#US tax filing in UK

[expatglobaltax1]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

Lina Khan’s future is the future of the Democratic Party — and America

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

On the one hand, the anti-monopoly movement has a future no matter who wins the 2024 election – that's true even if Kamala Harris wins but heeds the calls from billionaire donors to fire Lina Khan and her fellow trustbusters.

In part, that's because US antitrust laws have broad "private rights of action" that allow individuals and companies to sue one another for monopolistic conduct, even if top government officials are turning a blind eye. It's true that from the Reagan era to the Biden era, these private suits were few and far between, and the cases that were brought often died in a federal courtroom. But the past four years has seen a resurgence of antitrust rage that runs from left to right, and from individuals to the C-suites of big companies, driving a wave of private cases that are prevailing in the courts, upending the pro-monopoly precedents that billionaires procured by offering free "continuing education" antitrust training to 40% of the Federal judiciary:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/13/post-bork-era/#manne-down

It's amazing to see the DoJ racking up huge wins against Google's monopolistic conduct, sure, but first blood went to Epic, who won a historic victory over Google in federal court six months before the DoJ's win, which led to the court ordering Google to open up its app store:

https://www.theverge.com/policy/2024/10/7/24243316/epic-google-permanent-injunction-ruling-third-party-stores

Google's 30% App Tax is a giant drag on all kinds of sectors, as is its veto over which software Android users get to see, so Epic's win is going to dramatically alter the situation for all kinds of activities, from beleaguered indie game devs:

https://antiidlereborn.com/news/

To the entire news sector:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2023/06/save-news-we-must-open-app-stores

Private antitrust cases have attracted some very surprising plaintiffs, like Michael Jordan, whose long policy of apoliticism crumbled once he bought a NASCAR team and lived through the monopoly abuses of sports leagues as an owner, not a player:

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/michael-jordan-anti-monopolist

A much weirder and more unlikely antitrust plaintiff than Michael Jordan is Google, the perennial antitrust defendant. Google has brought a complaint against Microsoft in the EU, based on Microsoft's extremely ugly monopolistic cloud business:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-files-complaint-eu-over-microsoft-cloud-practices-2024-09-25/

Google's choice of venue here highlights another reason to think that the antitrust surge will continue irrespective of US politics: antitrust is global. Antitrust fervor has seized governments from the UK to the EU to South Korea to Japan. All of those countries have extremely similar antitrust laws, because they all had their statute books overhauled by US technocrats as part of the Marshall Plan, so they have the same statutory tools as the American trustbusters who dismantled Standard Oil and AT&T, and who are making ready to shatter Google into several competing businesses:

https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/8/24265832/google-search-antitrust-remedies-framework-android-chrome-play

Antitrust fever has spread to Canada, Australia, and even China, where the Cyberspace Directive bans Chinese tech giants from breaking interoperability to freeze out Chinese startups. Anything that can't go on forever eventually stops, and the cost of 40 years of pro-monopoly can't be ignored. Monopolies make the whole world more brittle, even as the cost of that brittleness mounts. It's hard to pretend monopolies are fine when a single hurricane can wipe out the entire country's supply of IV fluid – again:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-10-11-cant-believe-im-writing-about-iv-fluid-again/

What's more, the conduct of global monopolists is the same in every country where they have taken hold, which means that trustbusters in the EU can use the UK Digital Markets Unit's report on the mobile app market as a roadmap for their enforcement actions against Apple:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/63f61bc0d3bf7f62e8c34a02/Mobile_Ecosystems_Final_Report_amended_2.pdf

And then the South Korean and Japanese trustbusters can translate the court documents from the EU's enforcement action and use them to score victories over Apple in their own courts:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/10/an-injury-to-one/#is-an-injury-to-all

So on the one hand, the trustbusting wave will continue erode the foundations of global monopolies, no matter what happens after this election. But on the other hand, if Harris wins and then fires Biden's top trustbusters to appease her billionaire donors, things are going to get ugly.

A new, excellent long-form Bloomberg article by Josh Eidelson and Max Chafkin gives a sense of the battle raging just below the surface of the Democratic Power, built around a superb interview with Khan herself:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-10-09/lina-khan-on-a-second-ftc-term-ai-price-gouging-data-privacy

The article begins with a litany of tech billionaires who've gone an all-out, public assault on Khan's leadership – billionaires who stand to personally lose hundreds of millions of dollars from her agency's principled, vital antitrust work, but who cloak their objection to Khan in rhetoric about defending the American economy. In public, some of these billionaires are icily polite, but many of them degenerate into frothing, toddler-grade name-calling, like IAB's Barry Diller, who called her a "dope" and Musk lickspittle Jason Calacanis, who called her an all-caps COMMUNIST and a LUNATIC.

The overall vibe from these wreckers? "How dare the FTC do things?!"

And you know, they have a point. For decades, the FTC was – in the quoted words of Tim Wu – "a very hardworking agency that did nothing." This was the period when the FTC targeted low-level scammers while turning a blind eye to the monsters that were devouring the US economy. In part, that was because the FTC had been starved of budget, trapping them in a cycle of racking up easy, largely pointless "wins" against penny-ante grifters to justify their existence, but never to the extent that Congress would apportion them the funds to tackle the really serious cases (if this sounds familiar, it's also the what happened during the long period when the IRS chased middle class taxpayers over minor filing errors, while ignoring the billionaires and giant corporations that engaged in 7- and 8-figure tax scams).

