If you live in Greece and gamble online, I hope you report that income and pay the appropriate taxes. If not, you had better start. The Greek government has made it known that they are targeting tax evaders, including those who don’t pay taxes from online casino gaming.

There is an estimated €15 billion in so-called missing taxes each year for the Greek government. That means tax money that they should receive but do not because of tax evasion. As part of the rules given to them by the IMF, EU and Germany during the bailout, Greece must reduce that number and bring in more of that missing tax money. To that end, they have created a new team, called the Financial Police and Electronic Crimes Squad. That team is tasked with finding tax dodgers, including online gamblers.

Among the new powers given to that team is the ability to track bank accounts and stock market activity. That means there is a much better chance of noticing money made from overseas online sources, such as online casinos. Christos Papoutsis, the leader of the team, also says that online gambling is a major target because he thinks it costs the government €2 billion per year. “Greek banks are unwitting accomplices in this because all the transactions are done using credit cards,” he said.

Greece has long been considered one of the top European nations for tax evasion. Many online gamblers took advantage of that and simply didn’t pay tax on casino earnings. With the new team implemented to go after them, gamblers would be wise to pay their taxes legitimately.

Right now the state of Nevada is trying to balance their budget. In an attempt to meet that goal, they have proposed raising the taxes and fees placed on the gambling industry. Representatives from the state’s casinos, who are already being bled by the government, predictably said no. According to the Associated Press, the casinos’ unwillingness to accept higher taxes could derail “plans to raise enough extra revenue to avoid deep cuts to education and social services.”

This is how it always goes, isn’t it? We want to raise your taxes! No? Fine, we’ll have to lay off teachers then! This form of government blackmail is certainly nothing new, but it’s also dishonest. Governments love taking money and when you resist, they don’t take that lightly. I lived in the great state of Florida for a large portion of my life and I can tell you that every time the city faced opposition to raising taxes, they claimed that if they don’t hike the taxes then they’ll have to lay off teachers, police and fire fighters. The state acted the same way. You hear it from across the country and I would imagine every state uses this form of manipulation whenever they want to raise taxes. But it is dishonest.

If you listen to that argument, you are led to believe that the cities and states only pay for three things: education, police and the fire department. After all, those are the only places they can make cuts if taxes aren’t raised, right? I can think of a few other ways to balance the budget.

Does every road in the state need to be under construction? Do you need pretty grass and flowers in the median that need to be watered daily? And since Nevada brought up social services, are there a few people out there receiving welfare checks that don’t need them? Are there a few government employees with unnecessary jobs? Are there a few government employees making too much money (since those jobs pay considerably more than the private sector)? Can we cut back on some of the wasted “expenses” of government employees? This is just a list off the top of my head. Anyone who sits down and looks at the expenditures of the government can come up with lots of ways to balance the budget without letting teachers go. The point is this:

Don’t believe the lie. Nevada, you should be ashamed for threatening cuts in education if you don’t get more money. Then again, Nevada ranks 47^th in the nation in education, so there’s a good chance a lot of those teachers should be let go, anyway. So let’s add the teachers unions to the list of problems, since they make it almost impossible to fire bad teachers. A bad teacher is an unnecessary expense.

People panic when they hear that the government will have to lay off teachers and police and that’s exactly what the government wants. Worse yet, on occasion they actually go through with the threats, while refusing to make any of the cuts I mentioned above. One thing you need to remember, though, is that anytime the government enacts a new tax or fee, they never get rid of it, even if they say it’s temporary. And if they raise taxes it’s very difficult to get them cut again.

The government works for you and is supposed to serve you, but they waste your money and always ask for more. Balancing the budget means making the amount of your money that they take equal the amount of your money that they spend. Since both types of money are yours, shouldn’t you get a say in how much is taken, what it’s spent on, and where the cuts are made?

Nevada and other states are doing nothing more than using scare tactics to get what they want: your money. The casinos in Nevada are already losing money in this recession. Increasing their taxes and fees would be crippling, but that’s not the government’s concern. The government doesn’t care about the business’s profits as long as they can get their share of the money. That’s why taxes are taken out of gross revenue rather than net. The casinos are right to reject the tax hike and as a result, uninformed idiots have branded them bad guys who don’t care about education. However, it is the state of Nevada, not the casinos, that is threatening the teachers, when they know there are much better ways to make cuts.

This is what governments do, though. They can’t just ask nicely for more money because most people will say no. Instead, they come up with a catastrophe that more money will avert. The planet will be destroyed by “global warming” unless we pass cap and trade legislation (which is essentially the largest tax hike on the middle class in history)! Our entire country will be unemployed unless we pass this “stimulus” bill! We’ll become a third-world country if we don’t bail out the banks and auto manufacturers! Those are all federal examples, but state and local governments do the same exact thing, but on a smaller scale. They invent or exaggerate problems that, according to them, can only be solved by taking or spending more of your money. It is a con, nothing more. Don’t buy into it.

On Thursday, the Indiana House approved a bill that would require deadbeat parents to pay child support before collecting their casino winnings. The bill passed the Senate earlier and now has to go back to the Senate for a few changes to be approved.

Once it is signed into law, anyone who wins an amount of $1200 or more at a casino must first have their name run through a database before they are given their winnings. If they are shown to be at least $2000 behind in child support payments, part or all of their winnings would be withheld and given to the correct party as a child support payment. Of course, that would be after the state takes their cut of the winnings for taxes. $1200 is the minimum amount that requires a tax form to be immediately filed in the state of Indiana.

This bill is a tough one to gauge as far as whether it’s a good idea. On the one hand, who is going to stick up for deadbeat parents who aren’t helping support a child that they had no problem creating? Certainly I won’t. On the other hand, I’m not a fan of the government taking the possessions of private citizens, either. If you win money at a casino, that is your money. What right does the government have to take that money and use it for what they deem appropriate? The answer is none. The government does not have a right to do that.

Representative Trent Van Haaften, who voted for the bill, said that it is just “another way to ensure that if you plant a seed, you tend the garden.” Certainly anyone who creates a child should do their part in helping raise that child. Ideally, both parents raise the child together, but there are circumstances where that doesn’t happen, in which case one of the parents (usually the father) pays child support instead.

So the government is doing this because they care about the children, right? Umm… Sort of. It seems to me that if the children were the primary concern, the government wouldn’t tax the amount until the child support is paid, either, but that’s not the case. Instead, what the government is saying is that if you win money at a casino and are behind in child support payments, you can’t take your cut of the money until the child support is paid. The government, however, will take their cut right away, even if that means less money is paid toward child support. So it seems that providing for children is important, but not important enough for the government to give up its share of the money.