Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Romanian Witches and Wizards Now Legit

In an effort to increase its tax rolls the eastern European nation of Romania has declared witchcraft an official legal profession. In Romania income taxes only apply to individuals working in professions defined as such by the government, and up until now sorcery has been practiced under the table - and therefore earnings from it have been tax-free. Needless to say, given the new taxes some magical practitioners are not happy about the change.

Why are people upset that Romania declared witchcraft legal? Apparently people who perform witchcraft services will now have to pay taxes. The government is actually cracking down on tax evasion, and witchcraft is joined by astrology, embalming, valet parking and driving instructors as new groups that must pay taxes. It is not surprising that governments are looking for ways the increase revenue during the poor economy, and declaring certain jobs legal professions seems to be a good way to collect more money.

The legalization of witchcraft has been hotly debated in the region, and many witches have protested. Since Romania declared witchcraft legal, one witch named Bratara has plans to retaliate using black pepper and yeast to cast a spell that will create discord in the government. If she is successful, will Romania change the new law? It is hard to tell.

Maybe I don't know the Romanian government as well as this particular individual, but my immediate thought is that if this is how Romanian witches deal with laws they don't like it's amazing that they get paid for anything at all. When you want a government to change a law the most efficient and effective magical approach is to cast a spell with the intent of getting the particular law changed or repealed. Don't worry about the means - just cast with the final result in mind.

Lashing out at lawmakers and the government in general is going to become counterproductive very quickly because the government nedds to be operating efficiently in order to repeal the law once your spell is set in motion. You might be able to get some mileage out of a spell causing confusion in the agency that collects the taxes, but that still would only be temporary. It's kind of like casting a curse on someone who owes you money - how are they supposed to pay you back if bad luck follows them everywhere?

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4 comments:

Unknown said...

Reactions like this are similar to punching your boss in the face after a pay-cut. You've childishly just made your situation worse to satisfy a momentary urge.

Anonymous said...

The government also needs to be operating efficiently to enforce the law. No enforcement is just as good as repeal in practical terms. :-p

Scott Stenwick said...

@Pallas: Good analogy.

@Ben: While you're to some extent right about the government needing to operate efficiently in order to enforce the law, in my experience when governments operate inefficiently law enforcement still exists but in a random, capricious, and often abusive form. Repeal strikes me as a far better option in a situation such as this - but as I said, maybe there's something about the Romanian legal system that I'm just not getting.

Anonymous said...

I don't know where to begin.

First of all all Romanian governments are composed of mostly incompetent individuals that got there as lackeys of a/some powerful figure/s to do the bidding of the latter. This bidding resumes on helping their masters gaining more and more money. While the comon folk faced intense hardships after the economic depression in 2008, the individuals in charge of the country gained fortunes from fraudulent transactions with state owned property which they privatized it for next to nothing, while their foreign accounts were being filled by the foreign companies that bought that property.

This left the country almost bankrupted and the government got a 20Billion euro load from the IMF and several smaller loans from the WB and EU. Those loans had to be payed back eventually so the bird brains decided to tax everything except the air people breathe, although I wouldn't be amazed of they would do such a thing.

The fact that they taxed witchcraft ment nothing as the authorities were incompetent to even collect from normal businesses.

And that Bratara (Bracelet), she's not Romanian, but a gypsy who clames to have magical powers. It would stunn you how many powers she's claim she has, especially if she'd find some naive person that she feel has enough money... There are many do called witches in the gypsy community here in Romania, but they are no more than carnival tricksters to say the least.

True Romanian magick (both low and high) is ancient and very powerful, but unfurtunately it's mostly unknown (especially the high magick) because unlike other cultures that wrote down their practices, ours only passed them using word of mouth.

There are still old ladies and men that practice it, but they are quite hard to find.