| > If you sell me a piece of kit you very legally own, and I pay you in | > cash, that's black market : no trace, no taxes paid. The property traded | > is not necessarily illegal, it's just that the transaction is not | > visible to the State. | | Am I a business, or just a regular Joe? | | If I'm a business, then yes, that's the black market. If I | just sell you my old PC, then that's the perfectly legal (at | least in the USA) secondary market. Of course, if I make a | habit of buying and selling used kit, then, yes, I would be | engaging in commerce, and then must either register with the | state and collect taxes, or enter the black market.
To give a U.S. Tax point of view... According to IRS guidelines, if you make a profit on the transaction (any transaction, in business or private citizen trading with my neighbor), you owe income tax on that transaction. Now then, determining the amount or profit could be problematic (Let's just not go there). The IRS wants their share no matter what. However, they cannot enforce what they do not see, so cash is usually a way to get by. If you engage in a large cash business, most people get "caught" by depositing said cash into banks, which is very traceable. It's not to difficult to observe an individual and determine expenditure patterns based upon lifestyle, infer an income, and determine whether tax has been avoided. My $0.02, Brooks