But the FTC wasn't merely underfunded: it was timid. The FTC has extremely broad enforcement and rulemaking powers, which most sat dormant during the neoliberal era:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/10/the-courage-to-govern/#whos-in-charge

The Biden administration didn't merely increase the FTC's funding: in choosing Khan to helm the organization, they brought onboard a skilled technician, who was both well-versed in the extensive but unused powers of the agency and determined to use them:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

But Khan's didn't just rely on technical chops and resources to begin the de-olicharchification of the US economy: she built a three-legged stool, whose third leg is narrative. Khan's signature is her in-person and remote "listening tours," where workers who've been harmed by corporate power get to tell their stories. Bloomberg recounts the story of Deborah Brantley, who was sexually harassed and threatened by her bosses at Kavasutra North Palm Beach. Brantley's bosses touched her inappropriately and "joked" about drugging her and raping her so she "won’t be such a bitch and then maybe people would like you more."

When Brantley finally quit and took a job bartending at a different business, Kavasutra sued her over her noncompete clause, alleging an "irreparable injury" sustained by having one of their former employees working at another business, seeking damages and fees.

The vast majority of the 30 million American workers who labor under noncompetes are like Brantley, low-waged service workers, especially at fast-food restaurants (so Wendy's franchisees can stop minimum wage cashiers from earning $0.25/hour more flipping burgers at a nearby McDonald's). The donor-class indenturers who defend noncompetes claim that noncompetes are necessary to protect "innovative" businesses from losing their "IP." But of course, the one state where no workers are subject to noncompetes is California, which bans them outright – the state that is also home to Silicon Valley, an IP-heave industry that the same billionaires laud for its innovations.

After that listening tour, Khan's FTC banned noncompetes nationwide:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/25/capri-v-tapestry/#aiming-at-dollars-not-men

Only to have a federal judge in Texas throw out their ban, a move that will see $300b/year transfered from workers to shareholders, and block the formation of 8,500 new US businesses every year:

https://www.npr.org/2024/08/21/g-s1-18376/federal-judge-tosses-ftc-noncompetes-ban

Notwithstanding court victories like Epic v Google and DoJ v Google, America's oligarchs have the courts on their side, thanks to decades of court-packing planned by the Federalist Society and executed by Senate Republicans and Reagan, Bush I, Bush II, and Trump. Khan understands this; she told Bloomberg that she's a "close student" of the tactics Reagan used to transform American society, admiring his effectiveness while hating his results. Like other transformative presidents, good and bad, Reagan had to fight the judiciary and entrenched institutions (as did FDR and Lincoln). Erasing Reagan's legacy is a long-term project, a battle of inches that will involve mustering broad political support for the cause of a freer, more equal America.

Neither Biden nor Khan are responsible for the groundswell of US – and global – movement to euthanize our rentier overlords. This is a moment whose time has come; a fact demonstrated by the tens of thousands of working Americans who filled the FTC's noncompete docket with outraged comments. People understand that corporate looters – not "the economy" or "the forces of history" – are the reason that the businesses where they worked and shopped were destroyed by private equity goons who amassed intergenerational, dynastic fortunes by strip-mining the real economy and leaving behind rubble.

Like the billionaires publicly demanding that Harris fire Khan, private equity bosses can't stop making tone-deaf, guillotine-conjuring pronouncements about their own virtue and the righteousness of their businesses. They don't just want to destroy the world - they want to be praised for it:/p>

"Private equity’s been a great thing for America" -Stephen Pagliuca, co-chairman of Bain Capital;

"We are taught to judge the success of a society by how it deals with the least able, most vulnerable members of that society. Shouldn’t we judge a society by how they treat the most successful? Do we vilify, tax, expropriate and condemn those who have succeeded, or do we celebrate economic success as the engine that propels our society toward greater collective well-being?" -Marc Rowan, CEO of Apollo

"Achieve life-changing money and power," -Sachin Khajuria, former partner at Apollo

Meanwhile, the "buy, strip and flip" model continues to chew its way through America. When PE buys up all the treatment centers for kids with behavioral problems, they hack away at staffing and oversight, turning them into nightmares where kids are routinely abused, raped and murdered:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/they-told-me-it-was-going-be-good-place-allega-tions-n987176

When PE buys up nursing homes, the same thing happens, with elderly residents left to sit in their own excrement and then die:

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/12/24/nursing-homes-private-equity-fraud-00132001

Writing in The Guardian, Alex Blasdel lays out the case for private equity as a kind of virus that infects economies, parasitically draining them of not just the capacity to provide goods and services, but also of the ability to govern themselves, as politicians and regulators are captured by the unfathomable sums that PE flushes into the political process:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/10/slash-and-burn-is-private-equity-out-of-control

Now, the average worker who's just lost their job may not understand "divi recaps" or "2-and-20" or "carried interest tax loopholes," but they do understand that something is deeply rotten in the world today.

