FROM LEO ROGERS – AUTHOR OF “YOUR PASSPORT TO TAX FREEDOM” Most people trying to make a crust online (or offline for that matter) are so focused on doing just that, they ignore taking simple steps to ensure that they hang on to just as much of it as they can. Instead, they hand over large lumps of their hard-earned money in tax, usually in one of two mistaken beliefs. Either:- 1.It’s a good thing, a sure sign of a civilised society. Or, 2.If they don’t,
Feds will “get them”, fining them, expropriating their assets, maybe even jailing them.
I’d respectfully suggest that those two “reasons” are mutually exclusive. Visiting penal sanctions on citizens because they decline to hand over their money to you could hardly be regarded as mark of a civilised society. In fact it might more properly be regarded as mark of a criminal one!
So how does this situation arise, and how can thinking man or woman avoid it?
Most e-mails I receive regarding business opportunities trumpet benefits of being an entrepreneur. Now Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “entrepreneur” as follows:
“A person who undertakes or controls a business and bears risk of profit or loss”.
Yes, that’s “risk”, “profit” and “loss”. All things that people with their own businesses regard as being as inevitable as night following day.
Interestingly, SOED contains no definition of “rentseeker”. Still, key term in to Google and you’ll discover that it refers to people who want to be paid to take your money for a “service” that you would not yourself choose to pay for.
Now let’s just talk this one through:
1.They want to be paid. In practice, they don’t just wish to be paid, but to enjoy substantial pension rights. All of this is funded by taxpayer. 2.In return for these payments, they undertake to extract further sums of taxpayers’ money to provide what they describe as “services”. 3.Critically, taxpayers would not, either as individuals or collectively, freely choose to pay for these services. If they did, they would do so, in marketplace. 4.The money is therefore taken by coercion. 5.They lack any concept whatever of risk (at least to themselves) or of profit (to taxpayers). Loss, on other hand, is guaranteed to each and every taxpayer.
Now, in any other context, this process is known as “robbery”, or, more subtly, “fraud”.
After all, it IS your money, right? Well not according to Uncle Sam, or, depending where you’re based, your nearest friendly local equivalent. Governments seem to think that they’ve generally got a whole lot better set of ideas about what to do with your money than you might have yourself (despite all evidence to contrary in front of everyone’s eyes). What they’ve particularly got, however, is a set of excellent ideas for using your income to pay their own salaries and pensions (final salary, index-linked, performance-irrelevant). And these people are known as rentseekers.
