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GAO Reports Bailout and Tech Firms Love Tax Havens
theodp writes "Most of America's largest publicly traded corporations and Federal contractors — including those receiving billions of dollars from US taxpayers to finance their recovery — have set up offshore operations that could help them avoid paying US taxes, according to a GAO study released yesterday. Of the 100 largest public companies, 83 do business in tax-haven hot-spots like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands. The report found that Citigroup, a recipient of $45B in bailout funds so far, has set up 427 subsidiaries in tax-haven countries, including 91 in Luxembourg, 90 in the Cayman Islands, and 35 in the British Virgin Islands. Household names on the lists from the tech sector include Apple (1 tax haven subsidiary), Cisco (38), Dell (29), HP (14), Intel (6), IBM (10), Microsoft (8), Motorola (4), and Oracle (77)."
Isn't the way this worded presuming guilt before innocence? Is doing business in a tax-haven country an automatic fail?
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
Maybe if the US tax policy wasn't insanely out of line with the rest of the world, we wouldn't have this problem. Can you blame these companies for getting away?
Other countries charge income tax based on income earned in that country. The US charges income tax for income earned in any country. Where would you set up your company?
The FairTax would instantly make the US the world's tax haven.
I was against the bailout to begin with, but this is silly.
We give them money, then they are supposed to give it back?
Is this so Hank Paulson and some IRS agent can siphon some off to keep their jobs?
2nd highest in the industrialized world behind only Japan, as I recall the most recent article.
California has the highest or 2nd highest corp. (and other) taxes and has a net outflow of population compared to inflow.
You don't think taxes has something to do with economic decisions?
Think again.
Theoretically, their duty is to maximize return on investment for their stockholders, which means doing everything they can legally to minimize their tax liability. So if a tax shelter is legal, expect them to use it. (If it's not legal, expect them to try to pretend it's legal.)
Now, though, because in some cases their partial owner is the U.S. government, there is a conflict of interest between the interests of the government shareholder and the private shareholders.
--- Thousands are enslaved every day.
I saw the same email you did, and the originator wasn't very good at math. It is closer to $400 per American, not $300,000.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
If the government is willing to give your tax dollars to companies that cheat the US, then the only appropriate response is to refuse to pay your taxes, and get as many people as possible to do the same.
I came here for a good argument
We know what to do with the ones we own now.
rd
"there is nothing sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible".
People and companies respond to incentives -- it is really surprising that the bizarre tax structure in the US pushes companies to form subsidiaries? Apparently it is, to either clueless or grandstanding politicians.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
I really get frustrated when doublespeak is acceptable. It's like the question, "Are prisoners in Guantanamo being tortured?" If they weren't being tortured, they would be in New York state, sitting in the same jail cells we use for other suspected murderers. The fact that anyone is asking the question is mind-boggling.
Similarly, any company that sets up in a small country that they do no business in is obviously up to something. Otherwise they wouldn't be there.
American business is a game, where the winners are those who best exploit their workers, the tax code, government contracts, and the environment. The most important bit is not getting caught, and having a lot of lawyers if you do.
(I'd like to defuse any rebuttal by saying "Wal-Mart.")
They are receiving US GOVERNMENT funds taken from US TAXPAYERS and they're stashing them in foreign tax havens.
This is solely for the benefit of their executives. It will not help rebuild the US economy.
There needs to be a new law passed TODAY (drag Congress back in) that makes that practice illegal.
If you want "bailout" funds, you cannot use a foreign tax haven.
If you use a foreign tax haven, you cannot receive "bailout" funds.
Why should the US taxpayers finance some CEO's retirement villa in Monte Carlo while the economy drags?
The reason we got here: greed. We did nothing to address the underlying reason for the economic crisis, so is it surprising that greed continues?
Tax the full rental value of bare land, and remove all taxes on labor and capital, excluding social security.
Not only would you provide a bigger economic stimulus than any of the current proposals -- one estimate puts it at a trillion dollars per year (see http://wealthandwant.com/docs/Tideman_Applications_LVT.html) without deficit spending -- it's pretty difficult to stick an acre of Manhattan in a Swiss bank account.
Plus, capital likes to flow to where there are low taxes. The giant sucking sound would be headed back to the United States, for once.
