Value Added Tax Quotes

She begins to feel that the reality show is the university she never attended. Vicarious reality. Emotion without a value-added tax. Movement without danger. Alma finds her reality. She no longer has a reason to put herself at risk and go out into the hostile, degrading world.

They’d never have thought up Welsh-language television, for example. Or value-added tax. Or Manchester.

VAT Value Added Tax, a sales tax (currently 17.5 percent in Britain) imposed on nearly everything.

But demons like Ligur and Hastur wouldn’t understand. They’d never have thought up Welsh-language television, for example. Or value-added tax. Or Manchester.

People were not getting back what they wanted for their sold labor. Taxes grew and services shrank. Prices rose and quality decayed. Everywhere people felt used and betrayed and coerced and cheated.

Governments could recognize the huge value added if the two biological parents choose to live together with the child: a tax-credit bonus could reduce the tax burden for those who are taxpayers, and income could be supplemented by an equivalent amount for those who are not. The commitment of young parents to their children benefits us all, and we should be prepared to pay for it. When parents withhold this commitment, the rest of us pay for it – heavily.

The Social Security system is a $75 trillion problem. Again, just to give you a sense of scale: Let’s say you started a business the day Jesus Christ was born. Let’s say you weren’t exactly a good businessman, and your business lost a million dollars every day—right through yesterday. How much longer would it take before your losses added up to $1 trillion? About 718 more years should do it, give or take a few months. And that’s just one trillion. Multiply that by seventy-five, and you have the size of the Social Security problem. That’s the amount it would take to fully fund Social Security for all current workers and retirees. To realize the magnitude of the problem we’re facing, consider the fact that the total of all wealth in America is about $60 trillion. We could confiscate every item of value from every American household, including cash and investments, and apply the value to the problem—and still not have enough money to fund Social Security fully.

The air, soil and water cumulatively degrade; the climates and oceans destabilize; species become extinct at a spasm rate across continents; pollution cycles and volumes increase to endanger life-systems at all levels in cascade effects; a rising half of the world is destitute as inequality multiplies; the global food system produces more and more disabling and contaminated junk food without nutritional value; non-contagious diseases multiply to the world’s biggest killer with only symptom cures; the vocational future of the next generation collapses across the world while their bank debts rise; the global financial system has ceased to function for productive investment in life-goods; collective-interest agencies of governments and unions are stripped while for-profit state subsidies multiply; police state laws and methods advance while belligerent wars for corporate resources increase; the media are corporate ad vehicles and the academy is increasingly reduced to corporate functions; public sectors and services are non-stop defunded and privatized as tax evasion and transnational corporate funding and service by governments rise at the same time at every level.

Are you serious? I mean, drugs or gambling or something. But cheese?" "Gambling's legal, most places," Miller said. "And a chemistry class dropout can cook up just about any drug you like in his bathroom. No way to control supply." "Real cheese comes from Earth, or Mars," Naomi added. "And after they tack on shipping costs and the Coalition's fifty percent in taxes, it costs more than fuel pellets." "We wound up with one hundred and thirty kilos of Vermont Cheddar in evidence lockup," Miller said. "Street value that would have probably bought someone their own ship (...).

Progressive taxes are inherently flawed in that they fund public services which are often location-dependent, thus adding to the value of owned land. Thus, any tax that pays for public services without obtaining revenue from resulting land value increases is fundamentally unjust.

In an innovative proposal linked to basic income that has attracted interest across the European Union, Philippe van Parijs has suggested that every EU resident (presumably, legal resident) would receive a Euro-Dividend averaging €200 per month, paid for by a 20 per cent value added tax.11 This would amount to about 10 per cent of EU GDP.

