Explore "Border Guard" by Don Whitehead on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Richard X, an American dealer in diamonds, sat at the desk in his hotel room in Antwerp, Belgium, in June, 1953, scribbling figures on a sheet of paper. Even allowing for an unexpected drop in prices on the diamond market, his figures showed that this day's work eventually should bring him a net profit in the neighborhood of $100,000 -- a pleasing 50 per cent on his investment and no taxes on profits to be paid to the Internal Revenue Service.
Long before this, Mr. X had decided it was foolish to bring $200,000 worth of cut diamonds into the United States, to declare the gems on his customs declaration, to pay the government the required 10 per cent duty, to pay the Federal luxury tax on retail sales, and then to pay another tax on the profits from the sale of the diamonds.