Most of the major companies mentioned are not receiving any "rescue" from the government, and would not want or need any. Additionally, just because a business has set up a subsidiary in another country does not at all indicate that it is trying to avoid taxes. There are many reasons to set up subsidiaries, including requirements of the local governments. These are LEGAL subsidiaries, whether the purpose is for tax reasons or otherwise. The corporate tax rate is so high in the U.S. that some of these businesses (and others) feel compelled to take LEGAL action to lower their taxes to workable levels.
To drive the economy, you want the people with the LEAST money to spend MORE money.
The VELOCITY of the money is what drives our tax system. The government gets more taxes if a dollar is used 100 times than if it is used 10 times.
Buying a pizza - taxed. ... etc
Pizza shop owner pays delivery guy - taxed.
Delivery guy goes to dinner with his girlfriend - taxed.
Restaurant owner pays cook - taxed.
Cook buys muffler for car - taxed.
Pump enough money into the lower economic rungs and more pizza delivery guys will have to be hired to meet the demand for more pizzas.
Give the money to some company that's going to stash it in an off-shore tax haven ... the US jobs stagnate.
I don't know why anyone complains about this. I mean it's not like corporations are anything but the great back bone of our country. Forget rights and freedoms, we all know it's the corporations who make this country great. It is why we give them all of the rights and privileges of human beings but none of the responsibility. For instance they own copyrights much longer than mortal humans. I mean look, we have one of the highest corporate tax burdens in the free world and one of the strongest economies on the planet. Don't you see how that tax burden is crippling us. Just imagine if our corporations paid less taxes like Europe. Just think lower taxes=better business right. Bermuda is the next economic powerhouse then, right. Right?
His figure is suspiciously close to the amount of Monopoly money that $400 can by in copies of the game with your $400 of REAL money.
The Italians tried that hyperinflation thing once.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
$900B / 300M = 3,000. For the one bailout. Yeah, I was off by two zeroes. But it's macro economics, so that's close enough.
Still a lot more than $400 pp though.
Sure corporations do this. And not just US ones. And not just corporations, many non-profit organizations also benefit from that status to maximize their revenue.
Greenpeace, Amnesty International, Mozilla Foundation, Wikipedia and many, more more are just flying non-profit "flags of convenience" to avoid paying taxes on their commercial operations arms.
The Tax system is deeply flawed, and since it benefits the rich, powerful, and those who aspire to be, it's not going to change any time before Hell freezes over.
It was only one zero of 400 though ;)
Go figure.
The diversity and expression of human opinion is essential to human survival.
dude, when you do... the coincidence is gonna blow your mind!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
I see the "republicans" tag on this story and am having a hard time making the connection. If I remember right, a large number of republican members of congress didn't like the idea of the bailout and continue to speak against the release of the second half of the money. We need a tag called "bipartisans." I think part of Obama's appeal to monied interests is "All this partisan bickering is getting in the way of what we can really do for this country: get paid."
When the axe came to the forest, the trees said, "Look out - the handle was once one of us."
Just like those accountants.. never doing any real work, just saving money!
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Well if you had both read the fine article before it was overloaded and had to be changed, you would have find that it had a perfect system for getting rich whilst meeting beautiful girls (or boys or non-determined goth types, depending on your taste) which unfortunately I can follow but can't explain. So don't make this mistake next time.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
These "Free Trade" acolytes love the free market until it's their ass on the line, and then tax-funded government welfare is just fine. Then they have the nerve (as many are doing in this thread) to say that they should be able to legally dodge paying taxes because "it isn't fair". If these companies think paying taxes is so horrible, then they should reject tax funded bailouts and go bankrupt just like any citizen would have to if they got themselves in a bunch of trouble. You won't see that though, because it's easier to talk tough about welfare and taxes, while you gobble up those very same funds to clean your messes up.
That they did nothing but deregulate for 10 years. The only reason some Republican politicians made political theater out of the bailout is because it was an easy way to appeal to pissed off citizens during an election year. Conservative economic policies have reigned supreme for a decade, and this mess is what we have to show for it. Don't feign surprise when blame is placed at the feet of the party that controlled the policies that lead to the mess.
Corporations and the power-elite have ripped the US taxpayers off to the tune of trillions of dollars over the past eight years alone. They always have, of course, but it has grown so rampant and egregious that we must put a stop to it once and for all. That means cracking down on offshoring and outsourcing by companies that come to the US taxpayer begging for hand-outs. It means life-sentences or worse for the white-collar criminals like Bernie Madoff who are responsible. It means revocation of corporate charters for companies that do wrong, to curb the complicity of Boards of Directors and middle-management in white-collar crime; there must be more cases like Arthur Andersen being put out of business by the government.
