I've seen this happen as a side effect of a formal job evaluation process. Employees write up their job duties/skills in minute detail ("I helped the SAP admin by rebooting a server once" becomes "maintain the SAP system") and these duties are then scored by a committee. More "duties" = more points = more money, so of course, the employee is entirely motivated to pad everything. My personal favourite is the educational requirements. I have a masters in an unrelated field, so therefore a masters is a "requirement" of my job that just happens to be worth 2 pay grades.

The evaluation committee normally does a pretty decent job of leveling out the pay grades, but unfortunately it's the originally document often turns into the job posting when that person needs to be replaced.

Not true. The Windows "site license" is an upgrade to the OEM copy of Windows installed on the PC. It cannot be used on bare metal. What businesses do is buy the cheapest possible Windows license with the PC and then image over it with the desired version. (Or get the OEM to ship the image preinstalled for a few extra bucks.)

Actually, it wasn't clear at all. You used

as your example. If you were discussing kroner, you shouldn't have used a dollar sign.

Besides, $1.51 will buy you a coffee in Canada, but in Norway it'll be 20 NOK.

See, the HST IS good for something after all!

So you're going to pay $0.01 more for each coffee?

$1.51 with card = $1.51, with cash = $1.50
$1.49 with cash = $1.50, with card = $1.49

Don't you mean p > n? If there are more pirates would otherwise be customers than the number of new customers gained through pirate word of mouth, then damages have occurred. X and R and completely irrelevant to this calculation.

GST is not a compound tax, it's a value added tax. Every bill that I pay gets split into two accounts - a "GST paid" asset account and an expense account. Every invoice I collect is split to a revenue account and a "GST collected" liability account. At the end of the period, I simply remit the difference between the two GST accounts.

Here's my example. Let's say a white box supplier buys $400 worth of components and sells me a $500 computer. They collect $25 GST from me, pay $20 to their supplier, and remit $5 to the government. (Let's ignore import/export issues for now and assume that the original supplier remits the entire $20.)

Now I take that computer, install Linux, slap my brand on it, deliver it, set it up, and feed your dog while I'm there. I charge you $700 + $35 GST, When I file my return, I remit the net GST of $10 as well. So a total of $35 in GST was remitted to the government from the supply chain, which is exactly what you paid.

If you were a GST registrant and decided to sell that computer along, but only got $600 for it, you would be able to claim a refund of $5 ($35-$30, or 5% of $700-$600) as well. If that was your only sale in a reporting period, you would actually get a $5 cheque (well, direct deposit) from Revenue Canada.

Actually, GST has definite advantages in that regard. Invoices must clearly show the amount of GST charged and the registrant number, so an audit has a good paper trail to start from. And business are motivated to collect GST so that they can recover their input credits. It's also easy to cross reference to your income tax return as well - if you aren't remitting about 5% of your gross profit, a red flag goes up.

I see what you did there.