Slashdot Mirror
Wikileaks To Name Swiss Bank Tax Evaders
eldavojohn writes "The old cliche that the rich and corrupt hold all their money in Swiss bank accounts (to avoid taxation) may finally have a bit of transparency, as the news today is that Wikileaks has been handed a list of account holders tendered by Rudolf Elmer, former banker of Julius Baer. Julian Assange promises a 'full revelation' while Elmer cited his motivation as being: 'I want to let society know how this system works. It's damaging society.' This appears to be real, as Mr. Elmer is soon to appear before a Zurich regional court on charges of coercion as well as violations of Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws. The public may soon find out that their favorite celebrity, politician or employer doesn't feel responsible to contribute financially to the commonwealth at the expense of privacy."
I guess Assange didn't like that the swiss bank PostFinance closed his account.
There are more details here.
Personally, I'm just gonna sit back and watch this unfold *grabs popcorn*
You do know that it's been a while since we heard anything about him. Beside he is sorta the spokesman of wikileaks, so...
I do not understand why wikileaks is telling everyone what they will reveal later.
Can't they just post it immediately ?
Having a swiss bank account doesn't mean you're a tax evader. They don't report information to the (US) IRS, but neither do many other foreign banks. If you run a business, your revenue isn't automatically reported to the IRS either.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Seriously, Identity theft?
WTF happened to Terrorism and Espionage????
This piece of dog-shit with legs needs to be gunned down with his head mounted at the very top of a nice sharp pike - perhaps while still alive and screaming from the gunshot wound as it enters his rectum.
I'd bet just about anything he only exposes one political/national side's leaders in this - and not because theres only one corrupt side either.
guess someone has a hidden bank account...
I used to work for a Swiss Bank in compliance IT, so naturally would trawl through the most restricted "beneficial owner" papers when bored.
Despite their exotic reputation, the vast majority of accounts were held by fairly ordinary folk (there seemed to be an inordinate number of german dentists). So while this may sound like a blow at the rich and powerful, there's going to be a lot of very unextraordinary middle class folk whose financial details are laid bare by this. Having a Swiss bank account is not illegal in itself.
You might want consider whether you'd like your finances laid bare before you acclaim this as another win for david over goliath.
Call it whatever you wish to, but on behalf of all indians (and as a matter of rather my opinion, on behalf of everyone around the world tired of corrupt politicians)... :)
Thanks Julian
everyone downmodding this post will be prosecuted for reading my post without first buying a license!!!
On the one hand, the public will be screaming about all the billionaires' money that goes untaxed, and demanding that politicians close tax loopholes and inpose windfall taxes on the people named by wikileaks.
On the other hand, the billionaires so named will be applying pressure to somehow make it all go away. I wonder which way our elected representatives will go on this one.
I fully expect the media to be conveniently and entirely distracted by some complete non-news story the second the leak appears, for the exact amount of time it takes for it all to blow over.
Just how long has world known that the Swiss are the bankers of choice for criminals, dictators, and the idle rich that do not want to pay their taxes?
I mean really this is no shock to the world. I do have to wonder just how much blood money is in Swiss banks and how much of the wonderful Swiss lifestyle is paid for with the misery of the world.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Considering the love-fest for Google around these parts, but they've been effectively dodging taxes for a few years. Why would it be a shock if politicians, celebrities and sundry millionaires / billionaires do the same?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201043146825.htm
While I am all for businesses making a profit, I am NOT all for a multi-billion dollar company paying effectively 2.4% while I continue to pay nearly 30% of my income. The argument "Well, that gets turned into research and good pay for employees" still doesn't float IMO, when you have the higher executives of Google being paid millions. Reduce the salaries of those PHBs down to something reasonable, pay the rank and file programmers and researchers that money, and pay taxes like everyone else.
There are more details here.
It is indeed a better link and was one I found in my Google Reader this morning. However, I also have noticed continuously that New York Times links provide me headaches and disappointment when used in Slashdot's submission process. Here's a recent example, earlier this morning I submitted a story about video games and mental health problems. Now in that submission I referred to a well written New York Times article an used this URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17gaming.html
Every time I previewed it or edited it, it came out like that. But when I hit submit, it magically changed to this URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17gaming.html&OQ=_rQ3D4&OP=70b1f348Q2FQ5D-2yQ5DgoksPooZQ27Q5DQ27W33Q5DW3Q5D3VQ5DisQ5D3VdQ241Q26rdQ25OZ14
What is going on? I've written to CmdrTaco about this and I thought he said they'd look at it ... like their system prefetches URLs or something? Makes adjustments to avoid TinyURL in the submission? Avoids redirects that might go to goatse? I don't know. What I do know is that if you go to the firehose and type in 'nytimes' as your search term you will find submission after submission with login/paywalled URLs exactly like the one above. Here's one and another and another ad infinitum.
So when you do this, people get upset they can't read the article and I heavily sympathize with them and generally consider my submission a failed attempt when that happens. So the solution? Don't link to the New York Times in submissions! I'll find some other site to send a billion Slashdot eyes at if they don't want their page views. It really is a shame because I love the New York Times and think they have some great writers but from the above it's evident the affection is asymmetrical.
My work here is dung.
I don't care if he's a monkey and likes to play a recorder with his butt.
It's a Good Thing (tm) this information is being made public.
These negative responses are almost as juicy as the leaks themselves. You've left us wondering whether you're a tax evader, a Freedom Fry? Or maybe it's just jealousy or a secret crush... not trying hard enough to be an astroturfer.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Mod Parent Up
What, on the basis that ignorance is knowledge and hysteria is wisdom?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm getting sick of Assange's promises of all this great information they are "going to leak". He has all of this info on corruption in the US banking system, on rich people evading taxes, and a bunch of other info which will be released if he disappears.
If he has information on illegal dealings, corruption, etc., release it.. Why the threats, why the talk? His current behavior is more like someone
trying to shake down folks, not someone trying to uncover the truth.