And to those who contend that if we hold companies and white-collar criminals responsible for their actions that capital will simply flee the country, I ask, where are they gonna go? Where can they go that the long arm of the American people cannot reach? Mars? Because the US can make life on earth very uncomfortable for any place else that arouses its ire by sheltering them.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
n/t
you had me at #!
I find it amusing that US politicians are always talking about decreasing personal income tax, at the same time the corporate tax take has gone from 34% (1968) to just 15% in 2008. So who is paying the missing 19% of the tax take pie you may ask ? At the end of the day you and "your children" are as the government prints money and borrows. This gives the wonderful double whammy of an inflated currency (true worth of the currency drops) and a massive debt to pay off (over $3000 per person needs to be spent just to pay the interest every year). So as your tax money is used to bail out companies who pay less than 2% tax on total income thanks to off shored holdings you have to wonder who is getting screwed during this recession.
People want to avoid being stolen from? Who would have thought? That some people are more than willing to steal from others, while hypocritically trying to avoid being stolen from themselves? One of the many unfortunate corruptions of civil society that the government brings.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
If these companies didn't minimize their corporate taxes through any (legal) means possible, then they are doing a disservice to their shareholders. I would argue that they are doing a criminal disservice by not minimizing their taxes - they are not maximimizing the return on investment to their shareholders. Assuming that the money saved in taxes doesn't end up all being spent on hookers and blow for the top executives of a company, minimizing taxes helps the business grow. If you think paying taxes is such a great idea, go ahead, volunteer some extra money to the tax department, or avoid taking any of your legal deductions.
It seems the article and the report casts the net too wide.
Some mega-corps (like Coca-Cola and Cisco) actually do business everywhere, and even though they show considerable numbers of businesses in tax havens, those are a small fraction (10%) of the total number of countries in which they have offices. For companies like that, I'd be surprised to find a country where they are *not* operating.
Others, like Chevron and Goldman Sachs, show over half of their foreign operations in tax-haven locales. To me, that sounds very slimy.
Others are somewhere in between, probably representing a somewhat disproportionate presence in tax havens.
What else would you expect? Corporations do behave like psychopaths.
Fair enough. By the time all this spending is done, it will be over that, I'm certain. I will even concede that the number of working Americans is a lot less than 300M, making the burden on taxpayers that much more.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
It's all part of the NewParadigm (TM). The NewParadigm ends with the old-fashioned way of taking money in form of taxes and using it to provide services to the people. The NewParadigm reduces the input of taxes, and makes up the difference by issuing debt, that is in turn bought by the Chinese, that for some cultural superstition of them, like to work hard, sell merchandise, and lend back all the received money to the buyers, to allow them to buy still more stuff.
In the NewParadigm is not wrong for corporations to use tax law loopholes to evade taxes, and even receive bailout money afterwards, because the bailout money is just more debt, and debt is good. The NewParadigm states that the bigger the debt of a country, so much the better, because the debtors will be scared of forcing a default, and will keep on buying debt forever. So now, besides having companies too big to fail, we have countries too big to fail. In the NewParadigm, once you have a company deemed too big to fail, you can stop working, because the government will pay all your costs, as by definition they cannot allow you to fail. If you manage to have a country too big to fail, you also can stop working, and finance yourself just by selling bonds.
The reason because the NewParadigm works is because the world increase of productivity has generated a net production surplus. With the old paradigm, there was no way to use that surplus. If you stopped working to reduce the surplus, you stopped having money, and so you died, or got sick or something, and usually returned to work, very likely coughing. If you kept on working, the surplus just got bigger, and was from time to time wiped out by crisis and wars. However, the increase in production lately has made those two methods rather inadequate anymore. The NewParadigm, however, offers a way out of the dilemma. You can now stop working (or pretending to work in non-productive jobs like marketing or politics or the military) and keep on living well just by adding to your VISA debt balance. A whole country can do that by adding the VISA debt balances of the population and putting them into bonds, and selling the to the Chinese. In that way the surplus is eliminated and global prosperity ensues.
