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Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

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Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#71

Post by etskinner »

colejohnson66 wrote: post #33
jrockway wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow. I hope the government loses their lawsuit here. Customs & Border Protection should have absolutely no jurisdiction over what an item is used for once it enters the country.

Ford lost in 2019. An appeal to the Supreme Court was denied.[0] My non-lawyer understand of the issue wasn’t so much that they were avoiding a tariff (“tariff engineering”), but that they were removing the seats upon entry. In contrast with the BRAT where the dummy seats were still there when sold. [0]: https://www.autoblog.com/2021/06/03/ford-transit-connect-imp...

I wonder if they could, in theory, sell you the car for 150% of it's final price (so that they seats are there when sold), then buy back the seats immediately for 50% of its price. The invoice would say something like: Car with passenger seats: $15,000; Passenger seat buyback: $5,000; Total after buyback: $10,000.

That way everyone gets what they want, and they've technically sold it with the seats still installed.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#72

Post by vilaca »

RC_ITR wrote: post #42
colejohnson66 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No lobbying involved. It’s the remnants of a tariff war with France and Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

The Chicken Wars brought the powerful agricultural lobby in France into direct conflict with the powerful agricultural lobby in the United States. Not surprisingly, France, the largest poultry producer in the EEC, was unwilling to embrace a free trade policy whose benefits would be spread among consumers throughout Europe. The benefits of protectionism were concentrated in France and the costs were borne by consumers…

> benefits would be spread among consumers throughout Europe

The EU has banned poultry meat from the US on psytosanitary grounds for more than two decades.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#73

Post by magicalhippo »

geocrasher wrote: post #5

This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups. So Subaru added two plastic jump seats in the back of the BRAT, even making them face backwards. No seat belts as I recall just handles. They weren't even really intended to be used. They were just cheap plastic. But they served the purpose of making the vehicle a four-seater car instead of a pickup, with only a 2.5% tar…

Here in Norway we have the infamous "E6 ham". We have an import tax on dry-cured ham[1], but not unprocessed meat.

Someone figured out it was cheaper then to import unprocessed meat from Spain to Norway, turn the truck around as soon as they were customs cleared and drive the 3000 km or so back to Spain for curing.

Once cured they'd re-import the processed meat, which now has a different tariff due to being "Norwegian" ham processed abroad, while still being proper Spanish dry-cured ham.

So a ~6000 km (3700 miles) detour to save on import taxes, yay...

The name comes from the E6 route[2] the trucks drive through Sweden and into Norway.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ham#Dry-cured

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_route_E6

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#74

Post by slt2021 »

titusjohnson wrote: post #51
jrockway wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like the age-old market segmentation thing. People driving their kids to soccer practice don't make money with their vans, so they'll notice the higher price (and if they find out their congresscritter was responsible, they'll vote for a different one). Meanwhile, cargo vans are used to make money, so the users can bear the extra cost. There's also overtones of taxation without representation going on here;…

> There's also overtones of taxation without representation going on here; individuals can vote, and so they have lower taxes than businesses, which can't vote. I'm confused about this statement. Businesses are comprised of individuals, and those individuals (if citizens) can vote. So the business has a vote through the voice of its employees and representation in government through the people employees at a business…

maybe businesses can't vote, but they can buy votes of the congressmen directly.

why go through the hassle of voting and deal with uncertainty whether you voted a right person, when you can just buy with cash whatever law/regulation you need

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#75

Post by njarboe »

Johnny555 wrote: post #63
geocrasher wrote: post #5

This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups. So Subaru added two plastic jump seats in the back of the BRAT, even making them face backwards. No seat belts as I recall just handles. They weren't even really intended to be used. They were just cheap plastic. But they served the purpose of making the vehicle a four-seater car instead of a pickup, with only a 2.5% tar…

Oddly, the Subaru Baja is much more car-like than the Brat ever was (the Baja has 4 real seats, not jump seats), but when I had one, it was registered as a pickup, not a car.

The "truck" (trucks, SUVs etc) class of vehicles in the US have lower average gas mileage requirements than cars so many cars are made just large enough to be classified as "trucks" even though they are marketed still as cars. Subaru did this with almost all their cars back in 2004[1].

[1]https://web.archive.org/web/20210609082852/https://www.nytim...

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#76

Post by BizarroLand »

ggrrhh_ta wrote: post #65
version_five wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The solution to a bad or poorly written law is not to leave it on the books and have some "oh well we actually meant" thing that means it can be arbitrarily applied in a different way than written. Courts can interpret laws if the interpretation is the problem. If there is just a stupid loophole, then either the law itself makes no sense (as seems to apply to this Jones Act) or it needs to be reworded to align with i…

Laws, at least in many European countries, are prefaced with a preamble, introduction, or Vorwort, that explains a bit of the history, the motivation, the underlying principles, the philosophy, the practicality, and the guidelines for interpretation of that law. The words, as written, are not to be taken, in any case literally. Moreover, a literal interpretation contradicting the spirit of the law is unlawful, and th…

A law system like that requires wisdom. America has a lot of smart but almost no wisdom, so it would be chaos and anarchy if we suddenly switched to such a system.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#77

Post by tablespoon »

geocrasher wrote: post #5

This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups. So Subaru added two plastic jump seats in the back of the BRAT, even making them face backwards. No seat belts as I recall just handles. They weren't even really intended to be used. They were just cheap plastic. But they served the purpose of making the vehicle a four-seater car instead of a pickup, with only a 2.5% tar…

> This reminds me of the Subaru BRAT in the early '80s. There was a 25% tarrif on imported pickups.

