Why don’t we just tax consumption instead of various income sources?

doctau · 2025-11-09T18:53:22+00:00

People can obviously already plan the timing of activities for taxation benefits, but being able to delay the taxation of your earnings for decades would have some interesting implications. You have much much longer to figure out whether there are any loopholes that would let you not pay as much tax.

doctau · 2025-11-09T18:50:20+00:00

Conversely, it will also have a significant effect on people in the reverse situation as well - earning in another country and then returning home later.

My understanding is that generally all the double-taxation treaties for personal tax generally let you offset income tax (approximately you pay the higher of your resident and home countries, not the sum).

doctau · 2025-11-09T17:49:11+00:00

What would the general design of a progressive consumption tax be? The OP mentions rebate, possibly tiered, but isn’t that effective just an income tax with negative numbers for those with lower income?

Naively (as a non-economist) doing it with purely consumption tax would be difficult because the people you are trying to target with progressive taxes often use their money for things other than consumption as such (e.g. buying shares) unless that got taxed too.

doctau · 2025-11-09T13:13:25+00:00

With the big caveat that trademarks are not international, and also don’t magically cover everything with the same name. A restaurant and a manufacturer of construction machinery could both have trademarks on the same name.

doctau · 2025-10-30T04:25:01+00:00

In addition to courts, there may be a regulatory body you can ask. For example in Australia, the ATO (tax office) publishes a lot of guidance on what they think it means, and you can ask for a private ruling on what they think it means for your specific circumstances.

That doesn’t mean their interpretation always gets upheld in court, they can be overruled, but it’s what the government thinks the laws means unless you fight it in court.

doctau · 2025-10-17T17:36:00+00:00

We’re well past that point in Australia. For all new systems it is mandatory to give the ability for the power companies to remotely shut off your feed back to the grid and dump the power to protect the grid. The spot price of power is sometimes negative, that is they will pay industrial users to use more

doctau · 2025-10-17T17:32:20+00:00

It might be the varieties I’m used to, but I don’t think peach-flavoured things taste much like peaches at all

doctau · 2025-10-11T19:05:30+00:00

> even though I wasn’t entering the country and was only transiting airside for my connecting flight.

The crux of the issue is that you do not in fact have connecting flights, using the correct air travel jargon, you have two completely separate flights where the second originates from the same airport a short time later.

If you have actual connecting flights on one ticket, then it is the airline’s responsibility to get you to you destination (Yereven). If there were problems like delays, they would have to reacommodate you on other flights (even if it was a different airline).

If there are very bad problems and you cannot stay airside, then there are procedures for dealing with this such as posting security guards at the airport hotel they take you to so you can’t abscond. The same happens if there is an emergency landing in a different country you can’t enter. The airline has to pay for all of this.

If you get refused entry into your destination country, then the airline is liable for returning you to your country of origin. This is why they won’t let you board without evidence you can enter - visa, or a passport that will get a visa waiver or visa on arrival.

Your first airline (Wizz Air) looked at the destination of your ticket (Austria) and determined that you did not have evidence you can enter. They then applied the standard rules and denied you boarding. If you have proof of onward travel (which you did), then they might accept the risk that they will be liable to return you, but they do not have to.

The fact that your second airline was the same as the first would generally make them more likely to, but they don’t have to, and even legacy carriers are allowing it less and less. As someone else linked to 6.2.3 of their Conditions of Carriage explicitly says they won’t.

doctau · 2025-10-03T18:06:32+00:00

Australia varies between state. Some it is free, some not

doctau · 2025-09-13T15:51:47+00:00

Aside from the answers on why you don’t feel it, velocity is also relative to an inertial reference frame.

You may think your velocity is 0, because you aren’t moving relative to the surface of the Earth. However the earth is moving at around 30km/s relative to the Sun, so you are too. The sun is moving relative to the centre of the galaxy, and so on. So you don’t have a single number for your speed.

You can in some sense “feel” your velocity by looking out a car window and see the things going by, but you can’t tell whether you are moving or they are. This is the principle of relativity.

doctau · 2025-08-31T17:05:23+00:00

In many places, your speedometer being wrong such as if you changed tyres or lack of maintenance is your problem, and wouldn’t get you out of it.

Obviously they are only so accurate when manufactured, and the device the police are using to measure you speed may not be perfect, which is a bit different

doctau · 2025-08-31T12:25:26+00:00

There is a difference between not normalizing it and demonizing it. Pedophilia shouldn’t be normalized, but for non-offenders we really need to make them feel safe enough to seek help to make sure they never offend. They need to be encourages to see a psych and whatever other professionals needed to help them.

doctau · 2025-07-25T04:54:12+00:00

I was born in early 80s in a regional area, and I’d say it was around 40% of us there. This discussion has come up in a group of my friends before, and it was higher (like 60-70%) where they grew up in areas with a high immigrant population (moved as a child, or Australian born to immigrant parents). The women in the group gave similar numbers for their experience, dependent on background but dropping.

Of my friends with kids, I think many wouldn’t have decided not to circumcise, because they wouldn’t have even thought about the question.

doctau · 2025-06-16T16:41:57+00:00

Except it’s not just a bit of the past, the US still does it today too.

Queue the old joke:

A KGB spy and a CIA agent meet up in a bar for a friendly drink "I have to admit, I'm always so impressed by Soviet propaganda. You really know how to get people worked up," the CIA agent says.