Prior to the opening up of the economy in 1980, the government relied on the artificially protected profits of SOEs to pad its budget. When economic reforms were introduced, SOE profits plummeted and government’s revenues fell precipitously to around 10 percent of GDP until the major fiscal reform in 1994 which introduced new valued-added and consumption taxes. The restructured fiscal system has steadily increased government revenue, which is currently around 22 percent of GDP, but it has also created an imbalance between the central and local governments. While the local governments were left responsible for funding more than 70 percent of government expenditures, they only collect about half of the tax revenue.24

The most important mystery of ancient Egypt was presided over by a priesthood. That mystery concerned the annual inundation of the Nile flood plain. It was this flooding which made Egyptian agriculture, and therefore civilisation, possible. It was the centre of their society in both practical and ritual terms for many centuries; it made ancient Egypt the most stable society the world has ever seen. The Egyptian calendar itself was calculated with reference to the river, and was divided into three seasons, all of them linked to the Nile and the agricultural cycle it determined: Akhet, or the inundation, Peret, the growing season, and Shemu, the harvest. The size of the flood determined the size of the harvest: too little water and there would be famine; too much and there would be catastrophe; just the right amount and the whole country would bloom and prosper. Every detail of Egyptian life was linked to the flood: even the tax system was based on the level of the water, since it was that level which determined how prosperous the farmers were going to be in the subsequent season. The priests performed complicated rituals to divine the nature of that year’s flood and the resulting harvest. The religious elite had at their disposal a rich, emotionally satisfying mythological system; a subtle, complicated language of symbols that drew on that mythology; and a position of unchallenged power at the centre of their extraordinarily stable society, one which remained in an essentially static condition for thousands of years. But the priests were cheating, because they had something else too: they had a nilometer. This was a secret device made to measure and predict the level of flood water. It consisted of a large, permanent measuring station sited on the river, with lines and markers designed to predict the level of the annual flood. The calibrations used the water level to forecast levels of harvest from Hunger up through Suffering through to Happiness, Security and Abundance, to, in a year with too much water, Disaster. Nilometers were a – perhaps the – priestly secret. They were situated in temples where only priests were allowed access; Herodotus, who wrote the first outsider’s account of Egyptian life the fifth century BC, was told of their existence, but wasn’t allowed to see one. As late as 1810, thousands of years after the nilometers had entered use, foreigners were still forbidden access to them. Added to the accurate records of flood patters dating back centuries, the nilometer was an essential tool for control of Egypt. It had to be kept secret by the ruling class and institutions, because it was a central component of their authority. The world is full of priesthoods. The nilometer offers a good paradigm for many kinds of expertise, many varieties of religious and professional mystery. Many of the words for deliberately obfuscating nonsense come from priestly ritual: mumbo jumbo from the Mandinka word maamajomboo, a masked shamanic ceremonial dancer; hocus pocus from hoc est corpus meum in the Latin Mass. On the one hand, the elaborate language and ritual, designed to bamboozle and mystify and intimidate and add value; on the other the calculations that the pros make in private. Practitioners of almost every métier, from plumbers to chefs to nurses to teachers to police, have a gap between the way they talk to each other and they way they talk to their customers or audience. Grayson Perry is very funny on this phenomenon at work in the art world, as he described it in an interview with Brian Eno. ‘As for the language of the art world – “International Art English” – I think obfuscation was part of its purpose, to protect what in fact was probably a fairly simple philosophical point, to keep some sort of mystery around it. There was a fear that if it was made understandable, it wouldn’t seem important.

We have taxes upon every article that enters into the mouth, or covers the back, or is placed under the foot; taxes upon everything which it is pleasant to feel, smell, or taste; taxes on everything in the earth, or in the waters under the earth; on everything that comes from abroad or that is grown at home ; taxes on the raw material; taxes on every value that is added to it by the industry of man ; taxes on the sauce which pampers man's appetite, and on the drug which restores him to health ; on the ermine which covers the judge, and the rope that hangs the criminal; on the poor man's salt, and the rich man's spice; on the brass nails of the coffin, and the ribbons of the bride; — on bed and board — couchant or levant — we must pay. The schoolboy whips his taxed top; the beardless youth manages a taxed horse, with a taxed bridle, on a taxed road; and the dying Englishman, pouring his medicine, which has paid seven per cent, into a spoon which has paid fifteen per cent, flings himself back upon his chintz bed, which has paid twenty-two per cent, and expires in the arms of an apothecary who has paid a license of one hundred pounds for the privilege of presiding at his death-bed. His whole property is then taxed from two to twenty per cent. Besides the probate, large fees are demanded for burying him in the chancel ; his virtues are handed down to posterity on taxed marble, and he is gathered to his fathers to be taxed no more.