I dunno. I'm pretty sure that he genuinely hates both rich people and the United States as well.
You say that almost as though it were a bad thing.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
They don't have to pay, they could move to another country. It's hardly theft for the government to make you pay for services you use. Why should I have to pay all my taxes when these jack asses are sending their money overseas to avoid having to pay taxes?
But then again, I bet you're one of those people who wants your taxes cut, but wants somebody elses services to be cut or diminished to finance it. I think the term for that is "fiscal conservative."
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
I don't think he hates the US. I think he is releasing this information so the citizens can be aware of some of the nefarious actions US leaders have been up to. Look at some of those leaks. Everything from child prostitution to killing the bees is in there.
I can't help but think this is an olive branch of sorts to the very nations embarrassed by wikileaks. "Here are your white collar criminals. Here is your money. Let's go easy on Julian, shall we?"
And as to your assertion that these aren't criminals: I don't know if this is flamebait (probably!) or heart-felt opinion but this is a clear-cut case of people getting around a law, be it "Right" (in the categorical imperative, universally just sense) or wrong. Get caught? Get punished.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
If they don't like paying for things like Police, Fire departments, Military etc then they can always move to a tax haven where they don't have to.
"Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
Have you ever considered that most states (including the US) is effectively run by the rich and powerful? If you have, then you would be a lot more measured in your reply, rather than babbling off absolute nonsense.
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
Outing honest people whose only so-called "crime" is wanting to avoid the theft of their hard and presumably legitimately-earned dollars is completely and totally wrong
Tax is not theft. Someone evading tax is not honest.
Black is not white, whatever you libertarians might like to believe.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Despite their exotic reputation, the vast majority of accounts were held by fairly ordinary folk (there seemed to be an inordinate number of german dentists). So while this may sound like a blow at the rich and powerful, there's going to be a lot of very unextraordinary middle class folk whose financial details are laid bare by this. Having a Swiss bank account is not illegal in itself.
From the New York Times coverage:
A former Swiss bank executive said on Monday that he had given the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, details of more than 2,000 prominent individuals and companies that he contends engaged in tax evasion and other possible criminal activity.
Emphasis mine. Elmer is doing this because he feels the list he has compiled is a list of unjust individuals and right now Wikileaks is doing all in their power to verify that these individuals are, in fact, tax dodgers. He says the list has 40 politicians and “pillars of society” worldwide among those two thousand.
You might want consider whether you'd like your finances laid bare before you acclaim this as another win for david over goliath.
Precisely why I ended the summary with "at the expense of privacy." And it's not just tax evasion. You do realize that if Julius Baer is associated with heinous criminals worldwide that it could get ugly on an international level, right?
My work here is dung.
An individual who seeks to minimize his tax obligations or a government that feels that it is ENTITLED to tax everything that moves?
Corporatism != Free Market
then so is the use or reliance on roads, public schools or universities, police, firemen, zoning codes, enforcement of contracts, national defense, and so forth. Which is to say, taxation is not theft, and a civilized society is not free of financial cost.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Outing honest people whose only so-called "crime" is wanting to avoid the theft of their hard and presumably legitimately-earned dollars is completely and totally wrong, and negates much if not all of the good Wikileaks has done in exposing actual government and corporate wrongdoing. It also makes Wikileaks, directly or indirectly, an accomplice to the very real crimes of the state that it has spent so much of its time trying to expose.
What if they are not honest people, but are in fact (for example) dictators stealing money from Tunisia or some other African country? Should they still act with impunity and should their actions still be hidden if they are exposed to wikileaks?
Tax evasion is also a crime in most countries, and rightly so. If that's what they are exposing here they would also be doing good in my opinion (that's tax evasion not avoidance). Finally, I'm not aware that the death sentence is imposed for evading tax, so perhaps tone down the rhetoric a bit?
However no-one knows yet what this information is exactly, and who it is on, so it is really far too early to judge this whistleblower and wikileaks. The guy is ruining his life to do leak this and will probably go to jail for it, so I imagine he has some pretty strong reasons to release the information, possibly because he feels morally obliged to...
It'll be shorter than your explanation of why the links don't work :)
Wherever You Go, There You Are
This really takes the cake. How about you stop "stealing" the use of all the public services being paid for by all other hard working people?
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
Not everyone who has money on a Swiss bank account is guilty of tax evasion. Since I assume WikiLeaks doesn't have the tax forms of the people on this list, they can't know who of them are tax evaders, and who simply hold their money there for other reasons (maybe they want to hide it from some near relative, and maybe even for good reason).
It's one thing to give the tax office this data. It's another thing to make it public.
Again: Just having money on a Swiss bank account isn't a crime, nor proof of a crime. Publishing it however invades the privacy also of law-abiding beople who just happen to have money there for legitimate reasons.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Outing honest people whose only so-called "crime" is wanting to avoid the theft of their hard and presumably legitimately-earned dollars is completely and totally wrong, and negates much if not all of the good Wikileaks has done in exposing actual government and corporate wrongdoing. It also makes Wikileaks, directly or indirectly, an accomplice to the very real crimes of the state that it has spent so much of its time trying to expose.
What sense does it make to out those crimes, but also at the same time sign what might as well be the death sentence for many, many honest people who were heroic and brave enough to, at great personal risk, try their best to avoid funding those crimes?
Should I Monty Python you? It's so overdone though.
Reg: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.
Stan: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers!
Reg: Yeah.
Stan: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers!
Reg: All right Stan, don't belabour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
Man: The aqueduct?
Reg: What?
Man: The aqueduct.
Reg: Oh yeah, yeah, that they've given us, yeah, that's true, yeah.
Man: And the sanitation.
Stan: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like.
Reg: Yeah, all right, I grant you, the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things the Romans have done.
Mathias: And the roads!
Reg: Well, yeah, obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they! But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct and the roads...
Man: Irrigation.
Man: Medicine.
Man: Education!