What happens to that understanding is a matter of politics. The Republicans – firmly affiliated with, and beloved of, the wreckers – have chosen an easy path to capitalizing on the rising rage. All they need to do is convince the public that the system is irredeemably corrupt and that the government can't possibly fix anything (hence Reagan's asinine "joke": "the nine most terrifying words in the English language are: 'I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help'").

This is a very canny strategy. If you are the party of "governments are intrinsically corrupt and incompetent," then governing corruptly and incompetently proves your point. The GOP strategy is to create a nation of enraged nihilists who don't even imagine that the government could do something to hold their bosses to account – not for labor abuses, not for pollution, not for wage theft or bribery.

The fact that successive neoliberal governments – including Democratic administrations – acted time and again to bear out this hypothesis makes it easy for this kind of nihilism to take hold.

Far-right conspiracies about pharma bosses colluding with corrupt FDA officials to poison us with vaccines for profit owe their success to the lived experience of millions of Americans who lost loved ones to a conspiracy between pharma bosses and corrupt officials to poison us with opioids.

Unhinged beliefs that "they" caused the hurricanes tearing through Florida and Georgia and that Kamala Harris is capping compensation to people who lost their homes are only credible because of murderous Republican fumble during Katrina; and the larcenous collusion of Democrats to help banks steal Americans' homes during the foreclosure crisis, when Obama took Tim Geithner's advice to "foam the runway" with the mortgages of everyday Americans who'd been cheated by their banks:

https://www.salon.com/2014/05/14/this_man_made_millions_suffer_tim_geithners_sorry_legacy_on_housing/

If Harris gives in to billionaire donors and fires Khan and her fellow trustbusters, paving the way for more looting and scamming, the result will be more nihilism, which is to say, more electoral victories for the GOP. The "government can't do anything" party already exists. There are no votes to be gained by billing yourself as the "we also think governments can't do anything" party.

In other words, a world where Khan doesn't run the FTC is a world where antitrust continues to gain ground, but without taking Democrats with it. It's a world where nihilism wins.

There's factions of the Democratic Party who understand this. AOC warned party leaders that, "Anyone goes near Lina Khan and there will be an out and out brawl":

https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1844034727935988155

And Bernie Sanders called her "the best FTC Chair in modern history":

https://twitter.com/SenSanders/status/1843733298960576652

In other words: Lina Khan as a posse.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/11/democracys-antitrust-paradox/#there-will-be-an-out-and-out-brawl

[lieutenant-rasczak]

On the incredible danger of the quaint, English village....

Although I live in Texas, thanks to various streaming services I get to watch a great deal of British T.V.  I have noticed that these shows (Midsomer Murders, Dalziel and Pascoe, Waking the Dead, Shakespeare and Hathaway, Vera, Rosemary & Thyme, Wycliffe,  etc.) share a common theme. 

And, after a certain amount of research I discovered that, believe it or not,  the third leading cause of death in the UK seems to be  "Moving to a quaint, country village". 

While “Getting murdered in a quaint, English, village”  killed slightly fewer UK Residents in 2021 than "Cancer" and "Heart Disease" it was distressingly close.  Even worse it came in only  slightly ahead of  "Attending a weekend party at a stately country home", which is in itself a fairly lethal pastime.  In fact “Attending a weekend party at a stately country home”  WAS the second leading cause of death in Britain between 1919 and 1939, but began to decline after the war as the Labour Govt. raised taxes and the number of country homes dropped drastically; thus causing a steep decline in the number of weekend parties one could be murdered at.

In any case my research indicates that IF you are British, AND you are feeling down, depressed, and suicidal, there is no reason for you to run your car off a cliff, or take a trip to Switzerland.  In fact, you need only do the following

1) move to a lovely, quiet, English village where nothing ever happens, but the murder rate is (adjusted for population) is far higher than that of South Chicago or East L.A.

You might think that such a village would be hard to find, but apparently England is simply teeming with them.  Places with highly competitive flower shows or bleak, cliff filled coastlines seem to be particularly deadly.

2) Change your will, and make sure to mention this to the former beneficiary. (This is vitally important!) Also make sure to let them know where the new will is kept. The top drawer of your desk is probably the best place, no need for locking file cabinets or bank safety deposit boxes!

3) Develop a keen interest in local land titles and/or genealogy. In fact you should probably announce that you are writing a book on the subject.  (It is suggested that you do so in a crowded pub.) In any case make sure to spend plenty of time at the local public records office researching this while receiving vaguely threatening  remarks from various upset neighbours. If you receive any threatening notes make sure to save them in an easily discovered drawer somewhere, but do NOT mention them to anybody, and certainly do not heed any warnings you are given about a need to “back off”.  That last one is ESSENTIAL.

4) Stand against the most popular member in the election for  Parish Council. Threatening to win the local flower show is also a good move.

5) Always leave the door or doors unlocked at night. (This includes your car.) Even if you have lived in London for decades, discard any habits you may have about locking up as soon as you move to the quaint, country, murder hole.

6) Never close any curtains or blinds, that way your future assailant always knows exactly where you are and what you are doing.

7)  Either don't have a phone or keep it in an inaccessible or hard to find place.

8)  Never, ever have any useful weapons nearby or if you do ensure you lose of drop them immediately on seeing your assailant.

Do this, and you��re guaranteed to be pushing up daisies by Christmas.

