Atlas upon seeing that the greater his effort, the heavier the world bores down on his shoulders, he simply shrugs. We have a dystopian Occident, where capitalists refuse to be exploited by increasing taxation and regulations and disappear offshore. Yes, capitalists are on strike! They are stopping the motor of the world by withdrawing their minds that drive growth and productivity. Capitalists demonstrate that a world in which the individual is not free to create is doomed, civilization cannot exist where capitalists are slaves of kleptocrats, and the destruction of the profit motive leads to the collapse of society. Atlas shrugged! All citizens should avoid and evade sales tax and VAT all the way! If you live in USA, you should refuse paying sales tax, and if you live in Fourth Reich, you should refuse paying VAT. If a shop owner does not respect your refusal, go to the next shop. In this depression, you can find myriad shops to accommodate your refusal, pure and simple! Remember, your government is your worst enemy! A sensitive issue cannot be fully explained in a post, but only in a speech, in that magic eyeball to eyeball contact, baring my soul, and declaring truths that cause shock and awe. That's why I look forward to the invitation of your organization to speak at your conference. Basil Venitis,  venitis@gmail.com Taxes, especially VAT, feed the underground economy. It is your patriotic duty to evade taxes, especially VAT, all the way! Taxation causes an enormous and unnecessary dead-weight loss to the economic system. The sheer cost and time burden of businesses and individuals trying to comply with the tax system, let alone the cost of myriad bureaucrats who claim to be administrating it, waste hundreds of billions of euros. This waste of resources unnecessarily reduces economic growth and job creation. A major reason this obscenity persists is that few kleptocrats think seriously about the consequences of what they have done and are doing, or just don't care.  http://venitism.blogspot.com VAT, aka kleptocrats' grab, is a regressive tax; the poor pay higher percentage of their income. Revenues from VAT are much lower than expected, because they are difficult and costly to administer and collect. Since any double-digit VAT leads many consumers to underground economy, most vatstruck Fourthreichians evade VAT! As a matter of fact, if you are a real patriot, you should boycott shops that charge abominable VAT! VAT is the cacothanasia of Fourth Reich! Vatdodging is heroism! The income tax has become much more progressive in the past thirty years, resulting in a situation in which a relatively small minority of taxpayers pay the bulk of the taxes, while most citizens pay little or any income tax. This is causing an increasing disconnect between benefits from government and what most citizens pay for. One result is a greater polarization in the political realm where a majority of citizens increasingly demand more government benefits for which they want others to pay. It makes no sense to tax corporations at all, because only people pay taxes, not legal entities. The corporate tax is paid by customers in terms of higher prices, by suppliers in terms of lower volumes of business, by employees in terms of lower wages, and by stockholders in terms of lower returns. All other persons and groups in society, except for acknowledged and sporadic criminals such as th