I've had an idea for a while how business owners, as well as their customers, might lower their taxes by promoting the use and circulation of gold and silver coins. The essence of the idea is to accept government minted gold and silver coins at face value.
For example, an item that would sell for 3 dollars in paper currency would also sell for 0.3 dollars or 30 cents in silver coins. The tax justification for selling at discounted and/or a less than the wholesale price is advertising and promotion. In addition to offering a 10% discount to senior citizens, or a 25% discount to veterans, one could offer a 90 or 95 percent discount to customers who use and circulate gold and silver coins from the mint.
You see, the mint stamps a face value on every Silver Eagle (aka Silver Liberty) and Gold Eagle minted. Also they are legal tender AND for tax purposes must be accepted at face value. Because both paper and precious metal are legal tender, there is no "competition" against the nation's currency.
The benefits of doing this can be felt instantly knowing you are not using the central banks money and furthering their agendas, but rather you are using the people's or nation's money and promoting honesty and fair value. At the end of the year you can take a tax write off which keeps more money in your pocket.
Now if you take a draw from the business or a worker accepts his commission and some of it is paid with the gold or silver coin, the face value of personal income is lower than if it had all been paid with paper or digital currency. (Chah-ching!)
As you can see, a little bit of creativity can help you and the local economy break the chains of the fiat monetary paradigm.
Of course there are going to be some minor hiccups when calculating your discount rates. For example, the face value of a Silver Eagle is one dollar and it weighs one ounce. The face value of a Gold Eagle is 50 dollars and weighs one ounce. However the "spot market" ratio is currently near 80:1. Additionally, in America, the quarter dollars, half dollars, and the dimes minted before 1965 contain about 0.725 ounces of silver per dollar face value. So since we want to promote using money that is "ours" and not "theirs" we might have to take a slight hit for the cause. But that is what promotion is all about, right? ...And then there is the quandry of the 10 dollar Gold Eagle. It weighs 1/4 of one ounce, so four of them would total up to a face value of 40 dollars but would weight one ounce which, if it were one coin, would have a face value of 50 dollars.
But to start out, these shouldn't be too much of a hurdle to promote your business, your liberty, and all the good things related to it.
As I see things, it is important that people stop using the central bank's currency if they don't want endless wars, high taxes, and political corruption. This is a good way to begin phasing out bad money and bringing back honest money.
I'm sure many people reading this will think cryptos would work just as well, but to me, at best, they seem more suited for purchasing on-line or from a business that is not local. Also they can take a long time to clear. Credit and debit cards take a long time to clear too in my opinion. Maybe I just have a knack for picking the slowest check out line in a store, but I seem to get behind the people who don't know how to drive the card reader very well. Some don't know which button is the "enter" or when to push it, some don't have their glasses and can't see, some are too short and can't read the screen at all, while others have a stack of cards and try them one at a time until one is accepted.
Cold hard cash is the fastest and requiers no third party verification to transact. Even paper transfers faster than digital money. But gold and silver coins can also offer a tax savings if we just circulate and use them. Just do not take them to the bank. Spend them!
people are so dumbed down you couldn’t buy anything with a silver backed ounce at McDonalds. I remember one guy trolling one and offered to buy a Big mac with 1 silver ounce of gold! Rejected.. pods.
Thanks for the reply @bearbear613 and I know what you are saying. That is why I think if the business used the tax advantage to promote it then the workers would accept them and learn something too!
Nope.
There’s a 28% collectibles tax that you are ignoring.
There was a case a few years ago if a business trying to play gold coins both ways. Iirc they were paying contractors the face value of the good coins but then claiming a business expense on the melt value. I believe they ended up losing in court.
And then there is Greshams law. The main reason people don’t do this is that bad money drives out good. So if you are holding $20 in paper fiat and $20 in gold, your trust in the value of the gold is higher than your trust in the paper fiat. So you’ll preferentially spend the paper fiat first and hold onto the gold.
You are right @ nealmcspadden you can't have it both ways. So you claim that you used the "lost money" on advertizing and promotion, just like when you give senior discounts, etc. But you cannot claim that the money you used was worth more than the face value. If you buy an item for 1 dollar face value silver and then try to say you lost 19 dollars because you used silver would not make sense. If you sell an item for 1 dollar face value silver when you normally would sell it for 20 dollars face value paper, then you claim that discounted sale as a promotion. If you are purchasing for the business and reselling, then you might show a larger "profit", but would offset that with "promotion" costs granted to your customers.
Thank for the input.
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