开云体育

He didn't call you a thief, he called you an unintentional tax evader. There's a big difference. A thief is someone who willfully takes something of value from another person, which belongs to that other person. A tax evader is someone who avoids legalized thievery by the government.

The idea that we need to pay taxes on imported items is ridiculous to me. The shipping costs for international shipments (in small quantities) are already high, so if it so much to buy something inside the country that it's more than having it shipped from overseas, there's something wrong inside your country, either the item simply isn't available on the market there, or the legitimate importers are overcharging in a big way. If no one can be bothered to sell the item in your region or even country, then I don't think you should have to pay a tax on it, since there's no brick-and-mortar store sitting there consuming resources and requiring police and fire protection. Paying a sales tax makes more sense when you have the convenience of going to a nearby store and buying it right away, without having to wait for or pay for expensive shipping, and that store needs various government services to exist. If the local economy is working properly, it should cost about the same to buy something locally (after tax) as to buy it mail-order (after shipping); if it's not that way, either local merchants are being greedy, or delinquent by not having enough selection.

In my opinion, there should be no taxes at all on internationally-shipped items, up to a not-too-small dollar amount, perhaps $1000 USD, especially between first-world countries that are already at parity in terms of cost-of-living. So importing $1000 of stuff from China, for instance, is not the same as importing $1000 of stuff from the USA. Don't you guys in the EU already have no customs fees for items moved between member countries? It seems to me all the first-world countries should implement that: EU, Japan, USA, Canada, Australia, and NZ.