Do Wizards and Witches... pay Muggle Taxes?

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

No: HPFGUIDX 54176

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Steve" <bboy_mn at y...> wrote:

> They say that there are two things in life that you can never 
> escape; death and taxes.

I think the British wizarding gov't might not have any taxes, because 
it might have some better source of income. OTOH, it seems so 
appropriate for Death Eaters who walked free to get jobs in the dept 
of Internal Revenue... 

> 
> The only way you /might/ get out of paying taxes it to live totally
> in the wizard world, but even then it would be difficult. Take the
> Weasleys, they seem to live very separate from the muggle world, 
> yet, I asssume, they own the Burrow. To own it, they had to buy it.

Buy it or inherit it. Or win it in a poker game.

> If they bought it then there is a public record of the sale. 

Not if they bought (or inherited or won) it from another wizard. If 
the property has always been owned by wizards, there need be no 
Muggle record of it.

> There really is no way to earn income in the muggle world without
> paying taxes on it. You can deal in an all cash business so there
> is no record of the earnings, but as soon as you start buying
> things with the money, you create a paper trail that will 
> eventually lead the tax man to you. 

I am sure that the wizarding folk can delete that paper trail by 
magic. I am sure they can make fake ID by magic, and they can use 
Confundus Charms and Memory Charms.

JKR indicated in an interview that Gringotts returns the Muggle money 
(that they get by exchanging) to the Muggle economy by fencing. Else 
I would think that a government to government arrangement had been 
worked out, not only for exchanging cash, but for giving wizarding 
folk a paper trail when they do business with Muggles. A money 
laundering arrangement!