As a fundamental belief, paying taxes is a fantastic way to ensure that a country functions well, has good infrastructure, a strong healthcare system, order in the streets, and takes care of the young in schools and the elderly in their final stages of life.
If only it were like that, I would have no problem paying the taxes required to maintain a balanced country. The problem is that the system doesn't work; virtually every country is filled with corrupt leaders and politicians who line their own pockets and egos.
A higher intelligence has figured out that if you can get 99% of the world's population to work for you and believe that what you are doing is the only thing that works, then you can steer the world in the direction you want it to go.
What the EU, tax authorities, OECD, USA, China, Russia, and government leaders are involved in is such a vast apparatus that most people cannot see what is really happening and believe what they are fed by the media and newspapers. And the average 9 to 5 worker doesn't care about what is happening; it's not something that concerns him/her. They don't realize that they are slowly and quietly just a cog in a huge system that exploits them.
I prefer the British approach
Leave the UK - No UK taxes so no money you earned wasted on bailing out Irish bankers whilst the own people are on ones and infrastructure collapses, none of your money bailing out Icelandic banks after your councils deposited all their/your money there and used the yield to bodge local infrastructure, no paying out for migrants that was 10,000 a year but now 1m a year to live the life of Riley in hotels being given cards whilst everyone else can barely put food on the table or heat their home and are surveilled for every transaction in case is tax evasion under the guise it’s for anti terrorism, no funding people that want to lock you down in 15 minute cities or control your ability to speak out.
The downside - no voting (changing), no NHS (probably die waiting to be seen), no pension (Goverment debases @8-12% pa so you won’t be able to buy anything at the end anyway), no safety net (teaches you to be an adult).
Plus side - the 50-80% of taxes you saved give you an outside spending capability living in an emerging economy and the ability to easily renounce citizenship and see the scale of degradation from afar much easier.
As for those that remain and as I see at the table a week ago with a Australian - disgust that countries have tax accommodating policies - they dug their own hole and suffer the consequences for not pulling out
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Australian woman at the table at our usual weekly get together found it heinous that countries like Thailand didn’t charge income tax for income earned if remitted the following year.
Then we got into AML and tax evasion discussions where it got heated - she worked for the post office or owned a post office as I understood - their view was drug money being laundered was “laundering” - I pointed out many of the cases these days are people selling s**t - not declaring it - then being charged with tax evasion and laundering of the proceeds of the crime.
Towards the end of the evening plastered with wine the discussion came up on how to get away from it and CBDC etc I pointed out there is only one way - leave.
But the vast majority won’t and she wasn’t inclined towards that so like I said above - made their own holes - lay in them.
Then we got into AML and tax evasion discussions where it got heated - she worked for the post office or owned a post office as I understood - there view was drug money being laundered was “laundering” - I pointed out many of the cases these days are people selling s**t - not declaring it - then being charged with tax evasion and laundering of the proceeds of the crime.
Towards the end of the evening plastered with wine the discussion came up on how to get away from it and CBDC etc I pointed out there is only one way - leave.
But the vast majority won’t and she wasn’t inclined towards that so like I said above - made their own holes - lay in them.
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Life becomes so much simpler when you leave the West - highly recommend it.