Is this a pyramid scheme? If so, how do I stop it? A dear, yet very naive friend of mine has fallen into the hands of what I think to be a pyramid company (operating from switzerland). I've talked with this friend of mine for a while yet she is unwilling to overthink her decision. The company at hand sells food supplements, and offers you the possibility of "gaining money" by "working" as a salesperson for them. The food supplements are low-quality and extremely overpriced (~200$ for a package). You can easily buy a similar package for 1/10th of the price. Now, "working" as a salesperson isn't really working for them, as you aren't employed. You have to buy the packages (for the FULL price), and then sell them online, refunds impossible (you lose the possibility of "working" for them). Once you've sold ~25 packages within a month, you get 10% off of your next package (wow, amazing). And this keeps on going, you're getting a few very small "benefits" the higher you get, at some point even money. The company has ~2-3 "selfmade" persons earning allegedly a few thousands per month just by selling those supplements online. My questions now are: Am I right to believe that this is indeed a pyramid scheme? How can I do something against this company?
It seems that your friend is taking part in a multi-level marketing scheme. However, this does not necessarily exclude a pyramid or snow ball scheme. Both can be illegal in Germany and Switzerland under the respective unfair business practices codes, because the systems do not rely on the sales of goods and services, but on the continuous recruitment of further sales persons. To clarify whether your friend's system is illegal, you could report the scheme to the competent watchdogs. In Germany the "Zentrale zur Bekämpfung unlauteren Wettbewerbs" in Bad Homburg is recommendable. As the company is operating from Switzerland, German law not be applicable without more. Therefore also contacting the Swiss authorities may be advisable. This seems to be the "Staatssekretariat für Wirtschaft SECO" in Bern.
Imputed income is a legitimate concept, but it is hard to prove, particularly when there is an earning history to back up the claim that there is no malingering. Ultimately, the question is what that particular individual could earn and whether that particular individual was intentionally being lazy in order to influence child support. At a minimum an earnings history and testimony from Mary would be strong evidence disproving the claim, and it would probably take expert testimony to make any kind of credible claim that more income should be imputed that would still be unlikely to succeed. If more money were at stake, a battle of the experts with experts on each side with one testifying that Mary could earn more and the other debunking that expert's testimony, would be appropriate. But, for $300 a month at issue, it probably doesn't make economic sense for either party to hire any kind of expert. And, a judge is usually going to take some random statistical study much less seriously than a history of earnings and testimony from the franchise owner about why it earned more or less than average.
I don't know of any federal law that is violated. US labor law is generally favorable to employers, compared to many other countries, and gives employers a lot of freedom in setting policies and rules, The theory is that an employee who doesn't like it can go and work somewhere else, and an employer with unreasonable policies will eventually be unable to get people to work for them. In particular, it surprises some people that employers aren't legally obligated to reimburse travel expenses at all: The FSLA does not have any rules regarding an employer's obligation to reimburse an employee for business-related travel expenses. No federal law requires reimbursement. So it would be perfectly legal for the company to require employees to pay for all their own meals when traveling on business. Given this, I'd expect that the company would have pretty broad discretion to place conditions and restrictions on reimbursement, including what they will and won't pay for. If an employee had a disability or religious beliefs that required them to eat meat, and the company wouldn't grant them an exception, they might have a claim under the ADA or Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act respectively. But if it's just that they happen to prefer meat, I don't think there's a law to guarantee them such a right. Some states could have their own laws that might be violated, though I tend to doubt it. If you have a particular state in mind, please specify.
It is legal for a company to ask for any information they want as a condition of doing business with you, so long as their request isn't proscribed by law. I don't know of any jurisdiction where a request for banking or credit information is illegal. (In this case, however, it does seem like you are being phished. You could report the matter to your country's consumer protection agency.)
You are correct in that the GST is 10%. It never has been (and likely never will be!) 2.5%. You're also correct that some items (generally considered as 'essentials') are GST free. For example, the ATO includes 'most basic food' on its list of GST-free items. However, these GST-free items are completely GST free, and restaurant meals certainly don't class as basic food. Perhaps interestingly, the wholesale sales tax when it was first introduced in 1930 was set at 2.5%, but it wasn't at that rate for long (see A brief history of Australia's tax system). If I had to guess, I'd say this is probably a dodgy set up in this restaurant's point-of-sale system (there's also no such thing as 'GST2'). Hopefully their returns to the tax office are not as dodgy!
Under German law, yes sure. As long as you keep to all regulations. You have to declare your taxes. This is income, whether it comes from inside Germany or not and whether it is paid into a German bank account or foreign. You have to have a health insurance and likely need to pay into the social security and pension funds. As your employer most likely does not do this for you as a German employer would be required to, you will need to pay both the employee and the employer's part yourself. So yes, if you pay your taxes on it and have health and social security insurance, Germany does not care where the money comes from. Now whether the company in Mauritius is legally allowed to hire and pay you under their law? I have no idea. Please note that filling out all the right forms correctly is not for the faint of heart. And finding out that you did it wrong only years later is painful and costly. Also calculate your costs before you do anything. Paying both parts for your health insurance for example can easily be up to 400€ a month more then a German employee at a German company, so run your numbers. You may be better off being officially self-employed or even incorporated. Just because it's legal, does not mean it's a good idea. Hire a professional to advise you on the economic and bureaucratic side of this.
The contract between you and the company is for the supply of the goods. How they get them to you is irrelevant; they may have them in stock, or they may order them and ship them on, or they may send an order to the factory to ship them directly to you. There is nothing saying that they have to be in stock anywhere. The law you refer to says that they must ship within 30 days unless they provide a specific date. In effect "shipped within 30 days" is an implicit term in the contract. If after 30 days they have not shipped the goods then you are entitled to rescind the contract (i.e. get your money back). Where things get interesting is if they took your money knowing that they would not be able to ship within 30 days, or at least being reckless (i.e. not caring) about it. It does rather sound like this may be the case. If so then it may rise to the level of fraud, and the FTC or state authorities may take action. Try writing to the FTC. A single event won't get any action, but if they get lots of complaints then they might.
Forget whether or not it's legal; it's mathematically stupid. The store owner gets no advantage by taxing you on each individual item vs. just taxing the bill as a whole because of the distributive property of multiplication. A(x) + B(x) + C(x) is exactly the same as (A + B + C)x You can try this on a calculator and you'll get the exact same answer each time. The only possible benefit to the pizza place by doing it that way would be the cumulative effect of rounding. But even if they were being that shady, it only amounts to a few pennies per customer. Not exactly a profitable criminal enterprise. More than likely what happened is the waitress didn't quite know how to ring you up so she made corrections to the ticket trying to fix something.