Aufgabe des Ökonomen ist es nicht, über die grundsätzliche Wahrscheinlichkeit, mit der sportliche Talente die in sie gesetzten Erwartungen erfüllen, zu befinden, sondern ebendiese durch eine leistungsorientierte Vergütung zu erhöhen.

Der Randsport ist gemessen am Massensport ein schweres Brot. Und wenn der Markt die Leistung einer Randsportart faktisch ignoriert, nichts davon wissen will, welche Qualen Kunstturnerinnen etwa leiden, lässt das aufhorchen, gibt das noch jedem Ökonomen der Welt zu denken.

Die ausgetretenen Pfade verlässt bloß, wer Randsportarten aufwertet, ohne dabei den Massensportarten Abtrag zu tun und sie unbotmäßig in Misskredit zu bringen.

People who have seen the latest Greek plan said Athens was proposing new savings in the pension system — the biggest sticking point — which will amount to about 0.4 per cent of gross domestic product this year and just over 1 per cent next year. But this is short of the 1 per cent savings this year and next that Greece’s creditors had demanded. It also relies on higher employer contributions which, alongside proposed tax changes targeting corporate profits, could crimp economic growth, some creditor officials fear. The two sides also remain at loggerheads over rates of valued added tax on electricity and processed food. According to officials who attended the eurogroup meeting, Christine Lagarde, the International Monetary Fund chief, was particularly tough.

Central Excise 2.3 Central Excise Duty is levied by the Central Government under the Central Excise Act, 1944. The levy is on all goods manufactured and produced in India, which are specified in the schedule to the Central Excise Tariff Act subject to certain exemptions. The effective rate may vary from product to product though most goods are subject to excise duty at 10% (without education cess). As manufacturer, credit is allowed on excise duty and countervailing duty paid on inputs and capital goods and the service tax paid on input service. The credit is allowed as a setoff against the excise duty payable on the output. Cross credit utilisation between credit of service tax and excise duty has been enabled w.e.f.10.9.2004. Service tax 2.4 Service tax is levied by the Central Government under Chapter V and Chapter VA of Finance Act, 1994. Service tax is levied on specified services, referred to as taxable services, when rendered by a service provider. Service tax is presently taxed at 10% (without education cess).Ordinarily, service tax is payable by the service provider, except in specified cases. As service provider, credit is allowed on excise duty and countervailing duty paid on inputs and capital goods and the service tax paid on input service. The credit is allowed as a set-off against the service tax payable on taxable services. VAT & CST 2.5 Value Added Tax (VAT) is levied by the State Governments on transfer of property in goods from one person to another, when such transfer is for cash, deferred payment or other valuable consideration. VAT is also payable on certain transactions that are deemed to be sale such as transfer of right to use goods, hire purchase and sale by instalments, works contract and sale of food and drink as a part of rendering of any service. 2.6 Local VAT is payable when goods are sold within the State and Central Sales Tax (CST) is payable when sale occasions the movement of goods 4

The Greek GDP spiked 25% when statisticians dove into the country’s black market in 2006, for instance, thereby enabling the government to take out several hefty loans shortly before the European debt crisis broke out. Italy started including its black market back in 1987, which swelled its economy by 20% overnight. “A wave of euphoria swept over Italians,” reported the New York Times, “after economists recalibrated their statistics taking into account for the first time the country’s formidable underground economy of tax evaders and illegal workers.”4 And that’s to say nothing of all the unpaid labor that doesn’t even qualify as part of the black market, from volunteering to childcare to cooking, which together represents more than half of all our work. Of course, we can hire cleaners or nannies to do some of these chores, in which case they count toward the GDP, but we still do most ourselves. Adding all this unpaid work would expand the economy by anywhere from 37% (in Hungary) to 74% (in the UK).5 However, as the economist Diane Coyle notes, “generally official statistical agencies have never bothered – perhaps because it has been carried out mainly by women.”6 While we’re on the subject, only Denmark has ever attempted to quantify the value of breastfeeding in its GDP. And it’s no paltry sum: In the U.S., the potential contribution of breast milk has been estimated at an incredible $110 billion a year7 – about the size of China’s military budget.

