Healthy Money Healthy Planet - library.uniteddiversity.coop

12
ways of avoiding paying tax.
Tax on Hoarding Money
As discussed in Chapter 12, businessman Silvio Gesell argued for a change in the
design of money to ensure its unimpeded circulation. Specifically, he advocated
placing a 5.2 per cent per annum charge on money, or validating each banknote
every month by attaching a stamp to it worth 0.1 per cent of the note’s value. Today,
this validation could be done electronically. This tax is not regressive as it falls on
those who hoard money, not on people who spend most of their income; it falls on
the possessors of money who do not pass it on, not on the poor. The practical effect
of this is that people will invest in real wealth instead of accumulating wealth in
the form of money.
Such a circulation tax would be hard to avoid and inexpensive to administer.
It would have profound economic and social consequences, as it would bring
hoarded money back into circulation. Whereas inflation penalises everyone, this
tax penalises only hoarders. And as explained in Chapter 12, personal saving
would still be possible and inflation could actually be kept at zero.
The main disadvantage of such a system is that it would be difficult to
implement at a national level since governments are currently less powerful than
banks. It would, however, be possible to introduce it at a local level. The other
drawback to this tax is that it does not raise much revenue.
Tax on Taking Money Out of the Country
If each country imposes a tax on those who take its money beyond its borders, then
no one would be able to speculate on its currency. This was done with considerable
success by Malaysia to avert the economic crisis that was affecting much of the