Isn't that tariff still in place?

It seems like they're smarter with the enforcement, so tricks like that don't work anymore:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

> The U.S. Customs Service changed vehicle classifications in 1989, automatically relegating two-door SUVs to light-truck status.[4] Toyota Motor Corp., Nissan Motor Co., Suzuki (through a joint venture with GM), and Honda Motor Co. eventually built assembly plants in the U.S. and Canada in response to the tariff.[1]...

> Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ruled in 2013 that Transit Connects imported by Ford as passenger wagons and later converted into cargo vans should be subject to the 25% duty rate applicable to vans and not to the 2.5% rate applicable to passenger vehicles. Ford sued and finally, in 2020, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case which confirmed the position of CBP.[22]

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#78

Post by nickff »

RC_ITR wrote: post #43
nickff wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Why SHOULD a cargo van have higher import taxes than a passenger van, other than to serve the needs of some random private company?" Have you read a tariff schedule? They're full of this stuff, which seem to be protections or favors for specific industries. Anti-dumping protections seem similar.

>It also goes to show how corrupt the import tax system is.

I am not sure it is 'corrupt', though that may be a question of semantics. I didn't mean to disagree with you, just point out how rampant the issue was.

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#79

Post by laurent92 »

etskinner wrote: post #71
colejohnson66 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford lost in 2019. An appeal to the Supreme Court was denied.[0] My non-lawyer understand of the issue wasn’t so much that they were avoiding a tariff (“tariff engineering”), but that they were removing the seats upon entry. In contrast with the BRAT where the dummy seats were still there when sold. [0]: https://www.autoblog.com/2021/06/03/ford-transit-connect-imp...

I wonder if they could, in theory, sell you the car for 150% of it's final price (so that they seats are there when sold), then buy back the seats immediately for 50% of its price. The invoice would say something like: Car with passenger seats: $15,000; Passenger seat buyback: $5,000; Total after buyback: $10,000. That way everyone gets what they want, and they've technically sold it with the seats still installed.

Isn’t a lot of securization necessary for two more seats? Adding floor reinforcements, seatbelts, and more importantly, passing the crash tests with two more seats?

Re: Adding unusable RAM for tax reasons

#80

Post by xtracto »

This was a pretty interesting read. I had to stretch my Google-fu muscles, but I was able to find the original Spanish import tax law from 1985:

https://www.boe.es/diario_boe/txt.php?id=BOE-A-1985-18847 (Google translation below)

From here: https://www.zonadepruebas.com/viewtopic.php?t=1830

It's funny that they explicitly set the number of RAM KB for machines. I wonder what was the logic?

---

BY ROYAL DECREE 1215/1985, OF JULY 17, A MODIFICATION HAS BEEN INTRODUCED IN THE TARIFF DUTY ASSIGNED TO SUBHEADING 84.53.B.II OF THE CUSTOMS TARIFF, CONSISTING OF SETTING A SPECIFIC MINIMUM DUTY OF 15,000 PESETAS PER UNIT.

THE BROAD CONTENT OF THE REFERENCE SUBHEADING, IN WHICH DIFFERENT ELECTRONIC COMPUTER PRODUCTS ARE CLASSIFIED AND TAKING INTO ACCOUNT THAT THE MENTIONED SPECIFIC MINIMUM SHOULD ONLY AFFECT A CERTAIN TYPE OF AUTOMATIC MACHINES FOR THE PROCESSING OF INFORMATION, KNOWN SECTORALLY UNDER THE THE NAME OF "MICROCOMPUTERS", MAKES IT ADVISABLE TO COMPLEMENT THE CITED MODIFICATION WITH THE TIMELY CLARIFICATION LIMITING ITS SCOPE.

BY VIRTUE OF IT, AND IN USE OF THE POWER RECOGNIZED TO THE GOVERNMENT BY ARTICLE 6 SECTION 4 OF THE CURRENT TARIFF LAW, AT THE PROPOSAL OF THE MINISTER OF ECONOMY AND FINANCE, AND PRIOR APPROVAL BY THE COUNCIL OF MINISTERS OF AUGUST 28, 1985, I HAVE :

ARTICLE 1. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THE APPLICATION OF THE SPECIFIC MINIMUM RIGHT OF 15,000 PESETAS PER UNIT INTRODUCED IN SUBHEADING 84.53.B.II OF THE CUSTOMS TARIFF BY ROYAL DECREE 1215/1985, OF JULY 17, IT SHALL BE UNDERSTOOD BY TAXABLE UNIT AFFECTED BY THE CITED RIGHT THOSE AUTOMATIC MACHINES FOR PROCESSING INFORMATION THAT CONSIST OF INTEGRATED OPERATIONAL UNITS, WHICH COMPRISE IN A SINGLE ENVELOPE AT LEAST ONE CENTRAL UNIT AND ONE INPUT UNIT, WHETHER OR NOT PROVIDED WITH AN OUTPUT UNIT, AND WHICH HAVE RAM MEMORY WITH CAPACITY NOT EXCEEDING 64 KB.

ART. 2. WITHOUT PREJUDICE TO ITS EFFECTIVENESS FROM JULY 25, DATE OF PUBLICATION OF ROYAL DECREE 1215/1985, THIS ROYAL DECREE WILL ENTER INTO FORCE THE SAME DAY OF ITS PUBLICATION IN THE "OFFICIAL STATE GAZETTE".

GIVEN IN PALMA DE MALLORCA ON AUGUST 28, 1985.-JUAN CARLOS R.-THE MINISTER OF ECONOMY AND TREASURY, CARLOS SOLCHAGA CATALAN.

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