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by twawaaay
1264 days ago
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If I was a government body responsible for setting tax rules after reading the article I still haven't learned anything. First of all, tax systems are typically result of huge forces within the country and represent history of negotiating between parties or other groups of people that each tries to get something for themselves while the government needs to deal with finite budget and groups of people dissatisfied that somebody else got something but not them. Second, Faroe Island is a tiny, tiny country. With any kind of organisation, as the organisation grows things get more and more complicated. And third, they point out Faroe Island has a huge GDP that comes from a fortunate resource. Countries that are in this position tend to have simpler tax systems because they do not need to rely on their citizens. Citizens rightly assume that if the country has a national resource they are entitled to have the resource pay for the infrastructure and government and not them. There is no need to fight to figure out where the money will come for this or that project -- the answer is always pretty much the same and it is not to put a levy on citizens but rather on the resource the country has. |
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Most people who have just one job end up paying exactly the right amount of tax (that 1 line in my spreadsheet) and don't need to file - if you have multiple jobs you may get money back (depending on how you registered your second job) if you don't file the IRD will send you a cheque (we don't do cheques any more, they'll drop it in your bank account).
It doesn't have anything to do with GDP, we used to have that complex tax system, about 30 years ago we chose to change it - what it takes is politicians with the political will to change things