[pseudowho]

Madam Haitch please marry me im gonna be your pretty wife i can cook and do taxes and laundry and i can be your personal proofreader 😞💍

I'm married to a big gorgeous guy, who won awards for his coffees, cooks me lovely meals, does the laundry with a baby on his hip without being asked, and is a literal English teacher.

And we don't need to file our own taxes in the UK. It's called HMRC; they do it for us. For free.

And @mrhaitch has a dick and knows how to use it.

Which is a lot of bonus for me.

Love, and grateful for your noble attempts,

-- Haitch xxx

[palestinegenocide]

Zionism will never be viewed the same after the Gaza genocide

How do you wrap your head around genocide? As one numb week follows another, our leaders blind themselves to massacre and famine.

Joe Biden can see no “compelling alternative to how Israel [wages] a war in these circumstances without doing grievous harm to civilians,” Aaron David Miller writes in the New York Times, excusing the president’s support for genocide. So, Israel isn’t being deliberately cruel and sadistic. The Times coverage would just have you believe they just have no choice– as Donald Johnson wrote in a letter to the paper. “There is no middle ground between what Israel is doing and Gandhian pacifism: They just had to use 2000 lb bombs in urban settings. They have to torture captives and cut off food.”

Miller and other liberal Zionists have adopted that stance, but they are having little influence on Democrats. Polls show that the American people favor giving humanitarian aid to Gaza in far greater numbers than they do giving military aid to Israel, and the progressive base of the Democratic Party has started a political “firestorm” over U.S. support for genocide. The Zionist group J Street postponed its 2024 conference, surely because its own rank and file are enraged by Israel.

James Carville said on MSNBC this week that if Biden loses, it’s Israel’s fault, because the catastrophe in Gaza is an issue “all across the country.”

“This Gaza stuff, this is not just a problem with some snot-nosed Ivy League people…This is a problem all across the country. And I hope the president and Blinken can get this thing calmed down because if it doesn’t get calmed down before the Democratic convention, it’s going to be a very ugly time in Chicago. I promise you that. No matter what happens, I know it’s a huge problem.”

Last week, Brad Sherman, the Israel-loving Congress member from Los Angeles, fought back, accusing “anti-Israel forces” of an “attempt to penetrate and muddy our national discourse.”

Protesters affiliated with the antiwar group Code Pink seek to ask Rep. Brad Sherman about his support for the massacres of Palestinians in Gaza, in a video posted March 20, 2024. The congressman from Los Angeles/Malibu ran away from the protesters and accused them of seeking the genocide of Jews. Screenshot.

Sherman accused them of antisemitism. “There’s blood on your hands for the genocide—you’re trying to kill every Jew.”

That is the chief refuge for Democrats who excuse Israel’s actions. To say that critics of genocide are motivated by antisemitism.

But even liberal media are giving a platform to progressive critics. “The United States is complicit in genocide,” Mehdi Hasan said this week on New York public radio, and when the host pushed back and said Hasan was not blaming Hamas, Hasan said of course he denounces Hamas, but his tax dollars are not going to support Hamas. He also pointed out the inevitable consequences of military occupation. “The oppressed will always rise against the oppressor.”

And in wonderful media news this week, Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg withdrew from a speaking engagement in Kentucky after students questioned his record in the Israeli military nearly 40 years ago.

Jeffrey Goldberg, Editor-in-Chief of The Atlantic, withdrew from a scheduled speaking event at the University of Kentucky (UK) Wednesday, citing a last-minute schedule change, amidst concerns from students about his past as a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) prison guard and his views on Zionism…. “We were informed that students expressed concern as to why a former IDF prison guard would be speaking on democracy and journalism at an event celebrating the integration of UK. Students were told he withdrew to not cause harm on campus,” the representative [of a Palestinian solidarity group] stated.

The event was billed as “The Future of Journalism and the Health of Our Democracy.” That’s a little bit of accountability. The editor of the Atlantic is finally being called out for his service for Israel. The writer Yakov Hirsch repeatedly explained on our site that Netanyahu could not have maintained his faultless reputation in the U.S. mainstream without Goldberg fostering “hasbara culture.”

And bear in mind, that Goldberg used to brag about his military service. He wrote a whole memoir about it. Now, times are changing. And other editors who carried water for Israel will surely be called on to defend that work.

This process is just beginning. Zionists still have esteem in the U.S. discourse. The view that Israel supporters promote bigotry against Palestinians is still off-limits. Even as mainstream Jewish organizations assert that those who support Palestinian rights are bigoted against Jews.

“Israel supporters should be seen as on the same moral level as supporters of Bull Connor, but in the U.S. and Western mainstream you can only point to antisemitism— you can never point to anti-Palestinian racism on the Israel side,” Donald Johnson has written on our site.

“We cannot make progress on this issue if the extreme racism of the pro-genocide side is never discussed. People have to be able to say that any group, whether white southerners or South Africans or Nation of Islam members or Christian evangelical Zionists or Germans or, yes, Jewish supporters of Israel, can be racists. They can make racism central to their ideology. But Zionist racism is still a taboo subject, automatically branded as antisemitic, because fundamentally Palestinians are seen as lesser.”

[brf-rumortrackinganon]

Closer and closer...