Reg: Yeah, yeah, all right, fair enough.
Man: And the wine.
All: Yeah, yeah, the wine!
Francis: Yeah! yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left.
Man: Public baths.
Stan: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
Francis: Yeah, they certainly like to keep order. I suppose they're the only ones who could in a place like this!
Reg: Yeah, all right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us!?
Man: Brought peace.
Reg: Oh, peace. Shut up!
Adidas To Bring Back Sneakernet
There's a whole Slashdot article with people ripping apart Google for "double Irish" and "dutch sandwich" styles of tax evasion.
The only reason that it should hurt your karma is that you confusingly singled out Google when your own article lists Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. Why pick on Google when everybody plays the same screw-the-taxpayer game? They're all crooks avoiding taxes in ways that a single individual like myself that makes very small fractions can't enjoy.
You'll lose karma when you spin it like this: "Apple Hurts Schoolchildren by Avoiding Taxes" and "Google Welcomes World Peace by Denying War Machine Its Pound of Flesh." See what I did wrong there?
My work here is dung.
Switzerland has great banks. In fact, there's at least one whole country where everybody puts there money there. There's no reason in the world not to put money in them. Having money in a Swiss bank is not a crime and it doesn't imply you're a criminal or a tax cheat. For example, maybe people are spooked by the circus surrounding US banks or something.
The static from the US IRS got so bad that Swiss banks simply closed all accounts of "American persons". They completely kicked Americans out of their customer base. I find that pretty darn disappointing that my country is acting so obnoxiously that I personally can't do business on equal footing with the rest of the modern world.
we steal it back for you
What does having a bank account have to do with taxes? Taxes are supposed to be about the money you earn, not the money you have. Funny how this is turning out.
did you forget to take your meds?
there you go. the sigfile that keeps on giving.
while we don't like paying taxes, what happens if everyone stops?
this is not complex. not any more complex than: if you stop going to work, eventually money stops coming in. sometimes life is simple like that.
we are not arguing about *whether* to pay taxes but that the rich get out of paying their fair share. we can debate what fair is, but what's clear is that they pay little to no taxes. not even close to fair, in anyone's book.
its a cheat and we let the privileged class get away with it. and how WRONG that truly is, too.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
Unfortunately it always comes with a side-order of corruption.
As long as they aren't politicians.
you have it somewhat backwards.
we are now seeing how out of control THE WORLD is.
people running things knew this. 'we' didn't.
this is what all the rukkus is about. exposure of the raw, uncut reality of how the world really world. no sugar coated disney movie view of things.
peoples' view of reality are being challenged and those who lived on the lie are being caught.
information revolution, to be sure. this is why its such a big deal. this IS a revolution; we're seeing it happen and unfold right now.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
Would you like paying less for the civilization you receive? Or is paying any amount for civilization worth it? If the latter, then add me to the list. I'd like to get a piece of your action too. I'll even pay taxes on it to make some more civilization.
If we were honestly paying for things like that then you might have a point. Most of our tax money is redistribution of wealth though. The "rich" (>40k/yr) pay for the services for everyone else. (ever noticed how much of your property taxes are for education? huge percentage - even if you don't have kids)
If we were really paying for our own police, fire, etc we'd be paying a flat tax amount and not a percentage of income. It would also come out to be a much smaller amount per individual than each person pays now except for the very poorest.
So you're implying that the police and fire deparments make more calls to millionaire's homes than poor people?
The military of the US is considered an asset to multinational companies - it gives enemies slight pause before attacking them, but everyone who works for those companies benefits from that and not just the C?Os.
This isn't an endorsement for cheating on your taxes - it is merely a reflection that the tax code is unjust and unfairly penalizes success. The fact that such a large percentage of the US pay little or no federal taxes is part of the reason the federal debt is so high. Politicans have no incentive to reign in spending because pleasing people who have no stake in the system keeps them in office.
In my opinion, overly affluent people are the real problem with the world today. Capitalism actually means all the people have access to the world's capital, not just the few percent. We live in financial despotism and employees are just economic slaves in denial. If democracy is so great why aren't our companies more democratic? From what I can see, greed is the insatiable effect of the law of diminishing returns. If materialism could actually produce happiness, wouldn't rich people stop at some finite point? It never ends because they're addicts. The rich and powerful are in the process of running society into a brick wall and for all of our science, we can't do squat about it.
Words to men, as air to birds.
Or possibly that they value the protection of privacy enough to see that it doesn't cease to apply just because they don't like someone.
I wouldn't support an organisation that shared my private details, I don't believe anyone who feels the same, while being happy to see it happen to other people, can claim to be anything but a hypocrite.
Good I'm sick of having to deal with cutting funding for education, parks, roads, and pretty much everything else because certain people want to avoid helping pay/maintain for the community we live in.
we are not arguing about *whether* to pay taxes but that the rich get out of paying their fair share. we can debate what fair is, but what's clear is that they pay little to no taxes. not even close to fair, in anyone's book.
Here in the UK, the top 1% income tax payers pay about 25% of all the taxes:
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/5245013/why-cameron-should-ditch-the-50p-tax-rate.thtml
I imagine in the US and other wealthy countries, it's similar.
You're completely satisfied with what your tax is buying you?
The public may soon find out that their favorite celebrity, politician or employer doesn't feel responsible to contribute financially to the commonwealth at the expense of privacy.
The public may soon find out that their favorite celebrity, politician or employer takes the responsible action of protecting himself and his family from the criminal syndicate dominant in his locale.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Then what? There will always be a seedy underbelly. But it's part of the infrastructure. Whistle-blowing is a way of picking at it and keeping people aware and occasionally bringing those to justice. But if you rip it apart, there is collateral damage. In the case of Wikileaks, it was the diplomatic cables, many of which had little to do with the dark evils of government. Then there are informants and other logistical people who did nothing wrong. All for what? "I told you so?" We're going to bring down world governments for what? What's in the vacuum? Anarchy? It's nice to think about the utopia to come but here's the bitter truth, there is no utopia. Assange can do this because he has no kids, no family, no one to worry about but himself. And now we're hearing reports of those with Wikileaks wanting money for their information!? That they STOLE!? Wikileaks deserves whatever they get and they haven't gotten nearly enough bag of hurt. Whistle-blowers? Hardly. Turns out they're just as prone to the dark side of human nature as those they look down their noses upon.
