Posted on 11/13/2016 8:12:09 PM PST by Olog-hai
Sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco have cost the Treasury more than £31 billion, an analysis has disclosed amid calls for a reduction in the Autumn Statement.
Around £31.6 billion of tax revenue has been lost because of the illicit market in spirits, beer, wine, cigarettes, rolling tobacco and diesel, according to the analysis of HMRC figures by the Taxpayers’ Alliance.
The high taxes on alcohol and tobacco simply fuel a black market in the goods which means that HMRC loses money, the campaign group said. …
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
High taxes = black market.
Black market = crime + no taxes.
Liberals never understand this.
Just wait until these idiots in government figure out they can tax sex.
is it going to be taxed by the minute? :)
Around a decade ago in Germany, there was a two-step tax increase figured up for cigarettes. The pro-health people jumped into this and got all hyped up.
So about eighteen months into step one with its increase, it was almost time to move to step two. Someone asked in the German Bundestag....how effective was step one. So the Zollamt (tax people) stepped up and noted that it was an odd thing. They knew that on average, people were buying X amount of smokes per month. So, they added up the numbers and said over the past year....they’d lost roughly 400 million Euro...NOTE, not gained, but actually lost.
People had stopped buying cigarettes. This didn’t make much sense. So they went to the agents who stop vehicles coming in from Poland, Austria, etc. It’s an odd thing...private citizens...into the thousands....were bringing in untaxed cigarettes. We aren’t talking a dozen cartons in the car....we are talking about hundred cartons....sometimes in trailers or bread-trucks...a thousand cartons.
So they analyzed all of this and came to this gut-feeling. That tax increase (phase one) took the smokers to the point of buying black-market smokes. It was now acceptable and people were willing to take the risk. They then said that going to phase two would be crazy because it’d just more and more legal sales to be non-existent. The health-freaks went nuts because they believed people were actually smoking less and phase two would take them to even fewer smokers.
In the end, they agreed to stop phase two.
Today, a couple hundred people each month are stopped and searched for illegally imported smokes. People are busted every single day. Here in Hessen, some couple last month were driving back from some vacation in a customized RV from Romania. The whole roof section was examined and loaded with untaxed cigarettes. 15,000 Euro fine will occur, and the authorities are talking about an actual jail-term for the two.
Could it be. I know, radical to think. But could it be people are drinking and smoking less???
Using diesel fuel is a sin?
Using diesel acquired without paying their usurious tax on it is a very grave sin in the eyes of those who benefit from the tax.
Well, yes ... but that wasn’t the context of the sentence.
By the stroke, if they had their way... Ha!
It’s in the Bible :)
LOL!
Sure is, especially after the government(s) decided to persecute VW over it.
Yes, there is a huge market for “washed cherry” cleaned red diesel (agricultural diesel) over there. The IRA used to make millions by washing thousands of litres of it at once on farms in Ulster. But anyone caught doing that process would be looking at as much jail time as a rapist!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.