Without a permanent primary residence in the UK, Harry is officially unable to serve as Counsellor of State.

Archived Link

Because I know it's going to come up as well:

Harry is allowed to keep his titles whilst living here in the US and/or becoming a naturalized citizen. He is only required to give up the titles if he runs for political office, per the US Constitution.

This has no impact on his immigration status or deportability. All it means is that he lives here most of the time and he's on the hook for taxes. He can still be deported. He can still be refused entry to the US if he leaves and tries to return.

(And he's not going to be deported. Not in the official way with DHS agents taking him to an immigration detention center or stuffing him on a plane back to the UK. That looks terrible for the special relationship and embarrasses the Trump Administration, the Biden Administration, and the Court of St. James. At worst, it'll all be handed privately/behind doors and it'll be spun as Harry deciding to move to Africa to be closer to his lifelong work with Sentebale. At best, it's a huge fine.)

(And before certain people come at me for mentioning the Trump Administration, yes, they are involved. The Sussexes moved to the US in March 2020 during the Trump Administration. Any paperwork for Harry to stay here past 90 days/June 2020 would have been processed by the Trump Administration. The Biden Administration didn't take office until January 20, 2021. Harry came and stayed under Trump. They're involved too, though the Biden Administration will take all the blame.)

[randomnameless]

I seriously hilarious how after a year people are still treating Engage like it burned their spouses and fucked their crops. If they love "moral grayness writing" that much, they have tons of other rpgs with similar themes to play, 8 seasons of Game of Thrones to watch and lots of grimdark fantasy books to read.

Seriously, there's only 3 times (if we want to count 3h that badly) where this franchise has tried to explote more nuanced and complex plots, and those games were the Tellius duology and the Jugdral games. The rest have milquetoast fantasy rpg plots. Why they sticking with FE when it's clearly not the franchise for these kinds remains an enigna.

Mmh,

I wouldn't say GOT's seasons are grim d4rk, imo they're trash in the same vein as the Kadarshians TV show, you're watching it to see how ruined things will be

(c'est quoi l'équivalent US/UK de l'émission "les marseillais"? )

I feel like Martin's books were more in the lines of "deconstruction then reconstruction" of the "traditional" fantasy tropes, with his own choice of depicting very grim and dark things that participate in the "deconstruction" side of his works... even if at times it borders on misery porn and, tbh, misogyny.

Fantasy settings, in general, always have some sort of monarchy and morale of "the good/rightful king returns home and everything is better!" - you can add some twists here and there, but in general, and especially FE, it's that kind of frame. We're not in game where Bob and John feel like Hector charges them too much for the sewer tax, and file a claim to his court to be discharged from paying said tax.

I'm not saying you can't add twists and add some sort of depth to the game, hell the Tales of franchise often tries to add some greater theme to their general "hero with a sword whacks people and is ultimately involved in a greater quest to save the world while eating appel gels", Symphonia tries to tackle racism and how being a victim or racism doesn't give you a pass to create concentration camps to turn people you see as "inferior beings" as fuels/devices to upgrade you and your chosen ones (even if that plot point utterly vanished when the MC goes "i wish we could have been friends" which is, uh, I guess where i found Kishimoto's inspiration for Obito I guess), Abyss tackles the existential crisis of clones/people created to be spares, do they have the right to exist beyond the purpose of their original creation or not? - etc etc.

Funny how you mention Tellius, because IMO, Tellius is even more shaky/wonky than Fodlan (or at least it's a serious competition) with its general message of "racism BaD but miscegenation BaD too" which is, uh... well.

That leaves Jugdral with all of the stuff it wanted to convey - and managed to do while being a SNES duology (I think?) - and yet Jugdral is, at its core, a story of "rightful heir returns to his throne" with some emphasis, especially in FE5, on what "rightful" means but the premise is the same, it's not Dalshin who's going to become the Lord of New Thracia, it's Leif because Leif is Quan'n'Ethlyn's son : his journey in FE5 is all about learning to become a good leader/king.

Back to your post, if people want a game where you "smash the patriarchy" and bring "the revolution"... well, the FE series is not (or wasn't, who knows how it will turn out to be in the near future) for you.

[impishtubist]

what I find especially funny about this 'sirius doing his taxes' hc is that you don't really need to file taxes for most things in the uk. they just do it for you. unless you're self-employed, which to be fair, I can see sirius have a bunch of freelance odd jobs.

but I think it's even better if the Wizarding World is just incredibly old fashioned about taxes. like there's actually just some guy who comes around to physically try to collect them, and you have to pay in coins or like, rare artifacts/ingredients.

remus probably had that job at some point.

Okay so I was too lazy to put this disclaimer on the posts, but yeah, you don't file taxes in the UK the way we do in the US, however I can see the wizarding world being backwards about that like they are about so many other things.

Also I think you just gave yourself a new WIP. Remus Lupin: tax collector (who collects strange artifacts and/or ingredients).

[gwgaccountant]

are in game currencies you can buy with real money covered under the same laws that make nfts and bitcoin taxable?

DISCLAIMER

I am not an international tax expert. Tax laws are obviously different in different jurisdictions; something that's true in the USA might not be true in the UK or Ukraine or India or Japan or Kenya or whatever. Also, the details of individual games can affect their legal standing. You may wish to consult a local tax expert before filing your return.

