Wizard taxes
Sep. 25th, 2019 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethToday I am thinking about how taxes would work with any form of masquerade, but specifically with the wizarding world.
Magical Britain exists alongside and in between regular Britain, but has its own laws, elections, administrative structure, and its own currency.
In a lot of ways it's easier to think of it as a different country. But it uses shared infrastructure, like the railway station.
And wizards born to wizards might only be registered with wizard authorities, but there's a lot of the other sort around, and presumably their parents have to explain where they've gone to school or if they count as living with them any more.
... I'm always pondering the intersection of rule sets, like, benefits law and wizard children. Sure they get to go to magical boarding school now, but are they residents of their parents house for housing benefit purposes? I'm sure there's a rule already, like for university students too.
Or just, all these people with national insurance numbers, disappearing off into the wizard economy. Do wizards get a nino? Do wizards pay taxes? Maybe they only pay wizard tqxes to wizard authorities. But that would mean either only living in wizard property or having a lot of translating to do re council tax.
... if you love through a magic door leading to an associative house that exists in the lost spaces of a dozen different mansions, in what jurisdiction do you owe council tax?
If wizards do all the money admin in the wizard system that keeps it relatively tidy, because aside from geographically they're not British, they're wizards. Like emigrating, only it's just down the road from Tesco.
... no, the muggle authorities are still going to have a dim view of anybody wandering around Britain thinking British law doesn't apply to them.
And obviously wizards can just obliviate their way through life, but assuming they dont want to crime forever, there's got to be a place the systems touch and sort things out.
Possibly lots of places.
... offices trying to deal with figuring out the age of someone who took a trip to fairyland is an idea I've had before, but now I'm wondering if said trip has tax implications. Like, probably you'd only pay taxes on the earth calendar. Probably. But that would mean having to be 18 by the earth calendar before ever so many things, so the superhero thing of born yesterday earth time would not legally be resolved by testing your ability age. And you wouldn't be eligible for retirement stuff until earth calendar rolled around too. Very elder wizard gets back from beyond, finds out they cannot get pension or bus pass. can probably cope.
would a wizard ever need the social safety net? very much depends on what magic can do, and since that is 'anything, if the plot says so', that... doesn't help.
But even if they never want anything out of the system, there are entire large offices dedicated to the idea everyone pays in.
I don't know. I read a fic where someone set up as an accountatnt to supervillains because Al Capone's theory that they can't tax illegal stuff was not as it turns out correct. So if a wizard is making money, some tax system, somewhere, wants a piece of it.
... if a wizard is literally making money, which is trivially easy with several spells, then some treasuries want a word with him too...
I read a thing where people who were babies in America are getting done for back taxes because as it turns out America taxes all its citizens even if they only lived there as infants. So an American disappearing into the wizarding economic system is still going to have interested tax men?
I realise the stories I read are all about zapping things in big wizard battles and then kissing, and I know I dont understand tax or ANYthing in the real world, but it seems to me there's a lot of stories in the messy intersections of anything, and these aren't ones I've seen.
Wizards and taxes.
Or vampires, but there the assumption is they just hire lawyers to see to everything.
Which is obviously the easy answer to wizards too, but vampires on the whole aren't written as having issued their own currency.
I'm still interested in wizard currency too. Like D&D economics, or GURPS, makes coins and metals kind of too easy to bother with? If a wizard wants to be coin rich they are, basically. No need for mining, they just whoosh.
... I'm having vague thoughts about bitcoin mining and cryptocurrency and getting other people to run complex symbol sets on their computers and calling it money. ways to get magic worked for you, set it up as adverts...
If wizards have coins it either implies interesting things about the limitations of magic or every coin has to be a complex magical artefact just so it's clearly a coin and not a rat with a spell on it. Or a leaf. Traditionally more likely to be leaves.
So what stories are in wizard parallel economics then?
... the one in my head today is someone inheriting that wizard mansion, and then finding out that, due to not recognising the mortal authorities, nobody has paid taxes on the place for in excess of a century...
