In contrast, with income taxes, the person who produces a lot for society will pay high taxes.
It's well accepted by economists that a consumption tax is the least distortionary tax.
There are notions of fairness that aren't premised on the idea that tax rates aren't a point score system for rating people, and it can be rational to accept some degree of distortion so long as it's not so powerful that it prevents the economy from serving its purpose (and so long as that distortion is buying us something).
The other is the normative one. My premise is that people should pay in proportion to the benefit they receive from society. Do you disagree with this claim?
I don't think I agree with your normative claim. I think ceteris paribus that it's a virtue of a tax system if people pay in proportion to the value they get out of society. It sounds like you think that virtue is controlling. I think there are other virtues as well.
Income Tax taxes value provided, Consumption Tax taxes value consumed.
-- Consumption taxes can also be scaled/slabbed with the amount consumed, they don't have to be regressive.
The remainder are things money can't buy. A beautiful woman who is broke has most of them - should we impose the same taxes on her?
(Actually, there's even an economic benefit to a land tax, as the tax encourages more efficient use. A _negative_ deadweight loss.)
Because the wealth should be taxed in the place (country state, region etc.) where it was made (and whose resources were used in the process) and not where it appears in public.
The IRS has no discretion in this matter; they just deliver the bill.
That's the key part. I don't know the exact legalese, but you probably still qualified as a Canadian resident.
Once you're no longer regarded as a Canadian resident, you no longer owe Revenue Canada anything. It's a clean break.
In the US, no matter how long you live outside the country, as a citizen you still need to file a return and pay taxes on foreign income.
I live in rental apartment and probably will keep doing this (where I live and work I can't afford to buy, and won't for various reasons). By your logic, I should be taxed to hell just because you don't like seeing foreign capital buying off properties in London or some other location you want to buy property in? No, thank you. I've lived through communism, resemblance is striking.
From the exchange's database's perspective, it'll be a credit to their CNY account and a debit to their USD account. No BTC needed to be moved.
Thus the BTC volume isn't a valid measure of the total value of transactions done in BTC.
1. I wire 4000 CNY to the BTC exchange.
2. BTC exchange receives my CNY, and shows that I have 4000 CNY in my account.
3. I buy 1 BTC with my 4000 CNY; exchange shows that I have 1 BTC in my account.
4. Later on, I trade that 1 BTC for 600 USD; exchange shows that I have 600 USD in my account.
5. I transfer the 600 USD into my US bank account.
In step 3, since I never took possession of the BTC, it never leaves the exchange, and thus no blockchain transaction took place. If no blockchain transaction took place, then anyone observing the blockchain would be oblivious to my fiat to BTC trades.
If I go to BTCe with a $50mm USD deposit, but they only have $25mm BTC equivalent deposited there, and "buy" an equivalent amount of BTC, will they not be required to obtain $25mmUSD equivalent more BTC from the blockchain?
Furthermore, do the exchanges take a position either long or short? If I then liquidate my $50mm worth of BTC, how do they get the fiat to wire to me, if they don't transact with somebody else?
I just fail to see how the major shifts in supply/demand are totally absorbed by the exchanges and never show up on the blockchain. Do the exchanges have an inter exchange market off of the blockchain or something? I agree with you, technically, that for small sums, there's no need for this and so the blockchain volume may not represent total size of the market, but at the scales we are talking about (see how much HSBC laundered for a single drug gang alone), how does this not show up, or rather, how does it never hit the blockchain? Particularly when somebody eventually wants to liquidate back to fiat?
"HSBC was accused of failing to monitor more than $670 billion in wire transfers and more than $9.4 billion in purchases of U.S. currency from HSBC Mexico, allowing for money laundering, prosecutors said."
That is one subset of the problem. BTC has what, $12mm/day volume? This one subset is over 2 years worth of all the BTC volume. Honest question, is off blockchain BTC trading really that big?
Governments should be focusing their taxes and revenue on tangible things that cannot be hidden or evaded, like property. This would solve so many problems in places like London or Vancouver where foreign money floods the market. Why waste time tracking endless trails of shell companies when you can just tax the wealth when it appears in public?
Plus I see income and revenue as non-zero sum, one man or company making more money doesn't preclude someone else from creating wealth. Taxes on this are just a friction on the economy. But property is zero sum, every piece of coastline bought up by rich people as 4th or 5th homes means entire neighborhoods of normal families can only see water when they are on their 2 weeks of vacation.