Disclaimers aside, probably not.

The thing about NFTs is that you can resell them. If you buy an ugly ape for etherium, you can later sell that ape for etherium and sell the etherium for cash, hopefully more than you paid in. That's what makes crypto stuff taxable; it's an investment.

Most in-game currencies cannot be exchanged for real-world money. You can't buy Fortnite VBucks at 5¢ to the buck and resell it at 7¢ to make a profit, and you can't sell anything for real-world cash. (This the main reason why gambling regulations usually don't apply to lootboxes.)

As far as the law is concerned, buying VBucks in Fortnite is no different from buying DLC on Steam.

Aside from blockchain games like the infamous Axie Infinity, the only ways I can think of for in-game currency purchases to result in taxable transactions probably violate the terms of service. Back in ye olde World of Warcraft days, people would sell their in-game gold for real-world money—profitable, despite (or because of?) being against the TOS.

Obviously, people can buy premium video game currency with their own money; that's what premium currency is for. But hypothetically, if you used that currency to buy an in-game item that you sold for real-world money, that would be a taxable transaction. The amount you sold it for minus the price initially paid for in-game currency would be taxable game.

Again, this is probably a violation of the terms of service you agreed to without reading, which would make this a breach of contract. In the US, you are required to report illegal income; however, as per the fifth amendment, you don't have to report anything that would incriminate yourself. How you report such income without self-incrimination is an exercise for any reader running a Fortnite money laundering business.

[mediamonarchy]

https://mediamonarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/20240514_MorningMonarchy.mp3 Download MP3 Devastating hits, Bezos’ DARPA grandad and Pokémon maps + this day in history w/U.S. moves Jerusalem Embassy and our song of the day by Macklemore on your #MorningMonarchy for May 14, 2024. Notes/Links: Are BRICS Bucks coming soon? BRICS: Prepare for US Dollar Collapse, IMF Warns https://watcher.guru/news/brics-prepare-for-us-dollar-collapse-imf-warns Australia’s Tax Office Tells Crypto Exchanges to Hand Over Transaction Details of 1.2 Million Accounts: Reuters; The ATO said the data will help identify traders who failed to report their cryptocurrency-related activities. https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/05/07/australias-tax-office-tells-crypto-exchanges-to-hand-over-transaction-details-of-12-million-accounts-reuters/ FTX customers get good-bad news as the bankrupt exchange rides the crypto rally https://sherwood.news/snacks/crypto/ftx-customers-get-good-bad-news-as-the-bankrupt-exchange-rides-the-crypto/ GameStop shares surge 70% as meme stock craze returns https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/14/gamestop-amc-shares-jump-another-40percent-in-premarket-trading-as-meme-stock-craze-returns.html Full list of closures as major bank to shut 36 branches and cut hundreds of jobs https://news.sky.com/story/tsb-to-close-36-branches-and-cut-hundreds-of-jobs-13131574 Video: TSB to close 36 branches with 250 jobs devastatingly hit (Audio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9juP3_SZxAk Laura Loomer Accuses Democrat Politician Who Told Trump to ‘Go Back to Court’ of Illicit Profiteering from Hush Money Trial https://archive.ph/Og5Ny Elon Musk, David Sacks Holds Secret ‘Anti-Biden’ Gathering of Billi https://californiaglobe.com/fr/elon-musk-david-sacks-holds-secret-anti-biden-gathering-of-billionaires/ Melinda French Gates steps down from Gates Foundation, retains $12.5 billion for additional philanthropy; The Gates Foundation has, over three decades, made $77.6 billion in charitable contributions, making it one of the world’s largest donor organizations. https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/melinda-gates-stepping-down-from-gates-foundation-rcna152001 FBI File on Jeff Bezos’ Grandfather, a DARPA Co-Founder, Has Been Destroyed https://vigilantnews.com/post/fbi-file-on-jeff-bezos-grandfather-a-darpa-co-founder-has-been-destroyed/ Video: America’s Book Of Secrets: DARPA’s Secret Mind Control Technology (Audio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZRkfBsTTt8 EU’s Controversial Digital ID Regulations Set for 2024, Mandating Big Tech Compliance by 2026 https://reclaimthenet.org/eus-controversial-digital-id-mandating-big-tech-compliance-by-2026 UK airports latest: ‘Queues only getting bigger’ https://news.sky.com/story/uk-airports-latest-queues-only-getting-bigger-after-london-and-manchester-confirm-nationwide-border-system-issue-13131330 Marvel Rivals apologises after banning negative reviews https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd1wwlvd9yko 28 years later, unopenable door in Super Mario 64’s Cool, Cool Mountain has been opened without hacks https://www.tomshardware.com/video-games/28-years-later-unopenable-door-in-super-mario-64s-cool-cool-mountain-has-been-opened-without-hacks Pokémon Go players are altering public map data to catch rare Pokémon https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/05/pokemon-go-players-are-altering-public-map-data-to-catch-rare-pokemon/ Video: Pokemon Go Versus OpenStreetMap (Audio) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fLPyXy39Sv0 Image: @Hybrid’s Cover Art – Pokemon Go’s ‘Modern Solutions’ https://mediamonarchy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/20240514_MorningMonarchy.jpg May 2014 – Page 6 – Media Monarchy https://mediamonarchy.com/2014/5/page/6/ Flashback: Americans Will Never Have the ‘Right to Be Forgotten’ (May 14, 2014) https://mediamonarchy.com/americans-will-never-have-right-to-be/ Flashback: Modern Pope Gets Old School On The Devil (May 14, 2014) https://mediamonarchy.com/modern-pope-gets-old-school-on-devi/ Flashback: Frugal US Consumers Make It Tough for F...

