Do Wizards and Witches... pay Muggle Taxes?

[Steve]

No: HPFGUIDX 54185

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)"
<catlady at w...> wrote:
> --- 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.

CatLady:
> 
> ... British wizarding gov't might not have any taxes, because 
> it might have some better source of income. 
> 

bboy_mn:
Just curious about what some of these better sources of income might be?


> >  
> > ... you /might/ get out of paying taxes is to live totally in 
> > the wizard world, .... ... the Weasleys, ... seem to live very 
> > separate from the muggle world, yet, I asssume, they own the 
> > Burrow. To own it, they had to buy it. ... If they bought it 
> > then there is a public record of the sale. 

CatLady:
> 
> Buy it or inherit it. Or win it in a poker game.
> 
> 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.

bboy_mn:

If the land exists in the real world then the government is going to
want some accounting for it. I would assume, if Mr. Weasley bought the
the land himself then he bought it from the great grandfather of the
farmer who owns the surrounding land, and that would create a public
record. Even if the land has been owned by the Weasley family for
generations, or if it had been previously owned by another wizard, the
government isn't going to overlook a single penny of tax revenue. I
suspect the every square foot of land in Britain is accounted for, and
somebody is paying taxes on it.

I don't really see that as a problem though, as well as Gringotts
Bank, I think there are a lot of other businesses who specialize in
being an interface between the two worlds. So you could have an
English Solicitor who is married to a witch, who is more than willing
to take care of mundane muggle concerns like property tax. 


> 
> > There really is no way to earn income in the muggle world without
> > paying taxes on it. ... as soon as you start buying things with 
> > the (cash) money, you create a paper trail that will eventually 
> > lead the tax man to you. 

CatLady:
> 
> 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.
> 

True but their is a limit to how far you can take that. You can use
memory charms to hide a magical catastrophe or some other revelation
of magic, but those are things that are not suppose to exist in the
muggle world. Spending money on the other hand, if it becomes too
obvious, can't be ignored, there are just too many records of it. The
big flags for the government would be major purchases, like buying a
car with cash, or making a large deposit or withdrawal. You have to
understand how closely we are monitored. If you paid for your
groceries with a check card or a credit card, then the government can
probably tell you what you had for dinner last night.

You can go a long way with cash, but the government, in the US at
least, actively works to suppress the uses of cash. I had a friend who
was on his way to Minneapolis from a small town to buy a new stereo
and he was carrying cash (several hundred dollars). He was pulled over
by the police and they confiscated his money. He had a very difficult
time getting it back, because he didn't have any banking receipts to
prove that the money was actually his.


Catlady:
> 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!

bboy_mn:
As I said above, I think there are a lot of 'front' organizations that
act as an interface between the wizard and muggle world. I have to
assume that a certain amount of the goods, especially fresh produce,
comes from the muggle world. I can see import/export companies
treating trade with the muggle world, the same as trading with any
foreign country. 

Back to the tax issue, while it is fun to discuss, I think it's just
one of those realities we have to suspend in order for the story to work.

Just a thought.

bboy_mn