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

# Wellspring taxation

## 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.

#### Evasion:

> [Review this section]

Evasion shall not be criminalized or carry criminal penalties. Notwithstanding, should an indepagent present itself to court on either side of the advocacy without having its taxes paid: in any proceeding against it where it stands as a defendant, judgment shall proceed against it by default (after a legislatively determined grace period during which it may pay to regain protection), and in any proceeding where it appears as a plaintiff, its plea shall not be recognized (but upon payment of its tax debt, it may re-file its complaint).

- Nevertheless, 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 free to leave 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.
- Where those activities which need to be audited are performed under the umbrella of a fictagent such as a corpagent:
  - The government shall request permission from the fictation to audit the fictagent to determine its classification for tax purposes.
  - The audit shall not be authorized unless the owner(s) of the fictagent consent to be audited.
  - If the audit is not consented to by the fictagent, the claim for the tax discount shall be denied to the claimant.

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.

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.