[affinityoutsourcinguk]

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[mostlysignssomeportents]

This day in history

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

#20yrsago Audio/transcript from BBC Creative Archive talk https://web.archive.org/web/20060306155902/http://digital-lifestyles.info/media/audio/2004.10.28-BBC-Creative-Archive-Q&A.mp3

#15yrsago Heavy illegal downloaders buy more music https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/illegal-downloaders-spend-the-most-on-music-says-poll-1812776.html

#15yrsago Scenting the Dark: outstanding debut short story collection from Mary Robinette Kowal, exploring our relationship to technology and each other https://memex.craphound.com/2009/11/01/scenting-the-dark-outstanding-debut-short-story-collection-from-mary-robinette-kowal-exploring-our-relationship-to-technology-and-each-other/

#10yrsago Surveillance and stalkers: how the Internet supercharges gendered violence https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahjeong/2014/10/28/surveillance-begins-at-home/

#10yrsago Secret recording of corporate lobbyist is a dirty-tricks playbook https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/us/politics/pr-executives-western-energy-alliance-speech-taped.html

#10yrsago NZ Trade Minister: we keep TPP a secret to prevent “public debate” https://www.techdirt.com/2014/10/31/new-zealands-trade-minister-admits-they-keep-tpp-documents-secret-to-avoid-public-debate/

#5yrsago Blizzard’s corporate president publicly apologizes for bungling players’ Hong Kong protests, never mentions Hong Kong https://www.theverge.com/2019/11/1/20944022/blizzard-blizzcon-hearthstone-china-hong-kong-response-j-allen-brack

#5yrsago My review of Sandworm: an essential guide to the new, reckless world of “cyberwarfare” https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/books/story/2019-11-01/sandworm-andy-greenberg-cybersecurity

#5yrsago Report from a massive Chinese surveillance tech expo, where junk-science “emotion recognition” rules https://twitter.com/suelinwong/status/1190194625572569093

#5yrsago Toronto approves Google’s surveillance city, despite leaks revealing Orwellian plans https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/sidewalk-labs-waterfront-toronto-quayside-vote-1.5342294

#5yrsago Chicago teachers declare victory after 11-day strike https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/10/31/chicago-teachers-strike-union-tentative-agreement-makeup-days/4106271002/

#5yrsago Airbnb’s easily gamed reputation system and poor customer service allow scammers to thrive https://www.vice.com/en/article/nationwide-fake-host-scam-on-airbnb/

#5yrsago Suppressed internal emails reveal that the IRS actively helped tax-prep giants suppress Free File https://www.propublica.org/article/the-irs-tried-to-hide-emails-that-show-tax-industry-influence-over-free-file-program

#5yrsago Massive spike in young people registering to vote in the UK https://memex.craphound.com/2019/11/01/massive-spike-in-young-people-registering-to-vote-in-the-uk/

#1yrsago Social Security is class war, not intergenerational conflict https://pluralistic.net/2023/11/01/intergenerational-warfare/#five-pound-blocks-of-cheese

[ingek73]

Tominey: Prince Harry & Meghan ‘could be a poster couple for workshy Britain’

April 02, 2023

By Kaiser

The Telegraph’s Camilla Tominey is frantic. When Prince Harry showed up unexpectedly at a London High Court last week, Tominey could not contain her rage and fury at Harry for daring to stand up to a British tabloid. She barfed out an especially crazy piece about how Harry is a piece of sh-t for calling out the Daily Mail and calling out his father, who hires senior staff straight from the Mail’s editorial board. Tominey even admitted that Harry’s work-trip to London last week “would almost certainly have upstaged the King’s European charm offensive.” Camilla Tominey is such a loser and she defends losers. Well, she had another column in the Telegraph where she latched onto the Daily Mail’s “exclusive” story about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Archewell charity tax filing, wherein they claimed (for tax purposes) that they worked one hour a week on Archewell’s charity arm. Behold, I give you “Harry and Meghan could be a poster couple for workshy Britain.” Sub-head: “But when it comes to self promotion, no one can doubt that the publicity shy couple have put in the hours.” Here’s part of her piece:

We all know that productivity has gone down since the pandemic…But who knew that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would have what it takes to become a poster-couple for workshy Britain, even after they left the UK to become “financially independent” in the United States?

The revelation that they last year carried out just one hour’s work a week for the Archewell Foundation, their non-profit organisation, has naturally been seized upon by the sort of people who revelled in that South Park episode. To be fair to the Duke and Duchess, it is standard practice for directors in the US to list their hours, as they have done on these newly released tax records.

Moreover, we can hardly say that they haven’t been busy since they stepped back as working royals – what with their Oprah Winfrey interview, their six-part Netflix documentary and Prince Harry’s autobiography, Spare.