Those that will like to point out the current crisis as a negation of the principles of the NewParadigm should be ashamed of themselves, as the current crisis is obviously produced by _failure_ to fully apply the NewParadigm principles. Some old fashioned thinkers, worried by old fashioned guilt thoughts about getting something from nothing, got cold feet and stopped issuing more debt. But now the good work has been taken up by the governments, and all the VISA debt will be backed up by bonds, that the Chinese will promptly buy. So please don't criticize these companies, they are the backbone of the next step in economical evolution, and you are old fashioned thinkers, probably full of shit too.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.
Err, no. The main reason they are held in Guantanemo was for a jurisdictional dodge about holding them at all. One that didn't work out, as it turns out; the courts didn't buy the idea that they were beyond the reach of US courts just because they weren't within the boundaries of the United States.
Nope.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/opinion/17davis.html?_r=1&ex=1360990800&en=a3b1d35d17a4d480&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all
My policy as the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantanamo was that evidence derived through waterboarding was off limits. That should still be our policy. To do otherwise is not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence.
Emphasis mine.
Nothing in this report says the companies do no business in the "tax haven" countries.
Sure. If I posited the same argument that a person who fit the profile of a crack dealer was passing "something" to someone in a car after exchanging money, you'd be the first in line to throw him into prison. I'm not saying they don't deserve due process, but a judicial branch that wasn't a secretarial service for corporate America would at least investigate.
Horrors. Why would a country ever want to do that?
I'm not blaming the country, or claiming the corporations are automatically guilty. When they do business that removes tax money from the community that built it's wealth, I consider that a worse offense than someone who is falsely collecting welfare.
I'm upset with the habit of Americans getting upset over social welfare and not over corporate welfare. When corporations have more rights than an individual person, not even equal rights, I consider that to be reprehensible. I can't buy a palm tree in Costa Rica and reduce my tax liability as an individual, but I could if I formed an LLC. In my opinion, that's bullshit.
Including you. If you want them to pay more change the law. Arranging one's affairs so as to minimize tax liability is neither wrong nor illegal.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
This kind of un-informed nonsense tells me that too many Americans believe their nonsense media:
... USA is barely hanging on in Europe, they dont argue, they just ignore you, and you have just suffered 8 years of that
Eg
1. Arthur Anderson is alive and well as Accenture.
2. Europe, Japan
He's arguing against setting up a tax structure that allows and encourages setting up tax havens. Similarly, Mr. Death would probably be against setting up a criminal justice system that does the same for murder.
Since there are international treaties governing both commerce and extradition, it behooves us to make sure that in both areas we discourage people of taking advantage of international political necessities.
Getting rid of the death penalty would help in the latter area wrt. other countries' extradition policies. But since the corporate tax environment is an entirely artificial construct, we don't have to make extradition equivalents. We can just set up the tax structure so that there is no advantage in overseas shell games.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I interpreted the article as saying that of the largest 100 companies, 83 "conduct business" in tax havens and 17 do not (see the first paragraph). The sentence you quoted from the article lists some of the 17 which I interpret as "not tainted" by virtue of not conducting business in tax havens.
I noted this as I work for Lockheed Martin and there is (rightfully so) a huge emphasis on ethics. I am pleased that my corporate leadership practices what they preach.
... when it was market demand that determined whether or not a company stayed in business. Today however, it seems to be politicians giving away taxpayer money to keep businesses the tax payers obviously are not supporters of, in business.
Whats wrong with this picture and where is it leading?
What, are we using dB_{$} now?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Bad analogy. Whoever said that accountants do no work?
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Absolutely, and this ludicrous, greedy policy (and regulations like Sarbanes-Oxley) are really helping to kill the US economy. Now a majority of the top IPOs every year occur in other countries. It used to be like 23 of the top 25 IPOs would always be in the US. Last year, it was like 2 of 25.
I'm sure that had nothing to do with the non-IPO friendly economy that started in the US last year.
Ireland's taxes are lower than most of the rest of the EU, so it makes sense for any company doing pan-EU business to be based there. It also has had a number of years where it was a cheap place to get labor, and had workers that were educated and spoke English, though there's recently been a lot of business moving to Eastern Europe, especially Poland, where the labor's cheaper.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Was your post meant to imply that it's wrong to want to keep one's own property safe from thieves?
Actually, when only counting the second $350 billion it comes out to something like $2000 per tax payer. Nevermind the difficulty in finding all of the people that don't file income tax to deliver said funds back, it is pretty insane to count every American since a great number of Americans are still in diapers. Of course this means that every American could have recieved $4,000 had they just given the damned money back instead of using it for bailouts.
