Taiwan solved tax evasion in 1951 with a trick

https://twitter.com/i/status/2073991580986609904

4 3 15 days ago

pmontra• 15 days ago

Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Slovakia all copied it.

Italy did not copy it. Italy does have a lottery similar to that one but a small change made it very ineffective.

Instead of printing a code on every ticket, people have to register on a web site, get a code, show the code to the shopkeeper that will add it to the ticket. The result is that we had 25 million lottery tickets in 2024 for a population of more than 50 million people.

re-thc• 15 days ago

Taiwan solved tax evasion

No. Not even close. It maybe improved it.

These surface level posts that people then run with and it spreads is no good.

1. Yes that transactions have to be recorded 2. No it can't tell what gets recorded 3. Ownership is still based on honesty

E.g. companies ask their staff for these invoice receipts or to quote the business tax id so they can report higher expenses that never occurred.

E.g. this did solve the anonymous case but if both buyer and seller agree you can issue a $1 invoice and then exchange $1000 in cash.

Not to say this isn't good but the idea it solved everything is just wrong.

sheereconomics• 15 days ago

Really, no trick for tax collection is smarter than low tax rate and simple tax code.

Taiwan solved tax evasion in 1951 with a trick

Related Stories