Caveat - don't try this at home.
The scenario given in the link would, I suppose, work only in cases where minimum wage laws don't apply, such as independent contractors, or where people earn enough per hour to meet the minimum wage requirements in "old" money. If nothing else, it is good for a chuckle to show the disparity between what the government CLAIMS old money is worth (face value) and the real value on the market. I wonder if postage stamps would be treated similarly.
Robert Kahre owns a family business and instead of using paper money he paid his workers with gold and silver coins minted by the United States government. He paid them based on the “face value” of the coins. If he paid a worker a dollar an hour he paid with a silver dollar, which states on the coin that it is “one dollar” regardless of today’s value. His wages were so low that he didn’t have to file W-2 income tax forms or withhold taxes or pay workman’s comp. This upset the IRS, which charged him and his family with 161 federal tax crimes.
Link follows:
Derry Brownfield -- Silver, Gold and the IRS
On September 17, the jury returned its verdict refusing to convict all nine defendants of any of the 161 federal tax crimes they had been charged with.
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