Slashdot Mirror
Swiss Bank Secrecy Under Renewed Attack
Stanislav_J writes "All you wealthy Slashdotters better start making alternate arrangements for stashing your millions. Switzerland's storied role as discreet banker to the world's tax-avoiding wealthy is under threat like never before, and this time the country ultimately may not be able to stop the rest of the world from prying into those legendary 'secret' accounts, said to contain between $1 trillion and $2 trillion. A massive German tax-evasion scandal is putting pressure on the Swiss to cooperate, and the rest of Europe is also hardening their resolve to force change upon them. Per the article, 'The official Swiss reaction has been self-conscious detachment, which they hope will deflate the issue,' but even their own citizens are not too concerned about those outside their borders: 80% of Swiss support the banking confidentiality law, but that number drops into the 40s when it is applied to foreigners. Pressure is also coming from US pols — not the 'let's pry into everyone's business' Republicans, but the 'make the rich pay their fair share' Democrats, including Illinois Senator (and presidential candidate) Barack Obama."
But downright wrong when it enables someone to evade taxation like the rest of us. Striking a balance will be a difficult task.
"To those who are overly cautious, everything is impossible. "
You can't have it both ways. It's like trying to say "oh, secrecy is great, but not when it allows THE TERRORISTS to run amok!"--just find some reason to point out why secrecy allows some perceived ill to take place and then you can easily get rid of it for everything, because you can't have secrecy only for "good" things and "no secrecy" for "not-good" things. If you have secrecy, then yes, you're going to have people break the law to use that secrecy... and, being shielded by secrecy, people aren't going to know if you're being good or bad. Also, I see no problems people allowing people to evade taxation "like the rest of us". Why shoot yourself in the foot?!
The Swiss economy is basically subsidised by victims from the rest of world.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
This statement actually surprised me:
During a meeting of his Rotary Club in Zurich, his fellow members were appalled that Swiss bankers might be managing the money of foreign tax evaders. "We had no idea," Mr. Hummler recalls them saying, "that you did things like that."
I don't pay a hell of a lot of attention to financial news, or banking laws.. but even _I_ know that the Swiss have built a long reputation on providing accounts to foreigners trying to avoid taxes in their home country. Isn't this just common knowledge? I'd think it'd be even more common knowledge in Switzerland.
AccountKiller
I know you're just joking, but switzerland is actually armed to the teeth. Everyone there is armed, most men train or have trained for the militia. They're obviously too small to fend off a super power, but definitely tough enough to make an invasion not worth it.
Tax evasion is not Liberty - it's criminal activity. Responsibility and accountability comes with this thing "Liberty" you toss around so haphazardly.
Horns are really just a broken halo.
Flat taxes and consumption taxes most certainly *DO NOT* work. THey're highly regressive, effecting the poor far more than the rich.
Take a rich man who makes 1 million a year, and a middle class man who makes 40K. Lets say the tax rate is 20%. With a consumption tax, the guy with 40K will likely need to spend 33K on food, clothing, shelter, entertainment, etc. He'll pay 20% taxes on that, adding up to 6,600 dollars. He basicly breaks even. The rich man may spend lavishly, and spend 300K. He'll pay 60K in taxes. The rest he saves. He only paid 60K taxes, a mere 10x the poor man despite earning 25x. This shifts the tax burden onto the poor. This is not acceptable.
Now take a flat tax. There's two types of flat tax- flat by rate, and flat by dollar amount. If you have flat by dollar amount, you have the same problem as above, but magnified- it will likely be 50% or more of the poor man's salary. If you do a flat rate, you haven't solved any of the problems of the current system- you still need to figure out how much he actually made, and he still has incentive to hide it.
Flat taxes just don't work. Consumption taxes, while they are technically possible, don't work socially- far too regressive. The only people who really think either of these are a good idea are those who are already rich and have the "Fuck you, I got mine" attitude, and those who don't understand math.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Libertarians whole heartedly do not care about the public good
That's a rather vicious smear, not to mention being a baldfaced lie. Libertarians care far more about the public good, particularly about our freedom, than those on the right or left who constantly seek to increase the power of the government. We've noticed that the freer we are, the better off we are.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Well, I'm not Swiss, but I worked at all the major banks in Switzerland (and work in one presently).