And if those who are hiding vast amounts of money from the tax man paid their fair share on it, the majority would pay less for a lot better civilization.
I make good money, I pay my fair share of all my taxes, around 45% for all federal, state and local taxes together after all legal deductions. Then I hope the roads are paved, the youth gets a good education, the truly needy get the help they need and the fire dept shows up quickly if necessary. If that looks like it's happening, then I'm happy and I don't complain about my taxes too much.
It ticks me off when people who make gobs more than I do pay a FAR lower percentage than I do.
However, I want to know who these people are who owed the IRS 1 million dollars but only had to pay three thousand! i hate the IRS as much as the next guy, but those ads make me kind of mad!
I say "yea!" to the disclosure. I would really like to know who is skirting/shirking the tax laws that I am unwilling/unable to skirt or shirk. Having those who can afford to break the rules able to do so with impunity doesn't do any good for the rest of society. Level the playing field, and then perhaps there will be greater pressure to make the tax laws more sensible.
I dunno. I'm pretty sure that FooAtWFU genuinely hates both freedom and the educated as well. Oh and he eats babies.
My statement is as valid as yours. See how it makes you look?
Please go and actually read up on what Assange and WikiLeaks does, has done, and is about... and no you cant use FoxNews or any republican hate rag as a information source.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I agree man. I'm praying that some big Indian names come up on this list. We will hound the motherfuckers out of office.
I thought the Swiss agreed to stop allowing US citizens to hide their money?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Well, it may be immoral, but I guess that Google doesn't think it's "evil". I wonder where Eric Schmidt sets the bar on the whole evil/immoral thing?
And what percentage of the wealth do they control? It doesn't matter what percentage of the population they are if they are being taxed more on greater sums of money.
Xavier Rabourdin for president 2012
If we were really paying for our own police, fire, etc we'd be paying a flat tax amount and not a percentage of income. It would also come out to be a much smaller amount per individual than each person pays now except for the very poorest.
I think if you rolled all the various taxes into one flat tax it would be much higher than, say, income tax which only represents a portion of the taxes you pay. People would revolt it they learned the true amount they pay in taxes.
--
No trees were hurt in the posting of this text
fuck him... make the announcement when you release the info... the hype is so tiresome...
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
Tax is not theft. ... Black is not white, whatever you libertarians might like to believe.
Strangely enough, it's the libertarians who insist on calling things by their rightful names, and you who is insisting that "black is white". Tell me, what is the significant difference between "tax" and "theft"? Apart from the obvious fact that one is an action performed by the government, and the other is performed by a private citizen, there is none, and the identity of the actor does not change the nature of the act. Theft is theft, even when it's called a "tax".
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
"Buy" suggests a free market or choice, or at least that men with guns won't put you into a tiny little cage if you don't give them what they want. I'm not saying taxes are universally bad- in fact I think a number of taxes are quite useful- but I've always found that quote to be frustratingly inaccurate. We build civilization with sweat and blood. We pay for organization and public resources with taxes. It's not buying, and it's not related 1:1 with civilization.
No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
This info is getting filtered by Elmer who made the determination that something fishy was going on with the account.
That's in some respect a judgement call. It'd be pretty easy to have a list heavily biased toward those politicians/celebrities you don't like/agree with.
I can agree, we all need to pay for the roads, police and military. I believe that patronizing the arts and sciences with government money is also a great benefit for society. However, the amount of tax versus the total money earned has been going up over the last century. Particularly for the lower income bracket. For example, the lowest income bracket pays 10% today, this was 1% for much of our history.
Much of this money does not go to benefit mankind or to benefit anyone really. It pays for unjust wars of "freedom". It pays for a military industrial complex which is vastly larger than it needs to be in a time of world peace. It pays for a broken education system which is among the worst in the world - yet costs more per-pupil than any other (except Lichtenstein.) All of which has become impossible to fix due to entrenched political forces.
So I don't blame anyone who evades taxes. Good for them. (I don't do it, btw. I just morally support anyone who makes that difficult decision.) Taxes should not be mandatory anyway. You want a driver's license? Show an "infrastructure tax payer" receipt. You want a cop to show up for an emergency? You better do the same. People WOULD pay for it. Just look at how many people pay for all kinds of insurance. Military costs would be paid through import duties and sales taxes.
Or the other option is to allow a line-item income tax. Where a taxpayer could pick and choose what programs they want to fund. I would support that. What we have now is nothing more than an oligarchy shaking down their subjects. The battle is always between them, what part of the meat they'll get. It never occurs to them that killing the animal was wrong. The average taxpayer has no voice in the media and no choice at the poll. Both parties don't dare to challenge the status-quo. In fact, they fight brutally for the system.
I have a theory that the truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours. - Hunter S. Thompson
The best way to maximise tax AVOIDANCE is to make sure the laws around tax EVASION are written in your favour. Which is what the kleptocracy does. And failing that, hide the money offshore (finally back OT).
you had me at #!
I am NOT all for a multi-billion dollar company paying effectively 2.4% while I continue to pay nearly 30% of my income... when you have the higher executives of Google being paid millions. Reduce the salaries of those PHBs down to something reasonable...
I'm all for taxation, but I don't think corporate income taxes make much sense when you think about them. In the long run, all the money a corporation makes ends up with individuals through salaries, dividends, etc. That's the whole point of a coproation, to make a profit for investors and employees. Corporations don't just hold on to the money; that wouldn't make any sense.
