Don’t Tip the State!

The “Taxation Is Theft” Meme Has Officially Gone Mainstream

APRIL 30, 2017

Op-Ed by Alice Salles

The month of April is a nightmare for anyone with a conscience, as we only have until “tax day” — which usually falls on April 15 — to give the taxman what he says he deserves. So if you pay taxes to Uncle Sam and you’re also aware you’re paying for mass murder in the Middle East and in U.S. streets due to the drug war, you should also feel sick to your stomach as you write that check.

To a restaurant customer, this may have served as enough incentive to remind his server that taxation is always immoral — but he didn’t stop there.

Last week, a customer at a Missouri restaurant gave the waitress a “personal gift” instead of a tip, writing the now popular line “Taxation is theft” in the tip section of the receipt.

In a second note, the fiscally conscious customer added:

This is not a tip. This is a personal gift and not subject to federal or state income taxes.

With major progressive news outlets like ATTN: reporting on this story, left-leaning reporters started to debate wages in the food and service industries, discussing the fact that tips end up being factored as wages, meaning they are always taxable.

But as that discussion developed, reporters were quick to realize that when personal gifts are in the mix, the taxman can’t take part of those earnings away. After all, a gift would have to exceed $13,000 to be subject to taxation, meaning that even if the customer had spent hundreds, the “personal gift” would not amount to anything close to the requirements stipulated by the IRS.

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From Activist Post, here.

True or False?

Authored by: העורך Editor

Kibbutzniks comprised a full quarter of the casualties during the Six-Day War, in spite of being only 4% of the soldiers.

UPDATE – Claude claims:

I retrieved the actual IDF historical research document on Six-Day War casualties. It breaks down the 781 fallen soldiers by front, brigade, date, rank, age, marital status, and type of service. Crucially, it does break down casualties by place of residence — city, development town, and “התיישבות העובדת” (the labour settlements, i.e., kibbutzim and moshavim).

The document notes that over 25% of fallen soldiers came from the התיישבות העובדת. But — and this is important — that category includes both kibbutzim and moshavim, not kibbutzim alone. And the document also explicitly cautions that many soldiers from kibbutzim (as well as moshavim, presumably) registered city addresses (military or family), so the figure likely understates their representation.

So the 25% figure appears to have a real basis in IDF data for the Six-Day War specifically — but it refers to the broader labour settlement sector, not kibbutzim alone, and the document itself flags the methodological caveat.

It’s also worth noting that kibbutzniks were historically overrepresented in combat roles and officer ranks, which would naturally affect casualty rates; IDF’s culture was the famous “אחרי” (“follow me”) doctrine, where officers led from the front.

Nothing specific to kibbutz casualty percentages in 1948.