wellspring/03-treasury-and-taxation/03-1-taxation.md

# Wellspring taxation

> [FIXME]: Consider switching over to a corporate only tax.
Find some way to ensure that fledgling businesses don't need to worry about taxes and need only start worrying about them when they become stable and profitable.

## Basics

### Valid forms of taxation
`WS` only allows the levying of taxes directly on the income streams of individual indepagents. No other form of taxation is allowed. Taxing depagents is not allowed: depagents' activities are merely reification of the will of their owning indepagent.

In addition, as explicit prohibitions for the sake of completeness:
- No forms of excise or internal checkpoint tax on freight or trade shall be levied.
  - This shall not be construed to limit `SovWI`'s ability to use checkpoints (without accompanying taxes) for internal security.
  - This shall not be construed to limit the ability of private conagents to charge tolls and other fees for the use of their capitals/property.
- No taxes shall be levied on wealth instead of income.
  - Any politician found guilty of introducing a bill to pursue a tax on wealth shall become an outlaw after 2 hours.
- No taxes shall be levied on abstract entities such as "corporations", etc.
  - This shall not be construed to prevent the legislature from creating and governing such fictional legal entities as "corporations"; they simply cannot be taxed: only individuals may be taxed.

#### Tax evasion:

> [Review this section]

Evasion shall not be criminalized or carry criminal penalties. Notwithstanding, should an indepagent present itself to court in a civil matter, on either side of the advocacy without having its taxes paid:

##### Enjoyment of the courts:

None of these penalties shall apply to any conagent presenting before the courts in any criminal or tort proceeding.
> [FIXME]: Make it narrower: only intellectual property rights are lost to the plaintiff if he doesn't pay taxes. Or perhaps all commercial claims.

- In any civil proceeding against it where an indepagent with an outstanding tax debt stands as a defendant:
  - In an ongoing proceeding which had been filed prior to any currently unpaid debt becoming accrued, the proceeding shall continue under regular order to completion.
  - For any newly filed complaint, judgment shall proceed against said defendant by default after a legislatively determined grace period during time which it may pay its outstanding balance in order to regain protection from the courts.
- In any civil proceeding where such an indepagent with an outstanding tax debt appears as a plaintiff:
  - In an ongoing proceeding which had been filed prior to any currently unpaid debt becoming accrued, the proceeding shall continue under regular order to completion.
  - For any newly filed complaint in the courts, its plea shall be suspended indefinitely until the tax debt balance is paid.

##### Clarification of scope:
- Nevertheless, an indepagent owing a tax debt shall continue to enjoy the full benefit of the protection of its person and property from immediate violation by the police; the police shall continue to provide immediate protection of the physical person and property of that indepagent and its depagents.
- Indepagents that don't pay their taxes shall be fully free to leave the jurisdiction of `WS` and shall not suffer imprisonment or any other criminal penalty.

### Upper limit on taxation

No individual shall be taxed more heavily than at 10% of the income generated per income stream. All taxation exceeding this shall be **unenforceable**. There shall be no form of graduated income tax. The tax on all residents shall always be uniform.

## Incentives via tax discounts

### Rules for claiming these discounts:

Claims for any of these tax discounts apply on a per-income stream basis. If any indepagent wishes to claim the tax discounts outlined in this section on any of its income streams:
- The tax authority shall have the power to audit the activities which form the source of the income stream being claimed, to determine whether or not said activities fall under the umbrella of the category being claimed according to the following constraints:
  - The government shall request permission from the claiming conagent to audit the activities surrounding that income stream to determine its classification for tax purposes.
  - The audit shall not be authorized unless the owner(s) of the income stream consent to be audited. The owner(s) of the income stream is/are such entity to which the income stream is paid; not such entity which disburses such payment.
  - If the audit is not consented to by the owner(s), the claim for the tax discount shall be denied to the claimant.

Written into the terms of fictagent laws such as the corpagent law shall be provisions obliging the corpagent to allow such audits for its employees' benefit, but such audits shall proceed only after a legislatively defined notice period.

Ambiguously purposed income streams shall be deemed to be classified under their most heavily taxed purpose, or shall yield no tax discount at all if ambiguous enough to make it unclear that the income stream is primarily purposed toward any particular category of enterprise.

### Discounted activities:

There shall be a "heavy" tax discount on all income streams from the provision of **insurance** for services in private security and investigation, legal aid, healthcare, bank depositors, pension funds and legal aid to ensure that such insurers have a preferential profit position in the market. Note that this is for the **insurers** for those products/services; not the producers of those products/services.

There shall be a "medium" tax discount on all income streams from the provision of therapy/counselling services for persons addicted to addictive/psychotropic substances and for the operation of waste collection/sorting/resale companies (**NOT** manufacturers which use resold materials).

There shall be a "light" tax discount on all income streams from schooling and education.

[Experimental] There shall be a "negligible" tax discount on all income streams from a non-profit corporation.

## No deceptive illusions.

Government employees shall be paid directly what the net sum of their income is and their income streams from the government shall not be subjected to taxation after they receive it. There shall be **no** abstract deception created by the government to make it seem as if government employees pay taxes on their government income streams. Gov't employees are tax **receivers** and not tax payers. They are employees of the people and in **no way** shall things **ever** be misconstrued to appear as if they are not.