The even stranger case of the barter tax (also round) business

Barter as a taxable event: payment for nothing

With the epistemological limitations with which I believe that on planet Earth all crows are black and all swans are white —I repeat: with those same limitations— I believe that in all legal systems one or another direct or indirect tax is paid on barters of goods and rights. The most elementary intuition and logic tells us that this should not be the case:

That if what you give me in exchange for what I give you has an equivalent value, then there should be no taxable event; that is, that for a fact of the world such that its real flow of value is zero, there should be no duty to pay taxes.

Continuing with the example seen above, the doctor before and after treating the farmer has the same value within his patrimony, just as the farmer has the same value before and after being cured: for they have agreed to their satisfaction that the five kilos of potatoes are worth what the doctor's service is worth.

It happens, however, that the descendants of the rulers —They— who agreed (i) to charge you for minting money so that you could do at cost (good or service in exchange for money) what you could do before without cost (barter: good or service in exchange for good or service); just as They also agreed (ii) that you should pay taxes so that you could help by paying (collaborate in solidarity to pay for certain goods and services which they called "public") what you could previously do without paying (help motu proprio or through the Church or other charitable organisations); —I repeat: those same rulers, who curiously all agreed without speaking, as if They belonged to an hermetic and elitist ideal community of interests, transgeographical and transhistorical— They agreed (iii) that yes, always and everywhere there was for one reason or another, with very exceptional exceptions, a taxable event subject to the implacable scrutiny of the Treasury (to collect taxes) and the Banking System (to collect that sui generis tax which is, strictly speaking, the price of money).

Firstly, because what the bartering parties barter brings to the surface a possible capital gain (a taxable event for the tax on capital gains and losses). Secondly, because, even if what is exchanged is of equal and exact value, it is the condition of professional or businessman that generates the accrual of the payment of the tax on the (mysterious) added value —do not know for whom. And finally, if it is not such a condition, then it is the common condition of non-businessman and non-professional, that is, that of private individual (= rest of the world), that generates the accrual of the payment of the tax on the transfer of goods and services.

No further comment.