Under King Salman, the technocrats’ representative body has lost influence. Major reforms have bypassed it. The Majlis al-Shura did not vote on Vision 2030, the Saudi Aramco initial public offering, or the imposition of a value-added tax.

Large and obscure words tax mental resources too much, interrupting you from making your point and disconnecting you from your audience. That’s why simplicity in speech is valued and used by people in the most important fields, like tech and politics.

Depreciation gets special IRS attention, and requires Form 4562. To fill out this form (whether you’re doing it with DIY software or providing info to your accountant), you’ll need to know the basis of your rental property. The basis for depreciation is different than the overall basis because land does not get depreciated, and may change over time if you make improvements to the property. To get started you’ll need to know: • The original purchase price of the property • The list of closing costs (most closing costs get added to the basis) • Land value, which you can find on the most recent property tax assessment paperwork • Additions or improvements you made that will add value for more than one year (think replaced roof, not repainted rooms) • The date the property was “placed in service,” meaning made available for rent The

With the first banks opened on Monday, the afternoon brought another request from Roosevelt. Stating that he needed the tax revenue, he asked Congress that beer with alcohol content of up to 3.2 percent be made legal; the Eighteenth Amendment did not specify the percentage that constituted an intoxicating beverage. Congress complied. The House passed the bill the very next day with a vote count of 316–97, pushing it to the Senate. Wednesday brought good cheer: The stock market opened for the first time in Roosevelt’s presidency. In a single-day record, the Dow Jones Industrial Average gained over 15 percent—a gain in total market value of $3 billion. By Thursday, for increased fiscal prudence, the Senate had added an exemption for wine to go with beer, but negotiated the alcohol content down to 3.05 percent. Throughout the week, banks were receiving net deposits rather than facing panicked withdrawals. Over the following weeks, the administration developed a sweeping farm package designed to “increase purchasing power of our farmers” and “relieve the pressure of farm mortgages.” To guarantee the safety of bank deposits, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation was created. To regulate the entire American stock and bond markets, the Exchange Act of 1933 required companies to report their financial condition accurately to the buying public, establishing the Securities and Exchange Commission. Safety nets such as Social Security for retirement and home loan guarantees for individuals would be added to the government’s portfolio of responsibilities within a couple of years. It was the largest peacetime escalation of government in American history.

The Economics of Property-Casualty Insurance With the acquisition of General Re — and with GEICO’s business mushrooming — it becomes more important than ever that you understand how to evaluate an insurance company. The key determinants are: (1) the amount of float that the business generates; (2) its cost; and (3) most important of all, the long-term outlook for both of these factors. To begin with, float is money we hold but don't own. In an insurance operation, float arises because premiums are received before losses are paid, an interval that sometimes extends over many years. During that time, the insurer invests the money. Typically, this pleasant activity carries with it a downside: The premiums that an insurer takes in usually do not cover the losses and expenses it eventually must pay. That leaves it running an "underwriting loss," which is the cost of float. An insurance business has value if its cost of float over time is less than the cost the company would otherwise incur to obtain funds. But the business is a lemon if its cost of float is higher than market rates for money. A caution is appropriate here: Because loss costs must be estimated, insurers have enormous latitude in figuring their underwriting results, and that makes it very difficult for investors to calculate a company's true cost of float. Errors of estimation, usually innocent but sometimes not, can be huge. The consequences of these miscalculations flow directly into earnings. An experienced observer can usually detect large-scale errors in reserving, but the general public can typically do no more than accept what's presented, and at times I have been amazed by the numbers that big-name auditors have implicitly blessed. As for Berkshire, Charlie and I attempt to be conservative in presenting its underwriting results to you, because we have found that virtually all surprises in insurance are unpleasant ones. The table that follows shows the float generated by Berkshire’s insurance operations since we entered the business 32 years ago. The data are for every fifth year and also the last, which includes General Re’s huge float. For the table we have calculated our float — which we generate in large amounts relative to our premium volume — by adding net loss reserves, loss adjustment reserves, funds held under reinsurance assumed and unearned premium reserves, and then subtracting agents balances, prepaid acquisition costs, prepaid taxes and deferred charges applicable to assumed reinsurance. (Got that?)