... well the idea made my blood run cold. wizard horror stories...
Magical Britain exists alongside and in between regular Britain, but has its own laws, elections, administrative structure, and its own currency.
In a lot of ways it's easier to think of it as a different country. But it uses shared infrastructure, like the railway station.
And wizards born to wizards might only be registered with wizard authorities, but there's a lot of the other sort around, and presumably their parents have to explain where they've gone to school or if they count as living with them any more.
... I'm always pondering the intersection of rule sets, like, benefits law and wizard children. Sure they get to go to magical boarding school now, but are they residents of their parents house for housing benefit purposes? I'm sure there's a rule already, like for university students too.
Or just, all these people with national insurance numbers, disappearing off into the wizard economy. Do wizards get a nino? Do wizards pay taxes? Maybe they only pay wizard tqxes to wizard authorities. But that would mean either only living in wizard property or having a lot of translating to do re council tax.
... if you love through a magic door leading to an associative house that exists in the lost spaces of a dozen different mansions, in what jurisdiction do you owe council tax?
If wizards do all the money admin in the wizard system that keeps it relatively tidy, because aside from geographically they're not British, they're wizards. Like emigrating, only it's just down the road from Tesco.
... no, the muggle authorities are still going to have a dim view of anybody wandering around Britain thinking British law doesn't apply to them.
And obviously wizards can just obliviate their way through life, but assuming they dont want to crime forever, there's got to be a place the systems touch and sort things out.
Possibly lots of places.
... offices trying to deal with figuring out the age of someone who took a trip to fairyland is an idea I've had before, but now I'm wondering if said trip has tax implications. Like, probably you'd only pay taxes on the earth calendar. Probably. But that would mean having to be 18 by the earth calendar before ever so many things, so the superhero thing of born yesterday earth time would not legally be resolved by testing your ability age. And you wouldn't be eligible for retirement stuff until earth calendar rolled around too. Very elder wizard gets back from beyond, finds out they cannot get pension or bus pass. can probably cope.
would a wizard ever need the social safety net? very much depends on what magic can do, and since that is 'anything, if the plot says so', that... doesn't help.
But even if they never want anything out of the system, there are entire large offices dedicated to the idea everyone pays in.
I don't know. I read a fic where someone set up as an accountatnt to supervillains because Al Capone's theory that they can't tax illegal stuff was not as it turns out correct. So if a wizard is making money, some tax system, somewhere, wants a piece of it.
... if a wizard is literally making money, which is trivially easy with several spells, then some treasuries want a word with him too...
I read a thing where people who were babies in America are getting done for back taxes because as it turns out America taxes all its citizens even if they only lived there as infants. So an American disappearing into the wizarding economic system is still going to have interested tax men?
I realise the stories I read are all about zapping things in big wizard battles and then kissing, and I know I dont understand tax or ANYthing in the real world, but it seems to me there's a lot of stories in the messy intersections of anything, and these aren't ones I've seen.
Wizards and taxes.
Or vampires, but there the assumption is they just hire lawyers to see to everything.
Which is obviously the easy answer to wizards too, but vampires on the whole aren't written as having issued their own currency.
I'm still interested in wizard currency too. Like D&D economics, or GURPS, makes coins and metals kind of too easy to bother with? If a wizard wants to be coin rich they are, basically. No need for mining, they just whoosh.
... I'm having vague thoughts about bitcoin mining and cryptocurrency and getting other people to run complex symbol sets on their computers and calling it money. ways to get magic worked for you, set it up as adverts...
If wizards have coins it either implies interesting things about the limitations of magic or every coin has to be a complex magical artefact just so it's clearly a coin and not a rat with a spell on it. Or a leaf. Traditionally more likely to be leaves.
So what stories are in wizard parallel economics then?
... the one in my head today is someone inheriting that wizard mansion, and then finding out that, due to not recognising the mortal authorities, nobody has paid taxes on the place for in excess of a century...
... well the idea made my blood run cold. wizard horror stories...
no subject
Date: 2019-09-26 12:14 am (UTC)~