The bank secrecy has been a boon to the Swiss banking industry. Make no mistake, not only has this created jobs, but it also works as a "Sozialamt", because a bank will employ up to five people (mostly Swiss, of course) to do the job of one single person, all the while the five will whine how "overloaded" they are.
If the Swiss banks didn't have the banking secrecy laws, at miserable (and laughable) 1.85% interest, it wouldn't be interesting to siphon money into Switzerland, so about four in five of your countrymen wouldn't have a job, and couldn't take their expensive vacations two to three times a year!
As expensive and as inefficient and as bureaucratic as things are in Switzerland, what do you think, where did the money come to pay for this huge, inefficient system come? From foreigners siphoning money into Swiss banks because of the secrecy laws!
So if Confederatio Helvetica abolishes bank secrecy laws, Switzerland will be severely busted.
How then are you guys going to pay for those 2-5 expensive vacations per year? And where are the other four guys going to go? Let me remind you, your conuntrymen consider themselves above menial jobs, like the Baustelle, or Kellner...
Oh, won't someone PLEASE THINK OF THE TERRORISTS!
geeze. i can't believe how blind some people are. as has obviously been pointed out before, the Swiss provide a financial anonymization service. they have removed their own imperfect judgement of what constitutes right and wrong and simply act in good faith for their clients. yes, sometimes this system is abused (nazi gold and various tax evasion schemes, etc), but the principles of the system are no different than you wanting privacy for all users of the internet, for wanting secrecy in your instant messaging systems, deniability, the rights to use the Internet for whatever purpose you choose. the issues here are all the same. some people will use the system for the benefit of the public good while others will use it for their own selfish purposes at the expense of the public good.
if the "good guys" haven't caught on to the fact that they can exploit the system the same way as the "bad guys" then it's only their fault for missing the opportunity.
check out my comic: Essential Tremors
It should be remember that Switzerland is a direct democracy. If the swiss government were to change the laws, it is very likely that the SVP, a swiss right-wing party, would force a public vote on the issue. Personally, I think there's a good chance that the swiss people would vote against their own government and keep the law as-is, international treaties be damned. There is jack shit any other country can do to influence the outcome of this; in fact, pressure from governments like the US government would have the opposite effect and help keep the current law.
One reason the rich get a lot of these tax breaks, is that they assume higher risks
Yes, if you got $100M in the bank, it's pretty easy to assume risk on new investments. Nonetheless, the risk is what is being rewarded.
Uh-Huh. So the risk is really about going from SUPER-DUPER-DUPER rich, to just SUPER-DUPER rich for a few years. Somehow I don't see that as much of a "risk", especially one worth rewarding with lower tax rates.
If you take a 100% safe job earning a specific salary,
Where are these 100% safe jobs you're referring too? Because I'll take one of those, thanks. The truth is that economies bust, people get sick, and people screw up. No job is "100% safe". The only thing that's even close to "100% safe" is having 100 million dollars sitting in the bank.
but you're not assuming much risk either
Uh-huh. Tell that to the people who've just lost thousands of dollars in equity on their major investment, their home do to the credit crisis. Tell that to the people who've been laid off over the various recessions the country has experienced. If you think being middle class (and to a much larger extent lower class) isn't taking a lot more risks than some guy who's super-rich, then I guess you don't know the true meaning of the word risk.
AccountKiller
It may come as a surprise to you that not everybody grows up in a blue-blood family, and that social mobility is not perfect in the US. Redistributive tax systems allow for the strengthening of social mobility by ensuring that the lower class isn't always subject to abject poverty- that even if they are searching for a job or lose a job they do not lose their home and their entire life in the process.
Your comparison to slavery is disgusting and horribly elitist. No rich person would be where they are without the society around them, the infrastructure created by the government, the military that defends them (made up disproportionally, of course, with the lower and middle class), and the people who work for them. The redistribution of wealth acknowledges that people owe society for what it has given them, and must support it so that future generations can benefit from it as well.