Indeed, the Duke has also been occupied at the High Court this week, bravely setting aside his security concerns to join a group of well-known faces in suing Associated Newspapers Limited, the publisher of the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, for allegedly stealing their private information, which the newspaper group denies.

Clearly, the amount of hard graft that is necessary, supposedly to protect one’s privacy, should not be underestimated.

In Harry and Meghan’s case, it has involved the traducing of a great many people to generate the requisite number of headlines to show just how intrusive the press can apparently be. We must never forgive the sacrifices they have made in the name of global royal reporting.

To be a royal is to be duty-bound in pursuit of the service of others, but Harry and Meghan’s approach has been rather more self-serving than that. For when it comes to self promotion, no one can doubt that the couple have put the hours in.

[From The Telegraph]

Imagine writing this about two people who left the UK in 2020, had their security pulled, were in fear for their lives, and were simply trying to survive for months with the kindness of a relative stranger (Tyler Perry). And in three years, this is what Harry and Meghan have done: welcomed a second child and recovered from a miscarriage; bought a home; won at least two lawsuits against the Mail; produced a wildly successful memoir; produced a wildly successful Netflix docuseries; produced a wildly successful and award-winning podcast; taken a Chief Impact Officer position with a billion-dollar life-coaching business; made a successful investment in a small oat-latte business; built a charity which has already worked on several substantive projects with tangible objectives and raised millions of dollars as well as working with corporate sponsors; organized another successful Invictus Games despite a global pandemic; continued conservation work in Africa; built an actual business and charity from the ground up, and on and on. While I wish we saw more of Harry and Meghan too, what they’ve managed to accomplish in three years is amazing.

Imagine writing all of this snide bullsh-t about “work-shy” Meghan and Harry… and then having nothing to say about Prince William and Kate, who barely do one event a week and are currently on a month-long vacation. I guess someone’s buying it?

Repeating this because it is a fantastic list:

Imagine writing this about two people who left the UK in 2020, had their security pulled, were in fear for their lives, and were simply trying to survive for months with the kindness of a relative stranger (Tyler Perry). And in three years, this is what Harry and Meghan have done: welcomed a second child and recovered from a miscarriage; bought a home; won at least two lawsuits against the Mail; produced a wildly successful memoir; produced a wildly successful Netflix docuseries; produced a wildly successful and award-winning podcast; taken a Chief Impact Officer position with a billion-dollar life-coaching business; made a successful investment in a small oat-latte business; built a charity which has already worked on several substantive projects with tangible objectives and raised millions of dollars as well as working with corporate sponsors; organized another successful Invictus Games despite a global pandemic; continued conservation work in Africa; built an actual business and charity from the ground up, and on and on. While I wish we saw more of Harry and Meghan too, what they’ve managed to accomplish in three years is amazing.

[masllp]

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[follow-up-news]

Paul Manafort has agreed to pay $3.15 million he owes to the US government over misrepresentations he made on his tax returns almost a decade ago, bringing to a close the former Trump campaign chairman’s financial tangles in court.

Manafort hadn’t disclosed to the Treasury Department nearly two dozen bank accounts in Cyprus, St. Vincent and the Grenadines and the UK that he used for political consulting business he did in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014, according to court filings.

The offshore accounts had tens of thousands of dollars in them, making it necessary for him to report them to the IRS. But on his tax returns, Manafort said he had no foreign bank accounts.

Manafort later admitted to failing to disclose the accounts as part of his guilty plea on a host of financial and tax crimes in the Mueller investigation. He was pardoned by then-President Trump in late 2020, again skirting some of the payback requirements.

The Justice Department sued Manafort in April last year “to collect outstanding civil penalties … for his willful failure to timely report his financial interest in foreign bank accounts,” court filings said. The DOJ also sought interest and late payment fees from Manafort.

[rahabs]

So in the last 24 hours, I:

i) Was chased and nearly attacked by a drunk man in a school parking lot;

ii) Was then told by my very white British ex-friends that I, a native/Indian woman, was not allowed to say that the ethnicity of my attacker was the same as mine because it makes them, white British people, uncomfortable, whereupon they all dogpiled me and tried to tell me what language I can/cannot use in regards to my own people and lectured me about my own culture because apparently I’m a Bad Indian if I don’t do whatever all those white girls in the UK think Good Indians should do;

iii) Spent all morning running around for extremely taxing clients;

iv) When I finally went for a late lunch over an hour later than usual my boss thought it would be a great idea to LOUDLY badmouth me to two coworkers because how dare I get lunch and how dare I not have a file I gave back to him over a month ago--oh, and did I mention the rest of the office heard, to the point where I had coworkers texting me about it and warning me as soon as I walked back in from lunch?

:)

I hate law.  I hate law.  It makes me so miserable I want to die and I’m being called “lazy” because I can’t stick it out and because I don’t want to be shouted at and I don’t want to work until 2 AM every day.  My boss is a perfectionist who wants everything done a certain way so I take time to try and make sure it’s done well except it never is and then apparently he goes around telling everyone I’m “slow”.  Of course I am.  I’m fucking terrified of you/interacting with you because nothing I do is ever good enough.