If those PHBs make bank, they'll be paying more than the 30% you pay, so the corporations' profits will effectively be taxed at that rate too. Corporate income taxes really just add another layer of bureaucracy -- you're taxing the same money at two levels (corporate and individual) instead of just one (individual). Now, individual income taxes are far from perfect (as Warren Buffett points out, he pays a lower tax rate than his secretary because the capital gains tax rate is so low), but that's just a reason to fix individual income taxes.
Not one person here would voluntarily pay taxes if they didn't have to.
You're a bit dim concerning the larger scheme of things if you think you can cast the net that wide without catching a cactus. The short answer is that any person who has ever chosen a lottery or a casino over a mutual fund is not half as tax averse as you make out.
I was reading John Rawls "Justice as Fairness" not long ago. He has this concept of the "original position". The way I recall the idea, you get to choose how the world is constructed, but you don't know who you will be when you wake up in this world when it comes into creation. You could be anyone, with uniform probability.
With no foreknowledge of personal privilege, do you choose a world with no tax system? Or a world with kinds of institutions that have evolved in society as we know it? Some worlds will combine spectacular opportunity with spectacular inequity. The bottom of the pyramid is fat, so your odds of showing up as a burger flipper are relatively high; or with small probability, you could be the patriarch of Galt's Gulch.
I didn't think the concept of choosing before coming into being was all that philosophically brilliant, but some people can't get their minds around the difference between choosing a *system* you can live with, or choosing your place within it, and that needed to be addressed. So I give Rawls his due.
In a fictitious world where the no-tax fairy arrives and asks you if you would like a lifetime tax exemption, not many people would turn the offer down. But that's fantasy, not insight.
If the Libertarian-transporter fairy arrived, and offered to poof you into a society organized on Libertarian ideals, with nothing resembling a tax system, I'd be terrified about what kind of society I might get poofed into. It's hard to pay for each service required individually, that would be a treadmill from hell, so I guess there has to be some kind of group organization, I can only imagine many of the groups once formed resemble condo associations. Ugh. But it's voluntary, so the coffee tastes great.
There's a perception in world aid circles that when a country with a weak civic infrastructure discovers vast resource wealth (diamonds, oil, tantalum) that the country is just as likely to tip into civil war as to become an affluent society. And even if the society does become affluent in the short term, when the resource is exhausted, the country usually declines, and often ends up worse off than their neighbours, who didn't stub their toe on a giant diamond mine, and had to build their social capital the hard way. Countries with strong social institutions, like Canada, tend to benefit the most from resource wealth. Some countries with little resource wealth but cohesive institutions manage OK, because they don't have much choice, other than to work hard and row together.
We're still learning that human nature is not as intrinsically wealth maximizing as many economists would portray it. I always think of one of the original theories of fluid dynamics, which perfectly described the behaviour of water, neglecting surface tension. Great, someone remarked, we now have the complete theory of water that isn't wet.
It's the surface tension term in human nature that leads to cohesive social institutions. Sapolsky studied some non-human primates where self-interest is a lot more raw (the animals behave like impulsive two-year-olds). It was pretty clear they weren't able to stop bickering long enough to stack one stone on top of another, much less bake a mud brick. Libertarian to the last hairy armpit. What in economic theory distinguishes us from them? Our greed is more nuanced and restrained.
One thing you can say in favour of Libertarianism is that it serves as an intellectual flu shot against certain kinds of really terrible thinking about how society could be better ordered, by the same kinds of people who destroyed Africa (out of kindness).
Personally, there's no social structure I understa
It's not as if the rich are paying their fair share of taxes, and they haven't really since 1980. The United States has the same tax collection rate as Romania. So, you would expect it to have social services on par with Romania.
Once you get to the actual civilized world, like England and France and Germany, you see the rate in the high 30s or low 40s, because that's what it costs to build and maintain a civilization that takes care of the elderly, the disabled, and the mentally ill.
If you want to live in a place like Romania or Moldova, where the disabled and elderly are helped to die or filed away at the edge of town languishing until they are dead, that's fine. That's the road America has chosen right now. The wealthy have spent billions convincing the middle class that low taxes are great, but now we are seeing the results of that policy. They (the top 1%) have lowered their own tax rate from 34% to 23% between 1980 and now.
But they're not willing to budge on the military they use to forcefully open markets. They're not willing to allow the middle class to have a public option to lower the cost of health care. They're not willing to improve free access to education to make our economy stronger and our population more employable.
They want to keep depriving the US government of money until it breaks down, and then accept a much lower standard of government service so they can go for the 10 million dollar yacht instead of settling on the 7 million dollar model.
They are worthless fucks who don't care about their countrymen, and I'd rather them emigrate to Romania before they rob America of the rest of it's wealth. Not after.
How about you stop stealing from them first? It's kind of unfair to demand that they be self-sufficient when you're taking from them the means with which to do so.
Taxes and public services go hand-in-hand. It's no more reasonable to keep taking taxes while simultaneously demanding that objectors not use the public services they're paying for than it would be for the objectors to demand public services without offering to pay for them. Of course, if they offer to pay for what they use then you don't need a tax; an ordinary contract will do just fine. The tax is only necessary because you want them to pay for more than they need, on your terms.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
You're wrong on two counts:
1) It distorts the calculations on what is actually needed for the common good. That has everything to do with what we really need.
2) It undermines the sense of duty people have to obey the law and contribute.
The government is supposed to obey the law and serve the common good. When it doesn't and gets away with it, people feel like chumps for going along with it in the best of cases. In the worst cases, they feel like the rule of law is meaningless.
Everyone thinks that they at least pay their fair share of taxes.
The odds that the share you pay is fair is just about 0%. You either pay more or less than your fair share with almost certainty.
"His name was James Damore."
This is merely the amount they couldn't hide in shell corporations, overseas, or bury underneath six tons of tax code specially crafted to create loopholes large enough for Lear jets.
