Debate Essay

Peddlers in Costa Rica

There is a network of peddlers in Costa Rica who avoid not only the payment of taxes; they also realize several illegal activities that may change the workplace for people who actually make business with all the rights. Providing services like this and selling products may have implications for mobile commerce and it also for the final user. Street activities are linked with other criminal networks, such as piracy and bad practices of paying taxes.

Street vendors make illegal activities that affect society because they do not make right sales. As mentioned by the Nation (2010), ¨ ... Behind a peddler innocent activity is also hide "criminal networks" include other crimes such as drug sales, labor exploitation and trafficking. ¨ It is of special care to ensure consumer rights and legal trader who works with all requirements of law. People cannot be sure that peddlers sale drugs and addictive substances only to adults, for that reason they are violating more laws.

Strongly argue that these activities cause child exploitation, and it is no doubt that this activity violated the labor code one of its articles, which states that work in conditions unfit for a child should not be in this case to be exposed to drugs, for example. According to the Nation (2010), children work in the streets to get drugs or food, which implies an erosion of our future society by contributing to an activity like this. The point is that people trying to make life-threatening to people who do not deserve the street work, plus the fact that work on the streets involves the deterioration of health itself, and not have decent working conditions that any normal worker would. Also we can mention that children who work since early year leave the opportunity to study.

We must always analyze the other side of the fact, in this case the legal activities. The traders who make commercial activities with all the support from the law that contributed with the street vendor as reported by La Nación (2010). Actually the peddlers offer a lot of products which are resold, among them are the DVD "pirates" which are certainly an object that is sold in violation of copyright, and although this becomes a threat to all businesses labels. Buyers prefer to buy a pirated CD than to buy an original CD, because of the price. So, people are contributing that street vendors make stronger.

It is unfair that peddlers sale no taxes products because there are traders that pay a lot of money of taxes, only to have a fair business. Although if some film distributor want to sue a street vendor has to give the complete personal information about them, besides it is requires the record labels. According to The Nation (2010): "To make searches and seizures of piracy requires that the record labels and film distributors complaint, name, people selling plagiarized material”. If there is deficiency in the law, that will be a problem for the legal commerce . So, we can note that it is almost impossible to avoid these transactions in the street as peddler.

All trading activity must be controlled by the Ministry of Hacienda to obtain taxes. The traders sellers have freedom to make a trade without the tax-paying, no matter what product is, the vendors themselves as individual traders should bring the tax rate to the country or pay a fee for doing their business but they do not, and therefore it does not comply with Article 448 of the Commercial Code, that mentioned "If demanded by the buyer, the seller must deliver invoices paid in full or in documents that will ensure peaceful enjoyment of the item purchased” so even if there are items that do not exceed two thousand colones on average, as mentioned by La Nation (2010), this peddlers have to provide for each customer a receipt or invoice. We know this is out of reality, and we believe strongly that the right of doing commercial trades is for the people who pay taxes and municipal duties. So those people are "paying for them" in some way or another, for the reason that the vendors do a free trade transactions.

It is really amazing of how peddlers of San Jose have the ability to evade the authorities and to obtain large quantities of merchandise that is not necessarily of high value. The most important aspect is the fact that they can have their own organization as a network of street vendors, according to The Nation (2010), they have different working areas in different parts of San Jose, and also the merchandise is obtained in a few minutes, so we can say without doubt that those people are working as a great chain which will probably work very well with other illegal activities, as has been shown that exist, according to The Nation(2010). The problem is that this country has no way of how to deal with the situation that no doubt will continue to grow every day, because it costs more money that is of us.

In conclusion, the risk to trade is the proliferation of the peddlers on the street, not because they are going to steal a piece of the market, it’s for other reason more important, the expansion of the organized crime in the area which certainly brings bigger problems arising such as: drugs, criminal acts, besides that perturb the habit of contributing to the state and everything is going to be a trade with cash. Therefore we must start at the root of the problem which generates this activity, and perhaps businesses should begin to work legally, so as to cover also the police and fiscal inefficiency that exists in our country. We think if these branches are not well articulated, the state can hardly reduced this trade. The solution is in our people too because if we avoid an activity like this, it won’t exist needs that can become a problem for many.

References

1. La Nación (2010), Algunas ventas ambulantes son cuna de redes delictivas, Retreived on November 05 of 2010 onhttp://www.nacion.com/2010-05-23/ElPais/Relacionados/ElPais2371145.aspx

2. La Nación (2010), ‘La posición es cero tolerancia’, Retreived on November 05 of 2010 of, on http://www.nacion.com/2010-05-23/ElPais/Relacionados/ElPais2371143.aspx

3. La Nación (2010), Vendedores callejeros se dividen la capital según su nacionalidad, Retreived on November 05 of 2010 onhttp://www.nacion.com/2010-05-23/ElPais/FotoVideoDestacado/ElPais2361029.aspx

4. La Nación (2010), Autoridades quieren frenar a proveedores de mercancías ,Retreived on November 05 of 2010 onhttp://www.nacion.com/2010-05-23/ElPais/Relacionados/ElPais2371146.aspx