Wikipedia: Crony Capitalism Crony capitalism is an economic system in which businesses thrive not as a result of risk, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class. This is often achieved by using state power rather than competition in managing permits, government grants, tax breaks, or other forms of state intervention over resources where the state exercises monopolist control over public goods, for example, mining concessions for primary commodities or contracts for public works. Money is then made not merely by making a profit in the market, but through profiteering by rent seeking using this monopoly or oligopoly. Entrepreneurship and innovative practices which seek to reward risk are stifled since the value-added is little by crony businesses, as hardly anything of significant value is created by them, with transactions taking the form of trading. Crony capitalism spills over into the government, the politics, and the media,[3] when this nexus distorts the economy and affects society to an extent it corrupts public-serving economic, political, and social ideals.

A dramatic ageing of the population. Its effects will start being felt in 2005 (from the retirement of numerous groups). Since the government did not foresee and reform the retirement system paid out of each year’s taxes, we know it is already too late. There will not be sufficient funds to furnish allocations and healthcare to seniors and ever higher taxes will be levied on those who are working. The result will necessarily be a generalised lowering of purchasing power and therefore of economic growth based on consumption. The ageing of the population will also rapidly lead — it is already happening — to another frightening effect: a loss of technological skills. There are not enough young minds. 2)  The massive immigration of new battalions from the Third World to palliate these gaps, so desired by the UN, is an imposture. These migrants are unskilled and need social services themselves. They are mouths to feed, not the brains needed in a post-industrial society. Germany wanted to import more than 30,000 engineers that it needs (already), but got only 9,000 Indians. The immigration-colonisation (of which the entire cost is already more than 122 billion euros a year), which will not stop growing, added to the steadily increasing birth rate of the foreigners — most of them, as everyone knows, are not able to earn a good education — will be one more brake on economic prosperity. The current masses of ‘youths’ from Africa and North Africa will for the most part have a choice only between unemployment supported by welfare payments or participation in the parallel and criminal economy. The professional value of the workforce is going to experience a dramatic decline as soon as 2010.

If your company has any credible strategy for providing equity-based returns with muted volatility, you have not just a value proposition, but one of the most important value propositions of our time.... What's the concept in an operating real estate REIT? Operating real estate (as distinct from net leases or mortgages, which are other financing concepts) has the potential to produce equity-like long-term returns, but isan extremely powerful diversifier, in that real estate correlates positively with inflation while stocks and bonds correlate negatively with it. Inflation, with it attendant higher interest rates, chokes off new supply of real estate: new expensive to build, to expensive to finance at prevailing market rents. When new supply dwindles, normal growth absorbs the available space and puts upward pressure on rents, increasing cash flows to the owners... until rents get to a point where new construction pencils out again. (Meanwhile, in an inflation/interest rate flareup of any consequence, stocks and bonds are usually getting hit, and sometimes hit hard.) This, to me, is a trifecta of a conceptual value proposition: (a) the potential for the equity-like long-term returns investors need, (b) historically correlated positively with inflation, unlike all financial assets, and (c) just when you think this story can't get better, with 90% of available income paid out currently to income-starved investors.... What's the concept for variable life insurance? It's certainly the least expensive long-term form of life insurance, in that, as the investment portion grows, it extinguishes the insurance company's exposure. (As Ben Baldwin gnomically and brilliantly observes, 'All insurance is term insurance.') It may also be, in a given situation, the cheapest way of funding an estate tax liability, leaving the maximum legacy to one's heirs. And, of course, if the ownership is vested in an insurance trust, one may (under current law at this writing) be bequeathing wealth without income or estate taxation. As long as there is an estate tax - any estate tax - there will be a financial planning issue in the life of every affluent household/family: how do you want the heirs to pay it? And it seems likely that, conceptually, VUL will always be an answer.... Small cap equities? The concept is, clearly, higher returns with - and precisely because of - their higher volatility.

Europe. With FDR’s approval, Mellon financed construction of the gallery and donated his vast collection of art, then valued at $50 million. He died a few months later, just before the Board of Tax Appeals unanimously cleared him of all charges. The National Gallery of Art was completed in 1941. Thirty years later, a second building was added. It became known as the East Building; the original became known as the West Building. A statue honoring Mellon now sits in a

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