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All sorts of measures have been proposed to reduce drug trafficking, but if the government is serious, it already has a mechanism in place. All the officials have to do is treat drug dealers the same way they treat other small businessmen.
Imagine a kid who dreams of sudden wealth. He drops out of school to become a crack dealer. Police haven't bothered him, but he wants to make sure the paperwork people don't pester him. So he's in the accountant's office.
Mr. Dealer, I see here that you deal in a commodity
subject to severe price fluctuations at the wholesale level.
I think, for tax purposes, we'd do best if we valued your
inventory under LIFO.
LIFO?
Last In, First Out. We could try FIFO, First In,
First Out. And then there's an averaging method.
Hey, look, you're the expert on that stuff. I just
want to tend to business and do what I know how to do,
OK?
Well, Mr. Dealer, this is part of tending to business
in America.
The accountant shuffles more papers.
I see you made capital investments last year, such as
Uzi rifles. Normally, I'd suggest a Section 179
delcaration, you can expense up to $10,000 in capital
improvements, if you don't top $200,000 in other capital
spending.
The accountant continues. But if you plan to stay
in business for several years, you should consider
depreciating them. I don't see them on the tables here --
they don't seem to fit as office equipment or heavy
machinery -- but my judgment is that the IRS would probably
accept them as five-year-class equipment. Should we try
straight-line or double-declining balance?
The perplexed dealer wonders why he bothered. He saw a
demand, and figured he could make a living by providing the
supply. How was he to know old-fashioned market economics
were so complicated? Whatever you think is best, sir.
I'll have to work on that to see.
He looks at
the papers again. You are in retail trade, selling a
tangible item, not a service. But I don't see any here of
filing your monthly sales-tax returns to the State
Department of Revenue. Do you know what can happen if you
don't do that? They'll padlock your business.
But I do my business on the street.
Then they'll file liens against any property they can
find. They'll tie you up for weeks auditing all this.
You'll spend every day with one of their collectors.
He'd be an accountant like you?
More or less. If you think today was miserable, just
spend a day, let alone two weeks, with a federal or state
guy.
Mister, why don't you just forget I ever came in
here? I'm going back to school so I could learn how to
handle this paperwork someday, and for some spending cash,
I'll get a job in a fast-food joint, where somebody else
handles all these business complications.
And so another dealer is off the street, peacefully, at no cost to taxpayers.
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