The only change I can believe in is what I find in my couch cushions.
I would define a tax haven is a jurisdiction where a corporation (or for that matter an individual) keeps a presence for tax reasons AND they do not make any significant profits at that location. By the way, locating in a tax haven does not produce profits, it only avoids paying taxes on that profit. If they produce a significant amount of their profits at the tax haven (say over 5%), I wouldn't call that a tax haven. That covers the Cayman Islands, Bermuda or Luxembourg don't have enough population to support the generation of these profits.
The collection of taxes is NOT theft! Look in the Bible about that one where Christ says that you should pay to Cesar what is due to Cesar. Not paying your fair share of taxes is immoral.
You know, the torture going on isn't just waterboarding, humiliation, koran desecration, human pyramids, being threatened with dogs, or "not getting the right jail." It includes what acts that are unarguably torture, including being beaten and chained up until dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilawar_(torture_victim)). Even when the sadistic bastards believed the detainee was innocent.
Some other examples of "not really torture" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse):
* Urinating on detainees
* Jumping on detainee's leg (a limb already wounded by gunfire) with such force that it could not thereafter heal properly
* Continuing by pounding detainee's wounded leg with collapsible metal baton
* Pouring phosphoric acid on detainees
* Sodomization of detainees with a baton
* Tying ropes to the detainees' legs or penises and dragging them across the floor.
And some other forms of torture, with real torture names that can really kill you, like strappado (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manadel_al-Jamadi). Although folks like you, Rush Limbaugh and all the other right wing nuts seem to prefer the doublespeak term "stress positions."
And I guess because some soldiers were just so stressed out and needed to blow off steam, some prisoners were just tied up, put in sleeping bags and beaten to death (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/02/AR2005080201941.html).
But you're right, waterboarding isn't torture and it was only 4 guilty as hell terrorists anyway.
Runner!
[UID-HeinzIntel]
Any use of tax havens should summon special, punitive taxes and also preclude all sales to government agencies, schools etc..
In order to protect loyal, American companies we need to really slam those that seek to avoid taxation.
You can't social engineer if everyone pays the same rate.
Quoted because you touched upon the OTHER reason we have taxes (and credits). By taxing and crediting, society encourages certain behaviors and discourages others.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
If your tax-minimization strategy causes such a public uproar that your business stands to lose billions of dollars in public funds and be saddled with new regulations as a result, then you've failed in your fiduciary duty to stockholders by shooting yourself in the foot.
(In other words, management strategies that increase regulatory risk are imprudent.)
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
- Judge Learned Hand
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If you've ever watched the movie "Joyeux Noël", you would know that "fraternizing" is an extreme threat to the social order of warfare, and punished accordingly.
From Ebert
He is accurate, however, in depicting the aftermath: Officers and troops were punished for fraternizing with the enemy in wartime. A priest who celebrated mass in No Man's Land is savagely criticized by his bishop, who believes the patriotic task of the clergy is to urge the troops into battle and reconcile them to death.
Torture is a means of maintaining the required psychological boundaries which military duty entails.
Somewhere on the Michael Moore DVD, there is a scene of young American soldiers abusing an elderly Iraqi man, is tied up, has a black hood on his head, and appears to have some kind of injury. Would you let your own grandfather lie there in that condition? The troops resolve the cognitive dissonance by humiliating the man for his stress erection.
The men on both sides who failed to kill each other one Christmas night were dispatched on both sides to the bloodiest fronts in Europe. Who or what exactly was harmed by these men briefly failing to shoot at each other?
I suspect few of the men known to have fraternized survived the war. No army punishes its torturers as harshly. The actor who plays the drill sergeant in "Full Metal Jacket" was a real life drill sergeant. Under a psychological barrage of that intensity, not even the terminally obtuse fails to internalize the prevailing value system, and I'm not talking about the value system as portrayed in their recruiting pamphlets.
If patriotism was a rock band, torture would be one of the groupies.
The FairTax repeals the 16th amendment
Every legal US citizen is regularly refunded the value of retail taxation--weekly, biweekly, monthly, annually, given to charity--whatever, using the existing systems of social security, welfare and unemployment, etc.
