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US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

bbc.com

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Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#21

Post by mixmastamyk »

alkonaut wrote: post #10
sean_patel wrote: post #3

> Nick Stafford's coin payment required 11 people who were hired to break open the paper rolls of the coins, taking four hours. So you are telling me this 'Businessman' wasted 11 peeps x 4 hours x 10$ min wage = $440, to 'make a statement' to IRS and pay his $400 tax bill with pennies / coins?! What kind of a businessman does that? What a waste of man power.

Surely he was also required to pay the extra costs for the transaction at the receiving end? I can't imagine the authority was somehow required to accept his coin payment, and not only accept but do it for free?

"Legal tender, for all debts, public and private."

Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#22

Post by abiox »

jhoechtl wrote: post #19
svachalek wrote: post #11

This seems to be a statement on the stupidity of still using pennies in 2017, more so than the point he was actually trying to make.

Whats wrong with using pennies?

the question is a bit open ended, but for one: a penny costs more to make than it's worth (at least in terms of face value).

Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#23

Post by tener »

jhoechtl wrote: post #19
svachalek wrote: post #11

This seems to be a statement on the stupidity of still using pennies in 2017, more so than the point he was actually trying to make.

Whats wrong with using pennies?

They are worth less than they cost?

Imagine using coins worth $0.001 or $0.0001. You could use them, but why?

Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#24

Post by crystalmeph »

alkonaut wrote: post #10
sean_patel wrote: post #3

> Nick Stafford's coin payment required 11 people who were hired to break open the paper rolls of the coins, taking four hours. So you are telling me this 'Businessman' wasted 11 peeps x 4 hours x 10$ min wage = $440, to 'make a statement' to IRS and pay his $400 tax bill with pennies / coins?! What kind of a businessman does that? What a waste of man power.

Surely he was also required to pay the extra costs for the transaction at the receiving end? I can't imagine the authority was somehow required to accept his coin payment, and not only accept but do it for free?

Yes, they were required to accept it. They are collecting taxes for the government (I'm not sure if the VA DMV is directly run by the government, or is a contractor doing business for the government, but it doesn't make a difference in this case), which means they have to accept legal US money, in any denomination, because of this section of US code, which he mentions on his website[0]:

As per section 31 U.S.C. 5103 of the "United States Coinage Act of 1965" Federal law specifically says: "United States coins and currency are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."

Even charging an extra handling fee for dealing with all the coins is difficult to justify given the wording of the law. Luckily, carrying around 5 wheelbarrows of coins is also inconvenient for the person who's doing the protesting, so you really only see this sort of thing when someone is really aggravated and has lots of free time and money, it's not like we have a rash of DMV offices being crushed under a singularity's worth of pennies.

[0]http://www.craftvinyl.com/page165 (He actually got the BBC to link directly to his site, wow, he just made another million I bet!)

Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#25

Post by snarf21 »

loeg wrote: post #18
jay_kyburz wrote: post #9

Not legal tender in Australia. They could just refuse to accept it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender

The US really ought to do away with pennies, and probably nickels as well. This stunt would be 10x less silly with dimes.

It is even possible that dimes should go away.

"The United States abandoned its own most worthless coin, the half-cent, in 1857, when a half-cent was worth more than a dime is today." [http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/04/04/bringing-dol...]

We need to drop the paper dollar too. The biggest problem is that the new dollar coin is too close in size to the quarter and people get confused (especially elderly) but I think we have to suck it up and say tough. Some countries even have $2 and $5 dollar coins. As things go more and more digital, we need these denominations less and less.

As for the rounding or difference up to a quarter, make that a federal sales tax to fund currency production. If you pay with cash, you incur an additional cost of up to $0.24 per transaction to support the cost of money. If you pay digitally, you pay the exact amount. Just a thought...... :)

Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#26

Post by alxmdev »

loeg wrote: post #18
jay_kyburz wrote: post #9

Not legal tender in Australia. They could just refuse to accept it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender

The US really ought to do away with pennies, and probably nickels as well. This stunt would be 10x less silly with dimes.

Canada did away with pennies: http://www.mint.ca/store/mint/about-the-mint/phasing-out-the...

From Wikipedia:

Production of the penny ceased in May 2012, and the Royal Canadian Mint ceased the distribution of them as of February 4, 2013. However, like all discontinued currency in the Canadian monetary system, the coin remains legal tender. Once distribution of the coin ceased, though, vendors no longer were expected to return pennies as change for cash purchases, and were encouraged to round purchases to the nearest five cents. Non-cash transactions are still denominated to the cent.

Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#27

Post by abiox »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #21
alkonaut wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surely he was also required to pay the extra costs for the transaction at the receiving end? I can't imagine the authority was somehow required to accept his coin payment, and not only accept but do it for free?

"Legal tender, for all debts, public and private."

the armchair-lawyer in me feels like the status of being legal tender doesn't itself mandate the acceptance of any particular item of currency.

Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#28

Post by velodrome »

This guy should have went down to the DMV to get his questions answered. He wasted more time going through all this mess.

Being self employed, I hardly have time to sleep, much less make a trip to my local DMV just to ask a "30 second question" so I tried to call my "local" DMV office by calling calling the only phone number listed on the internet for my local DMV.

Re: US man pays tax bill using five wheelbarrows of coins

#29

Post by dgfgfdagasdfgfa »

Shivetya wrote: post #16
dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A smart business man. He has gotten a lot of free publicity out of it. I can do a lot of things for attention; it doesn't make me smart.

it is all about proper application and this guy executed very well by exploiting the well established dislike for taxes and snarky but lawful adherence to the law. if payment can be made onerous then perhaps the taxing authority is itself

I'm still not seeing the exploitation here. Does he even own a business?
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