Comment by umanwizard a day ago
This vaguely reminds me of the fact that in many countries, pure ethanol sold for industrial purposes is intentionally made poisonous, so you can’t drink it and thus merchants don’t have to charge the taxes on it that they would for spirits.
I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole. Loophole would be when dying your spirit purple would change the taxation, because someone codified the color of alcohol instead of it's content.
But of course as you say it's largely semantics.
> I think if it's working as intended and as designed then it's hard to call it a loophole.
This assumes everyone acts in good faith.
A popular one these days is the "gun show 'loophole.'"
Rather than calling it "renegging on an explicitly-legislated compromise", it's a "loophole" that needs "closing."
> making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy
I have never seen this as anything other than the death penalty for evading taxes. If the tax were designed to reduce consumption across the population, it needs to scale with income or net worth. Otherwise, it's just a tax on the poor.
I’m not sure how this is different from what I’m saying?
The thread is about bad things because of tax policy, your post is about a good thing because of health policy - but you don’t say it’s a good thing, or that it’s about heath not taxes.
The post pointing this out has different content to yours, which reads as if your meaning is “this reminds me of another bad thing caused by tax policies” - even if that’s not what you meant.
> you don’t say it’s a good thing
But I also never said OP’s anecdote was a bad thing. (Why shouldn’t countries be able to tax video cameras coming in…). What’s the difference?
Does remind me when I talked to a chef from a big restaurant about wine and cooking. He said, a lot of people who work in a kitchen have often an smaller or bigger alcohol problem. He said, as soon as wine is opened in the kitchen for cooking, he does add just a bit salt, so people in the team don't even try to drink some cooking wine.
That doesn't seem like a good idea as a lot of people would try to reduce salt intake due to blood pressure concerns, where the alcohol in this wouldn't be a concern for that as it would likely be cooked off
That’s going to be tough. Shaoxing wine and soy sauce both have lots of sodium in them because they’re intended for seasoning dishes without the need to add salt separately. Even dòuchǐ (fermented black soybeans), which offer a similar flavour profile to soy sauce in solid form, have a lot of salt.
I live in one of the countries that just made it taste bad (because enough people died of poisoning it was allowed as an exception by the EU). I've drank a shot of denaturated alcohol once - half out of curiosity, half because I was already out of liquor at home for that evening.
If you close your nose the taste is just bitter, but bearable. The additives are supposed to make you vomit, but for me I only had vomit reflex for ~5 seconds after swallowing. I could live with that if I was addicted and couldn't afford a regular alcohol. I'm sure many people do.
Not sure what the moral is. I guess that addiction is a really strong motivator, and tax evasion is not a good enough reason to justify killing people with poison.
Cute, didn't know it was a thing in Chicago!
I suppose wormwood is an acquired taste, but it's one I happen to like. They still put it in many different bitters here in Sweden.
In some countries that is allowed, but in others it has to actually be poisonous.
I don't know exactly what "White Elephant" refers to, but I've had plenty of homemade liquor in Vietnam and am mostly fine.
FWIW, many countries no longer allow denaturing via poisonous agents, just via extremely unpleasant tasting ones (eg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denatonium).
I heat my house with oil, a truck comes every couple of months and fills a massive tank in my back yard.
This "oil" is basically diesel. It smells and feels identical to diesel. But it's about 70 cents cheaper per litre compared to road diesel. It's dyed red, and you are not supposed to put it in your car, but I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines.
The red diesel is not taxed like road diesel, and is much cheaper.
Here, that's commonly called red diesel (despite them changing to green decades ago) and it's sold for agricultural use. There are a number of cross border smuggling operations where criminals remove the dye and resell it for somewhere between the two prices.
Though primarily done to trucks, there are occasional fuel tests done by police. Even if your tank is currently clean, they'll occasionally pull out the fuel filters and check those for dye.
> I reckon it'll be more than fine for older diesel engines
There's always the risk of getting your fuel tank dipped if you're on road. Moreso for trucks, but some jurisdictions will set up inspections and check for dyed fuel and tear you an absolute new one when they catch it.
The exit of off road events is a common place to check this. So much so that there is a reputation in the off road community and now they don't even need to check often anymore since nobody is stupid enough to risk driving a truck that has ever had off road fuel in it there.
It's more like "so you can't drink it" without the taxes part. Those taxes play important role in reducing alcohol consumption (though they are of course not the only tool), so making cheap ethanol poisonous and with different color closes the loophole in healthcare policy rather than opens a loophole in taxation.
E.g. study: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3860576/