Your Daily North Korean Headline

Much as I like the idea of a tax free country, I have to wonder: What exactly would you tax in the first place? I don't think anyone has anything.

First Tax-Free Country in World

Pyongyang, March 21 (KCNA) -- On March 21, Juche 63 (1974), a historic law was promulgated in the DPRK to abolish taxation.

On this occasion, the Korean people are most grateful to President Kim Il Sung for the abolition of taxation in the country for the first time in the world.

He, in the "Ten-point Programme of the Association for the Restoration of the Fatherland" published in the period of the anti-Japanese armed struggle, put forth a policy of removing all kinds of heavy miscellaneous taxes and levies imposed by the Japanese imperialists on the Korean people.

After the liberation of the country, he established a popular and democratic tax system, mainly including agricultural tax in kind and progressive income tax.

In 1955 the DPRK government reduced income taxes for factory and office workers by 30 percent and taxes for handicraftsmen, businessmen and merchants by a wide margin. It also cut the agricultural tax in kind from 25 percent of the output to 20.1 percent on average, again to 8.4 percent in 1959.

In 1966 the agricultural tax in kind was eliminated completely in the country, leaving only a small amount of income taxes from white and blue collar workers intact.

Kim Il Sung promulgated the law "On Abolishing the Tax System" at the Third Session of the Fifth Supreme People's Assembly to finally abolish taxation.

Now the Korean people receive great benefits from the state instead of paying taxes.

It truly is a wonderland. The economic understanding conveyed in that last sentence is simply magical.