A secret account would allow you to accept money for services being performed under the table. Crafty ammendments, insider information, national secrets. There are lots of reasons why people should not have their accounts secret from the Law. Esp if they are elected or appointed officials. Even corporate board members should have their income visible...to make sure that any conflict of interest is quickly disclosed to the owners.
Also, if they are signing a tax return that says they have completely declared all income, but fail to disclose interest from a foreign bank account, then that fact should come up on their employment review ( or election ).
social care for disabled, firesquads, foster homes, police etc. I do not see how you could sustain that without taxes. Look at some rich corporations like Apple for example, they (Apple) haven't donated a dime in the last decade..
Think of all the taxes that went to create jobs in companies like Blackwater/Boeing/Lockheed.
Have gnu, will travel.
Now that he is in the crosshairs of the US government am I the only one that sees Julian's actions as evidence that he has been turned into a double-agent, cooperating with his prosecutors for a reduced sentence? It's not as if the US government hasn't been trying to uncover the identies of these Swiss account holders, right?
It almost reminds me of when the Napster boys settled their lawsuit with the RIAA by agreeing to hand over the identities of their customers so that the RIAA could spread their reign of terror by suing single mothers, homeless men, and elderly shut-ins for the balance of their life savings and potential future earnings.
Nope, no bias here. No consideration is necessary of the viewpoint that taxation is theft at gunpoint from legally disarmed victims. No thought of property rights, nor of punishing the producers who make modern life possible.
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
They might as well keep their money offshore since they're creating all of these jobs offshore anyway. Except for those tax evaders who hire illegal immigrants in the US. I guess that's a good thing. For somebody.
--
Comments may be biased from a U.S. middle class perspective.
No, I'm implying that nobody can foresee whether they'll need food stamps in the future. The service you're paying for is insurance. As long as people pay the taxes the program will be there. Anybody could get seriously ill and wind up homeless. When I had a heat stroke last summer, the bill for that was $14k, fortunately I had insurance which meant I only had to pay a small fraction, otherwise I likely would have had to either default on the debt or be homeless.
Additionally, citation need for the bureaucracy. People on the right make that sort of assertion regularly, but are never able to cut it, even when the GOP controls both houses and the White House.
Personal Swiss bank accounts are so 1990s. What Wikileaks will be revealing (and the IRS/Treasuery/US DoJ already has access to) is a list of names attached to accounts. That's a list of stupid people who went out on their own and got a Swiss account because they thought they were smarter than the law.
The big bucks are sitting in bank and brokerage accounts under corporate names. Foreign corporations that the USA can't touch, owned by a series of holding companies, the details of which are locked in a filing cabinet somewhere in the Caymen Islands.
Sure, there's 10 million francs in a Swiss account held for ACME GmBH. Who owns and controls them? Meanwhile, someone owns 100 shares of stock in Nauru Industries. Where's the connection? Good luck untangling that mess.
Have gnu, will travel.
They don't have to pay, they could move to another country.
Not true - the US taxes all income earned by people born in the US, regardless of where they live / have citizenship. To avoid this, you have to:
1) Renounce your US citizenship
AND
2) Convince the IRS that you did not renounce your citizenship to avoid paying taxes
I am not kidding. If the IRS thinks it is possible that you renounced your citizenship to avoid paying taxes, they will annul your renunciation. And remember, the IRS does not require any proof, and your have no appeal outside of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax court. After which they will probably win anyway, because in tax court you are considered guilty until proven innocent. Please see the relevant legal part of the tax code.
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I do not believe anybody should be getting any services from the gov't safe for minimum military.
You can't handle the truth.
"Then there are subsidies which actively harm US interests. A couple of key examples are farm subsidies and "cost plus" contracts (a popular feature of defense R&D and related spending, where the contractor is paid a base amount plus an additional amount based on "costs" to a fixed cap)."
A contract which pays actual costs plus a percentage of those costs is illegal.
A cost plus contract is "cost plus fixed fee" or "cost plus award fee"... the former has a negotiated fee (aka profit), typically in the 5% area, almost never above 10% based on the originally bid scope and cost. That stays the same, even if there is an over-run on the costs, so the vendor actually gets a lower percentage profit for an overrun.
A cost plus award has the fee (determined in advance) based on an evaluation of the contractor's performance. In almost all contracts I've seen, one of the factors determining the amount of the award is the degree to which the contractor kept the costs below a target. Bust the target, and no award.
There is, no doubt, some playing fast and loose when it comes to defining costs, particularly for indirect costs (General and Administrative, G&A) which are usually figured as an (audited) percentage of the direct costs (wages for the toilers, materials, etc.). But, in general, even those costs aren't "profit" in a bottom line sense. They may keep people employed, or pay for fancy facilities, but you don't make any ROI on them. (and all the government contractors I've worked at or visited had facilities that weren't by any stretch "plush".. for plush you need to go to big name law firms or investment banks..)
this entire article is a huge flamebait for me... must fight the urge to post lots and lots of comments on hating gov't...
You can't handle the truth.
I know this one. The ability and legality of the US Government to levy and collect taxes is directly codified in the Constitution.
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Bosses are employees too, and (as the parent points out) they certainly seek to enrich themselves.
Having regular employees make a profit is also necessary for a company; if it didn't happen, no one would work there.
I am Swiss, and you're dead on. There is only a very small, elitist circle here that has a lot of money. Mostly bankers and managers of international corporations, and most of them are not even Swiss. They only come to Switzerland because of the good market, low taxes for businesses, good infrastructure and security.
Yeah, it's true, we have a good infrastructure. You can reach almost every point by public transport. Almost everybody has telephone line / Internet access. Low criminality rates (except in economic crimes, insider trading for example is still very common and rarely prosecuted). However, purchasing power of a average middle-class swiss person is about the same as in the US, if not even slightly lower. We have an increasing overpopulation problem which causes apartment prices to skyrocket, so that an many people have a really hard time finding a home. We have an incompetent government that is overprotective in regard to large businesses/banks. We have media corruption (not a single paper noticed that with the beginning of this year, there is a new law which prohibits development of "hacker tools" while in Germany some time ago there was a huge outrage because of a similar law). We have a stupid bureaucracy.
