💯 Mickey Mouse:1-Rhode Island:0

Hey,

We all knew that recovering from this Pandemic was going to be a task, and you thought your government would help you do that. And so did Britain, but sadly that didn’t work out.

In an attempt to “open-up” the high streets of England, the British Politician Rishi Sunak is planning an online sales tax. This will make online products more costly compared to the shops on the streets.

Does this tax ensure that people will go out of their way to buy things from the streets? Or could they put a hold on shopping altogether? What about the people who have absolutely no choice but to shop online?

This Week’s Dose

• Mickey Mouse:1-Rhode Island:0

• Wealth Tax- A Necessity?

• Crazy tax Story- Metabo Law

Mickey Mouse:1-Rhode Island:0

Walt Disney once said, “When you’re curious, you find lots of interesting things to do.”

Rhode Island’s Division of Taxation put up names of Mickey Mouse and Walt Disney as “test signatures” (maybe because they’re Disney fans?). And then – to the horror of taxpayers – they forgot to put the actual signatures in tax refund cheques. So, the Island residents received cheques signed “Mickey Mouse” and “Walt Disney” in place of General Treasurer and State Controller respectively. 

“The invalid signature lines were incorrectly sourced from the Division’s test print files,” they said in a statement,
(we believe you!)

These 176 cheques were related to various business taxes, including sales tax, corporate, and tax credit refunds. A majority of them were corporate tax refunds! In response to this blunder, these cheques have been rendered null and the worthy recipients shall receive the revised cheques within a week.

Wealth Tax- A Necessity? 

The pandemic is changing the way we look at taxes. The idea of a wealth tax doesn’t look so bad now.

A few weeks back, 83 millionaires joined hands against the COVID battle saying, “Tax us. Tax us. Tax us. Humanity is more important than our money!” California democrats proposed a tax hike on the state’s highest earners on July 30. This would result in a maximum tax rate of 54% for the millionaires of The Golden State.

Sam Dastyari, the former Labor Senator of Australia has proposed a 1% tax on all Australians. He said that the people from the Land Down Under are ‘in this together.’ Also, in the land of the Kiwis, a new tax rate has been proposed by the Tax Justice Aotearoa- 50% on every dollar of personal income over USD 150k and an annual levy of 2% on net wealth over USD 2m.

Take a wild guess, how much ‘money’ is there on this planet. It’s USD 95.7 trillion! ‘Broad Money’ is a concept which means ‘cash or very liquid cash-like form.’ And much of this is effectively untaxed. Suppose there was a levy of 2% on this. It would raise USD 1.92 trillion a year. And how transformational that would be? It can cost as little as USD 7 billion to USD 265 billion to eliminate world hunger (according to IFPRI).

MetaBo? More like MetaBlow! – Crazy Tax Story

Surely, when you hear about a ‘Fat Tax’, you might yawn it away thinking it might resonate with the usual taxes on junk/fatty food. Well, not with Japan’s Metabo law.

In an attempt to overcome the obesity rates, in 2008, Japan introduced Metabo (a word associated with being overweight) law which legit requires men and women between the ages of 40 and 75 to have their waist measured every year. One inch above – of the limit of 85 cm for men and 90 cm for women – and you must pay a fine.

Now we know what you might be thinking –  surely the citizens were against it? Nah!. They took it in a positive manner  & even made songs and slogans about how much they love it!

#bodypositivity looking real bleak right now…

Byte of the Day