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author | Christian Grothoff <christian@grothoff.org> | 2015-08-03 19:33:18 +0200 |
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committer | Christian Grothoff <christian@grothoff.org> | 2015-08-03 19:33:18 +0200 |
commit | e06aaf1f139072826bdcba9b7e1ff89c927e5ee4 (patch) | |
tree | f900de32c18fc311a6435128ced7c58f191afcc6 | |
parent | a707ace908f8bf56725c4cf95a7eb222952612dc (diff) | |
download | www-e06aaf1f139072826bdcba9b7e1ff89c927e5ee4.tar.gz www-e06aaf1f139072826bdcba9b7e1ff89c927e5ee4.zip |
explain transaction vs. sharing
Former-commit-id: a2c19057e415c2a6ca2c672bbbb966944e55a855
-rw-r--r-- | index.html | 48 |
1 files changed, 47 insertions, 1 deletions
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268 | </ol> | 268 | </ol> |
269 | </p> | 269 | </p> |
270 | </div> | 270 | </div> |
271 | <!--# include file="common/footer.inc" --> | 271 | <div class="col-lg-12"> |
272 | <h2 lang="en" id="taxability">Taler technology: About taxability, change and privacy</h1> | ||
273 | <h2 lang="de">Taler Technik: Steuern, Wechselgeld und Privatsphäre</h1> | ||
274 | <h2 lang="fr" note="outdated"></h2> | ||
275 | <h2 lang="it" note="outdated"></h2> | ||
276 | <p lang="en">One of the key goals of Taler is to provide anonymity for | ||
277 | citizens buying goods and services, while ensuring that the state can | ||
278 | observe incoming transactions to ensure businesses engage only in | ||
279 | legal activities and do not evade taxes (such as income tax, | ||
280 | sales tax or value-added tax). However, we also want to stay | ||
281 | out of the immediate personal domain, so sharing funds within a | ||
282 | family or copying coins between devices should not be subject to | ||
283 | monitoring by the state. | ||
284 | </p> | ||
285 | <p lang="en">In Taler terminology, we distinguish between | ||
286 | <b>transactions</b> where the exclusive ownership of the value of a | ||
287 | coin is passed from one entity to another, and <b>sharing</b> | ||
288 | whereafter control over a coin is shared by multiple electronic | ||
289 | wallets (which may belong to different individuals). In Taler, | ||
290 | the receiver of a transaction is visible to the state and thus | ||
291 | can be taxed, while sharing is invisible to anyone not involved. | ||
292 | Once a coin is shared among different individuals, any one of those | ||
293 | can try to spend it, but only the first spender would succeed. Thus, | ||
294 | sharing requires a strong trust relationship among the individuals | ||
295 | involved, and thus represent interactions in the protected immediate | ||
296 | personal domain, and not commercial transactions. | ||
297 | </p> | ||
298 | <p lang="en">When Taler needs to provide change, for example because | ||
299 | a customer only has a 5 Euro coin but wants to make a 2 Euro | ||
300 | purchase, it needs to create <b>fresh</b> coins (of a total value | ||
301 | of 3 Euros) that are <b>unlinkable</b> to the original 5 Euro coin | ||
302 | to ensure privacy. To ensure that the resulting <b>refresh</b> | ||
303 | operation where the change is converted to fresh coins cannot be | ||
304 | used to <i>transfer</i> funds from one entity to another, Taler ensures | ||
305 | that any owner of an original coin that was involved in a | ||
306 | refresh operation can follow a <b>link</b> to the private | ||
307 | information of the fresh coins generated by the operation. As a | ||
308 | result of this trick, refresh operations cannot uses to create | ||
309 | <i>transfers</i>, as the linkage ensures that the fresh coins are | ||
310 | always <i>shared</i> with the owner of the original coin. | ||
311 | </p> | ||
312 | <p lang="en">As a result, Taler does not intrude into the | ||
313 | personal economic domain, offers good privacy, taxability | ||
314 | for transactions and the ability to give change. | ||
315 | </p> | ||
316 | </div> | ||
317 | <!--# include file="common/footer.inc" --> | ||
272 | </div> <!-- /container --> | 318 | </div> <!-- /container --> |
273 | </body> | 319 | </body> |
274 | </html> | 320 | </html> |