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50% of residential construction in Quebec was said to be done "under the table". This is not new, it is not hidden, and helps the larger economy. As a bonus, it makes the tax collector unhappy.
The informal economy is unpaid work that is unaccounted for. It is a huge part of the economy. For example, parents don't get paid for childbearing and childrearing and if they are subsidized to some degree, it is a small degree. That's unpaid work that is not compensated monetarily and therefore not accounted for on anyone's books.
The alternative economy involves paid work as well as barter is partly one the books and partly off the books. The alternative economy includes the part of the barter economy that doesn't fall into the informal economy. Some of it is on the books and taxes are paid, some not.
The underground economy is the part of the alternative economy that is off the books. Some of this involves criminal activity and some not. But it is all criminal activity to the extent that taxes are avoided, e.g., the cash economy and a part of the barter economy.
The under the table economy is unpaid work in the regular economy that doesn't go on the books. There are a lot of ways of extracting unpaid work from workers through superior bargaining power, for example, and subterfuge.
3 comments:
Tom, I've caught a couple of mentions to the underground, if you could point to a resource that would flesh that out, I'd like to check it out.
"This translates to an annual loss to the state of between $8.5 billion and $28 billion in corporate, personal, and sales and use taxes"
This sounds more like a tax potential to me. If that industry, that exchange didn't happen, what would the tax loss be?
50% of residential construction in Quebec was said to be done "under the table". This is not new, it is not hidden, and helps the larger economy. As a bonus, it makes the tax collector unhappy.
The informal economy is unpaid work that is unaccounted for. It is a huge part of the economy. For example, parents don't get paid for childbearing and childrearing and if they are subsidized to some degree, it is a small degree. That's unpaid work that is not compensated monetarily and therefore not accounted for on anyone's books.
The alternative economy involves paid work as well as barter is partly one the books and partly off the books. The alternative economy includes the part of the barter economy that doesn't fall into the informal economy. Some of it is on the books and taxes are paid, some not.
The underground economy is the part of the alternative economy that is off the books. Some of this involves criminal activity and some not. But it is all criminal activity to the extent that taxes are avoided, e.g., the cash economy and a part of the barter economy.
The under the table economy is unpaid work in the regular economy that doesn't go on the books. There are a lot of ways of extracting unpaid work from workers through superior bargaining power, for example, and subterfuge.
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