In addition to the elimination of all income taxation, gains taxes are also nuked. This is a major stumble for many, but remember that these wealth holders make major purchases of new goods, which are taxed at the FairTax rate.
The current ballpark is $13,600,000,000,000, trillion with a T, are hiding from taxation overseas. With the FairTax, these thirteen trillion dollars come back home to work for us.
You pay no income taxes. You take home 100% of what you earn. You have more control over your federal government. You pay a 23% tax on new goods up to the poverty line, but the MASSIVE supply-side taxation cost is eliminated from those goods, meaning the price after FairTax is the same. The economy booms because every-friggin-corporation opens up shop in the new tax utopia. Jobs are plentiful.
Don't believe me! Read for yourself!
FairTax baby!
This problem is easily solved.
I see no reason to switch to a sales tax, the income tax is fine. Just get rid of corporate taxes. They don't bring in money on a consistent basis, they bring in very little, and they pervert our stock-market by discouraging companies from posting a profit.
"Wrong. The solution is mass genocide, ...."
Genocide of ALL Corporate executive's and board members... They are the pirates of the 19th, 20th, 21st centuries. What did the do with pirates way back when? Then hanged them in public. That is what we should do with these guys/gals. Hang em' High - publicly! Enough of the piracy of the U.S. by these coporate shills - Hang em'!!!!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
You got one big difference people either don't think about or fail to mention. While soldiers might have had waterboarding or something similar applied to them (probably to train them to be less sensitized to it if done to them), the soldier is not going to be murdered by his superiors. They're never going to go overboard or make serious mistakes on their own comrades, and whether anyone admits this or not, anyone having this done to them (by their own military) is going to realize this.
A 'detainee' doesn't have this protection; he has no idea how far they will go and can fully expect to be drowned to death if he doesn't give them what they want (or what he hopes they want that he has so that he won't be murdered).
Even Hollywood recognized this, and years before 9/11 happened; go watch The Siege and look at Bruce Willis' part in the film; or even the whole movie, and maybe you'll understand the significance of why the treatment of so-called detainees will never be the same as treatment of ordinary people or those not considered to be combatants of any kind.
But going back to the use of simulated waterboarding in training, no matter how close the training is for our troops, it can never be the same conditions as someone who was grabbed by our military because they have no real protections that our own people have vis-a-vis their teammates and supervisors. (Does anyone seriously believe a guy is going to treat his buddy as badly as he would someone they've grabbed or bought from an Afghan warlord as presumably a combatant?)
I'll give you another example; use of torture or misconduct by soldiers encourages its use against them by others. Does anyone remember the stories of American Indians scalping people? Do you know why they did that? Because the white men (soldiers) did that to the Indians they found, and the Indians thought it was a sign of respect to warriors or at least it was a legitimate practice since the white men did it, so they did it too. But they didn't start doing it until after they saw how the white soldiers did it first.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
Tax every single steenking penny that leaves the country 25%.
We can't hit imports with heavy duties; too many international "free trade" agreements for that. But nobody says we can't tax the money when it leaves again, hmmmm?
Confiscate every dollar leaving that is not declared (whether it be via bank transaction, money order, or a shipping container full of Ben Franklins.
Simple, eh? But noooo ...
News Corp has 151 more tax haven subsidiaries. C'mon Apple!
In anarchy no person can keep more wealth then he can personally guard.
You can hire guards to watch non-portable wealth, but once they are 'guarding' the land how are you going to claim back ownership from the guards.
The wealthy do receive one benefit from government that those with no/few assets do not.
Try and squat on their land and find out exactly what that benefit is.
Not that I'm advocating anarchy. Just pointing out that the wealthy do get something for their money.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"Tax avoidance is the legal utilization of the tax regime to one's own advantage, in order to reduce the amount of tax that is payable by means that are within the law. The United States Supreme court has stated that "The legal right of an individual to decrease the amount of what would otherwise be his taxes or altogether avoid them, by means which the law permits, cannot be doubted." See Gregory v. Helvering."
Taxes of a modern age are things which only middle class and poor people pay. The reason for this is simple: rich people, affluent corporations, and anyone with a significant amount of money (which is who taxes were argued to take money from) do something very simply; they pay an accountant to find every tax loophole, make charitable donations, and balance revenue with expenses in such a way as to reduce the taxes they pay to as close to zero as possible.
Sadly, a Libertarian cannot force his views on another, and freedom cannot spread as does the cancer known as religion.