[HPforGrownups] Taxes

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 54236

Steve writes:

> > ... British wizarding gov't might not have any taxes, because
> > it might have some better source of income.
>
> Just curious about what some of these better sources of income might be?

It's been discussed before in the context of where Hogwarts and the old
wizard families get their money, but possibly they have a sufficiently large
stash at Gringotts to be able to cover their expenses from the interest.

Once upon a time I wondered if it might come from fines and confiscations,
but the evidence about Sirius Black still having a Gringotts deposit after
absconding from Azkeban means that that theory wouldn't work.

If they do have taxes, it's sure to be an entirely unrecognisable system
from the Muggle one - wizards aren't logical, after all...

> 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.

Certainly in the UK, detailed government records on everything and everyone
are fairly recent. It used to be very strongly held that you had a right not
to have your details on record and this persisted until round about the
1910s when things like National Insurance and PAYE were introduced and you
started to have big departments in charge of tracking people. But wizardly
properties that dated from _before_ then could easily not exist, if no one
had drawn attention to them.

Cheers

Ffred

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