less likely than winning lotto. At least they only cost me my ignorance.
Yeah but what offer such huge potential return you can really dream about? That's the whole point. No one would play lotto if it was $100k 1st division. A lot of people don't even play for $1M ones any more, they wait for the $10M+
Personal wealth can enable a lot of dreams otherwise unobtainable. If yours don't, more power to you.