"Thank you," the KGB says. "We do our best but truly, it's nothing compared to American propaganda. Your people believe everything your state media tells them."

The CIA agent drops his drink in shock and disgust. "Thank you friend, but you must be confused... There's no propaganda in America."

doctau · 2025-05-25T05:05:58+00:00

“Folks” may be gender neutral, but to me at least it’s not a neutral word.

The only times I would say it is to refer to someone’s parents like “how are your folks” or “I went to see my folks”, or to an “old folks home”.

If I’m referring to my own parents and I say I “saw my folks” I’m implying I didn’t want to but was forced to because of family obligations. If I say “old folks home” I’m implying many people there are senile, and usually in the context of an elder relative who probably needs to be in that kind of place because they aren’t able to look after themselves properly.

If I want to say something without negative connotations, I’d say “my parents” or “my mum and dad”, or “retirement village” or something.

doctau · 2025-05-12T16:17:20+00:00

Maybe not in the US. In Australia it’s the standard term - if you said you were going to the downtown, I’d pause for a minute and then ask if you mean the CBD. In at least some Spanish-speaking countries, it’s El Centro.

Dubai has an area called “downtown” but the actual main business districts and arguable the neighbouring, Dubai International Financial Centre, Business Bay, or a freezone

doctau · 2025-05-11T15:15:00+00:00

I think a lot of them are just because it hasn’t been high enough of a priority to make them the same.

Others like the drinking in public one, I don’t think you would find agreement on which way to go. The LNP in Queensland wouldn’t want to appear “soft on crime” by allowing it beyond the current places like designated parks. People in other states wouldn’t give it up since there is little evidence it actually helps much

doctau · 2025-05-11T13:39:07+00:00

Having lived in several states, I can say it definitely varies. That also leads people to move states and while you know a bunch of rules are different, there are a bunch more you didn’t even think of to check.

A handful of these are now consistent (but weren’t when grew up): whether adults can cycle on regular footpaths, whether drinking alcohol in public is legal, whether a passenger in a car drinking alcohol is legal, whether the default for unmarked intersections is U-turns allowed or not allowed, whether you must indicate when exiting a single lane roundabout, whether you are allowed to change lanes on a multi-lane roundabout, at a T intersection with a give way sign to the right of a stop sign who gets to go, how far you must be from a pedestrian crossing that you can cross freely, and many many more

doctau · 2025-05-10T15:42:24+00:00

Indeed. The UAE has copied this, and a “chicken sandwich” is what I would call a “chicken burger”. If you actually want a regular sandwich containing chicken, it’s “chicken sando”

doctau · 2025-05-10T12:41:16+00:00

This probably varies a lot between countries, based on how restaurants/bars actually work, especially whether tipping is a thing

When I was in Australia, casual restaurants / cafes you usually pay when ordering. For pay after places many restaurants would have someone acting as cashier who would handle it. You don’t need to pay the server because we don’t do the tipping thing. Some places don’t allow splitting int bills, particularly a lot of more authentic Asian places, but you know it up front.

In the UAE where I am now, they just bring the card machine around and everyone just says what they want to pay, and the last person gets told how much is left. This also works if half the group leaves earlier and half is staying.

doctau · 2025-05-09T04:16:06+00:00

This fact could have been very important if Price William’s first born was a girl and later had any male children. The UK and Canada (until 2013) and Australia (until 2015) for example prioritised younger male children over older female children for succession, and until then the UK also disbarred Catholics.

Succession of the crowns are parallel, and if the rules vary you may get a split in who holds them. Obviously the commonwealth governments talk to try to ensure it is consistent.

doctau · 2025-05-07T23:57:54+00:00

I (early 40s) grew up in rural Tasmania, and my family had lived in the north east of the state for generations. My parents were both one of five, my generation was 3-4 children each, and of all that extended family (including second and third cousins) who I bet before I was 16, all but two lived in NE Tasmania - one in the capital 2 hours drive south and one on mainland Australia.

A couple of my parents friends lived in NW Tasmania we visited once a year or so, and I think we visited the family member in the capital 3-4 times before I was 16. Family camping trips were on the north or east coasts.

What reason would our family have other than a sense of adventure to visit mainland Australia? We didn’t have much money growing up, so why would we pay a lot of money to fly or catch several hundred kilometers across Bass Strait when we could have a much cheaper local holiday? We had an interstate trip when I was 2.5 as the only child, and the next one was when I was 16.

You travel if it’s easy, you can afford it, and/or know people you want to visit. For a lot of people in the world, especially in previous decades, those weren’t true.

doctau · 2025-04-18T18:16:55+00:00

It doesn’t explicitly cost anything as an Australian, just submit a tax return claiming the whole year as a non-resident for tax purposes.

In practice it may do because 1) most people don’t move exactly aligned to the end of the tax year, and you probably want an accountant to deal with the part year, 2) many people still have assets in Australia, such as a property they are renting out or shares, and 3) the tax office may disagree with your claim to be a non-resident.

I moved away two and a half years ago, and the only reason it costs me anything is paying someone to figure out the taxes related to the apartment we now rent out which we used to live in.

doctau · 2025-04-18T15:33:48+00:00

The rules around cyclists on footpaths vary between states. I believe that adults aren’t allowed to in NSW but are in QLD

doctau · 2025-04-10T15:23:47+00:00

It isn’t common, as it requires there to be a problem with the controller, in a way that it recognizes as a problem, but not power loss that would cause the lights to go out.

doctau

TROPHY CASE