There was some resistance against the upper class here recently, however, it mostly fails because the upper class threatens the public that they will leave the country if the people will vote for laws "against them" (like i.e. higher taxes).
I don't say Switzerland is a bad place - but I am sick and tired that it is always praised as a neutral country, where everyone is wealthy and free like nowhere else, no one is oppressed and everyone is happy. Because it really isn't.
Mod parent up.
Depending on the complexity of the the applicable tax law, the difference between a "tax cheat" and someone just trying to abide by the law becomes more and more a matter of opinion.
I have a slightly different viewpoint: as a single male living in the Bay Area, who doesn't have children or own a home, I pay a lot of taxes. In fact, every 4 years I pay my share of the US national debt*. I'm proud to demonstrably do my part.
However, at this point I feel like I'm being taxed enough. I would like it if more people would help out. Minimally, I'd appreciate it if we stop voting to run up the debt.
* Based on the number of households in the US, not on the US population. By the US population I nearly pay my share on a yearly basis. I have no expectation that children should be taxed, however. So I feel per household is fair.
social care for disabled, firesquads, foster homes, police etc. I do not see how you could sustain that without taxes.
First, I personally don't really care whether any of that can be sustained. If it requires taxes to exist then we're better off without it. However, I'll continue under the assumption that we expect me to persuade those who do care that such services are sustainable anyway.
Second, aside from Social Security and Medicare (a small part of "social care for disabled"), none of the services you listed are handled by the federal government. Fire, police, roads, schools, etc. are all paid for by the states, counties, and/or municipalities in which they reside. Ergo, eliminating federal income taxes would have approximately zero effect on any of the traditional public services used to justify them.
The only major public service left is national defense, and—given that our geography lends us as good a natural defense as you'll find outside of large island nations like Australia—our per-capital nation defense costs ought to be among the lowest anywhere. That they consume a significant fraction of the GDP is a consequence of the fact that the military spends most of its time playing World Police rather than concentrating solely on defense.
Third, it's not like the money itself goes away if you eliminate the taxes. It's still there to be spent on comparable services and/or donations if that's how people choose to use it. The only difference is that the choice would be made by those who actually earned the money, rather than by those empowered to take it.
Look at some rich corporations like Apple for example, they (Apple) haven't donated a dime in the last decade.
Which means their shareholders were left with more to donate on their own. Personally, I'd rather the surplus were distributed to the shareholders (via dividends or growth in assets / share price). It's less morally ambiguous. The board should invest, and leave it to the individual shareholders to donating their shares of the proceeds if they choose.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
And you must still believe in the Tooth Fairy and Father Christmas as well
Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens
My dad was an auto mechanic working at a local dealership for one of the big three. My mom was a part-time bookkeeper/secretary. Neither ever made as much in a single year as I made when I started working as a programmer. Yet they gradually bought small amounts of stocks and my mom now uses the proceeds of those years of investing to live without having to rely solely on social security as neither had pensions. Mom benefited from the step up provisions at dad's death and paid all taxes they had to pay as they came due. My mom isn't rich, but she's better off than most of her friends.
You don't get rich by the way you suggested.
You get rich by not spending money you don't have, by waiting to buy things (other than a house) till you can pay cash, and by paying off your mortgage as quickly as possible. You stay well off by taking care of your health so you don't have huge bills, by covering risks of big medical bills by insurance, by not having bad habits like drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, and by not breaking the law. You stay well off by marrying one person and staying married for better or worse. Giving charitable donations and putting God first helps too, although not a popular concept on Slashdot.
Live well within your means and you'll have a decent life, whether you ever are considered rich by the immensely wealthy.
Roads, police, fire department, school, safety checks on food products, regulation for the standardization of various devices (e.g you are not fried when you plug in a hair dryer), a legal system to settle quarrels...
In short, a lot of things we like to call civilization.
For those of us who don't like civilization, can we get final fantasy instead?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
All of those things can be done privately even police. I know most will not agree, but at the very minimum none of those issues, none of them are a federal issue.
You can't handle the truth.
Being without citizenship is rather hard. This happened to a Russian friend of mine living in a Baltic state.
And besides, as a former US citizen, who would allow you in instead?
"I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization."
So why do you not give ALL your money for government redistribution, and advocate a government that owns all wealth in behalf of the people?
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
If it's insurance, surely a private insurance firm would not charge the wealthy dozens and dozens of percents of their incomes to provide it. In fact, the actuarial calculation to do this would probably be done on an individual basis. And the poor might be charged much more, due to higher chance of losing their job, illness etc.
So whats the idea with the same rate for everyone, and higher charges for people who (might) need it less, if insurance is the proper analogy?
truth is its own reward
What I resent is not the amount of taxes I pay, but the ridiculous complexity of the tax code, which makes it nearly impossible to know how much you're going to owe any given year if the picture is at all complex. I literally went from receiving a $3500 refund one year to owing $22K the next. What changed? My wife left me, I lost all my tax credits (like the child tax credit, etc.), I got hit with the marriage penalty tax, the alternative minimum tax, etc. etc. ad nauseam. This has literally forced me into bankruptcy. Give me a simple system where my taxes are predictable and reasonable, and I'll pay them happily. But get rid of this ridiculous tax code that is designed to enrich the lawyers and the accountants!
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
A "cashless" black market is also exempt from taxation. Nice try though!
It is not "exempt". It is tax evasion. Ever heard of Al Capone? Jailed not for bootlegging and murder etc etc, but for not paying taxes on his ill-gotten gains.
Furthermore, estimates are that the black/underground market is as high as 28% (!!!!!) of the US economy. Source1 Source2 Pay your niece to babysit using cash? You're enabling tax evasion. Pay your drywaller in cash? Probably also encouraging illegal immigration. Borrow your brother's truck in exchange for a case of beer? TAX EVASION! Tony Soprano, "legitimate businesses", drug dealers and money laundering? TAX EVASION AND THE 4 HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE!
