Techie exposed giant tax grab, maybe made government change the rules
- Reference: 1750059912
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/16/who_me/
- Source link:
This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Dillon,” who told us of a time he worked on the point-of-sale (POS) team for what he described as “my home city's most prominent retailer.”
“It was the kind of fancy store that had a classy steakhouse on the top floor, complete with a piano player and a bar – the kind of place where the city's movers and shakers went to move and shake,” he explained.
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Some of those movers and shakers ran the local professional sporting team, and as Dillon tells it, they “threw perennial tantrums and threatened to leave town if we didn't build them a new stadium.”
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The city council eventually agreed.
“To raise funds to pay the ransom for the stadium, the city levied a large suite of new sales taxes,” Dillon explained. “They added an extra tax on top of the state's general merchandise tax. They put a tax on restaurant food, and another on liquor served at bars. And they doubled the food and liquor taxes during times a venue featured live entertainment.”
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“The only items remaining untaxed in our restaurant were the napkins,” he bemoaned.
Dillon got the job of ensuring his store listed all the new taxes on the steak restaurant’s receipts.
“Our POS software package supported a maximum of four tax categories, and it was of course only natural to implement them by dedicating one category to each of the new taxes,” Dillon told Who, Me?
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That decision meant receipts in the fancy steakhouse soon included four lines of tax information.
“Receipts listed the customer's vice of choice, and noted their money was being collected by the city to pay for the stadium.”
The resulting monster-length receipts meant the city’s movers and shakers could not help but see the city government’s tax take – four times on each receipt.
[6]Field support chap got married – which took down a mainframe
[7]Admin brought his drill to work, destroyed disks and crashed a datacenter
[8]Techies thought outside the box. Then the boss decided to take the box away
[9]Automatic UK-to-US English converter produced amazing mistakes by the vanload
Dillon was satisfied that this arrangement meant his customers were well-informed and his employer was compliant with all applicable laws.
And one of those laws soon changed.
“The city started requiring that sales taxes on all receipts be printed as a single amount, rather than itemizing different aspects of poor governance,” he told Who, Me?
Did Dillon’s receipt scheme lead to that change? We’ll never know. But he never experienced any blowback!
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[6] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/09/who_me/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2025/06/02/who_me/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/26/who_me/
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It looks like a tax on them
Did Dillon’s receipt scheme lead to that change? We’ll never know.
I think we might.
Wait a minute - the tax payer is responsible for building a stadium for the local sporting team, who are themselves a profit making enterprise? That side of the Atlantic gets weirder every day....
You can't have the rich spending their money to benefit the poor.
I wish this sort of shenanigans was exclusive to that side of the Atlantic.
Seems normal?
Normally the team would then rent the stadium?
The stadium would have many uses, concerts and things, so it would be normal that the team wouldn't be the owner.
If the team thinks their current stadium is too small or decrepit, its normal that they complain and threaten to move - do they have any choice?
But its a risk for the team, the rental costs of the new stadium will presumably be higher...
Re: Seems normal?
And the next thing you know, tickets start at three hundred bucks and go up...
While there have been loud claims of "no public money" for the new Old Trafford football entertainment complex in Manchester, it does seem to be predicated on [1]significant public investment to enable it. There's been surprisingly little analysis of the economics of commercial sports, but what there is, at least in the UK, seems to suggest that the big-money businesses cause a net economic outflow from their surrounding areas and provide mostly casual, low-quality jobs in the local area.
[1] https://inews.co.uk/news/inside-manchester-united-plan-taxpayers-cash-stadium-3584715
Seems to be business as usual in the US. From the Grauniad earlier this month:
"Browns’ owners want to build a new $2.4bn stadium – and want Ohio taxpayers to foot a portion of the bill"
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/jun/05/cleveland-browns-stadium-move
Hmm
If people knew how much they were being taxed they would revolt.
Re: Hmm
I'm almost certain the reason our vat is so high is because its included in the shelf price.
My family hate shopping in the states where sales tax is added at the till, even after I point out that's probably why its usually maxed out at 5-10%.
Those in power don't like the minions to know how the sausage is made - lest they revolt in horror.