New Cuban Tax Just Same Old Communist Expropriation

New Cuban Tax Just Same Old Communist Expropriation
Posted 11/28/2012 06:39 PM ET

Tyranny: The media praised Cuba for slapping taxes on its impoverished
citizens for the first time, calling the move "market-oriented" and
"modern." In reality, it's just a new kind of theft from the same old
dictatorship.

To hear Reuters tell it, you'd think that Cuba, a brutal communist
dictatorship for 53 years, has been a tax-free haven for all its lucky
citizens.

"Most Cubans have not paid taxes for half a century, but that will
change under a new code starting Jan. 1," the newswire chirped, noting
that the new taxes on private profits begin in the 35% vicinity.

They're new all right, but hardly the first: Last September, the regime
initiated punishing customs taxes at $4.55 a pound in excess baggage
fees on Cuban expats bringing in supplies for their relatives with
businesses.

"The government's free-market reforms, introduced over the last two
years, are designed to encourage small businesses, private farming and
individual initiative," Reuters wrote. "Under the new tax code the state
hopes to get its share of the proceeds."

Its share? Cubans earn about $19 a month, slave wages by any standard.
They do the same work as other Latin Americans, often with more skill.
But to the state, their sole employer, their wages are worth just $19,
an implicit expropriation of their true market value.

Make no mistake, that's how the government sees it: Cuban dictator Fidel
Castro even told one prominent medical professional, Dr. Hilda Molina,
that she was not free to leave the country because her state-paid
training made her "brain the property of the state."

Reuters helpfully points out that taxes have been all but nonexistent in
Cuba because wages are low, so as to keep social services "free."

But that's just the point: The money workers could earn if free to
choose their employers at wages that reflect their worth now all goes to
the state and its "free" programs. Officially or not, it's a tax well
beyond 99%.

And what a surprise, the Castro brothers just happen to have personal
fortunes in the billions of dollars, according to the last Forbes
estimate. That's a lot of taxes.

The Castro dictatorship is looking to take cash from the supposedly
independent new businesses it's permitted to set up shop, originally as
a way of cutting the bloated state employment rolls.

Far from being a market liberalization or modernization, the Castroite
tax hike is nothing but a shakedown of businesses that are struggling to
grow, and an effort to reassert the power of the state over its citizens.

It's communist in the extreme, and won't work.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/112812-634982-cuban-castro-regime-taxes-just-confiscation-in-new-form.htm