Two conclusions:
-- Everyone is crossing the line from avoidance to evasion. Rich AND poor.
-- Tax laws (all laws, really) are draconian in their complication, pervasiveness and obscurity.
It's almost enough for me to seriously support the "FairTax"...
One more reason to keep an eye on your money.
No, you misunderstand me. The official US position is that if you were born in the US, the IRS has claim on you for life. Regardless of multiple / changed citizenship - they will extradite you if you don't pay them taxes on income earned anywhere.
It is not difficult to find a new home country for those of us that create businesses. We just are forced to examine only the smaller set of countries that will not extradite on tax evasion charges, and then we can never visit the US again. I believe the US is fairly unique in that respect.
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What is waste? I am sure we can find justification for every government expenditure, whether its a new library named for a local politician to whether men in African gay bars (in Africa) contract AIDS at a higher rate than in other locales. Therein lies the problem, we are a greedy society, everything we want obviously is warranted.
So, we end up with the budget mess we have because of people who think like you do. It is incredibly easy to "guilt" people into paying for ANYTHING. It all depends on how you word the question. Ever watch Yes Prime Minister? They have several great skits on just how easy it is to manipulate the public into doing something or not doing something, how to coerce them into paying taxes and the like. We see it everyday. What happens in Atlanta when they had budget problems, well the obvious, they cut fire and police services; specifically in areas where people griped the most about taxes.
A government that does everything for you can make you do anything as well, they have you by the balls. If not directly they certainly have enough people who will line up to hang you by your balls. All because their needs are justifiable.
what is "waste"? is funding fundamental science waste? is funding liberal arts waste? are the likes of the FDA waste? is paying for some dubious piece of art in your own town waste?
Yes, Yes, No, and Yes.
Yes, because there is no guarantee we are not targeting needs of society that are of the utmost importance, or at least we cannot verify we are. Where is the list of what we are funding? Who decides what is right and what isn't? When is it too much or too little? Whose little pet projects are we funding, what big corporation is getting a free ride? Justify all of it. It will add up.
Yes, because the term is too broad and it is common for such terms to be tossed about in order to bury any attempts at real analysis.
No, because the FDA protects the public and enforces government regulations which are designed to protect the public. Guaranteeing the safety of the food and medicines the public consumes benefits society as a whole. The test of any agency and every program within
Yes because if society doesn't want to pay for your Piss Jesus then society should not be forced to fund it. I have nothing against artist creating what they want, what I do have a problem with is that we must fund stuff they cannot find anyone else to buy. Look, if you want to make a living selling your art, be it poetry, paintings, stories, or whatnot, then by all means do so. Do not justify the government stepping in and paying for it because those damn trogs are too stupid to know what is good for them. Good art thrives, the rest relies on the government to exist.
Until we have the balls to stand up and stop just handing money out right and left we will forever be in trouble. We don't have the luxury of paying for items outside of root government functions which mainly are to protect the people and their freedom. Taking money from Peter to pay Paul for something which generally only benefits Paul is a violation of that requirement, you deny Peter his freedom to spend his money where he wants. While some taxation is understandable and required we have lost the connection between why we are taxed and what for. In other words, we no longer see the benefit, we see only the waste. We see only the waste because the burden has grown so big.
So, yeah, start gathering up those hundreds of thousands spent here and there, it will be substantial once you start. As a major radio personality likes to state, its a debt snowball. Start with the smallest and work out from there. Yeah its going to cost money to do it but damn , its better than pissing away our children's future all because we can't make up our minds.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Who knew there was gambling going on at Ricks.
Frankly, I am shocked.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Of course I'm a troll for not condoning Wikileaks behavior.
It does not necessarily follow that the more taxes you pay, the more civilization you get.
I'm sure I can trust that you contribute more to the government than you're legally required to, right? And don't claim any exemptions for anything?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
I have heard about that before, and seeing that it may actually become relevant to me I did a little research. It looks like you can exclude up to $91,400
People seem to feel the resulting vegetation would be tainted, but it actually wouldn't.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Could Assange be a pre-emptive plant by the higher ups to deflect attention onto sacrificial targets in various arenas? What if the list is just a subset to take the scrutiny off of the bigger criminals, and the latter goes undetected/unpunished? Maybe he's a plant so that they can ferret out anonymous sources that run to him with secrets?
Hmmm...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Government... "services". Ya, about that. It decides what we "need", forces us to use it, makes the competition illegal, and charges us whatever it thinks it can get away with. There are certainly useful things that a government does, but most of its attention is spent "servicing" us.
I don't care if it is a good thing this information is public.
If he's committed a crime he should go to jail for it.
We all knew this was happening.
We just didn't have any way to link it to particular individuals to charge them with a crime.
FTA: "Elmer said he would not reveal what specifically was in the documents, and said that he personally would not disclose 'individual companies or individual names' of the account holders."
I read that to say that he will release lots of details proving how large this problem is, but won't reveal the actual people who are doing it. Am I misreading that?
...
the Ural mountains.
West is Europe, East is Asia.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Sad to say, Assange will cost them more alive that it will cost to have him killed.
The rich are quite merciless.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
This is delicious. I can't wait to see some of these shirkers get a goring from the tax authorities.
I suppose I really ought to avoid statements that people can read connotations of that sort into them, but I was tired this morning. Sorry.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
My problem is that last year I paid for A$14,092 worth of civilisation and I'm not getting it. OK, The NBN is on it's way but Conroy and Abbott are still making trouble for it, Fibre me now.
I don't begrudge paying taxes, I keep about 80% of what I earn (well the bank keeps a lot of it) and get good healthcare for minimal cost out of pocket but I don't want to miss a good opportunity to put the boot into a few of the bell ends in Canberra.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Please go and actually read up on what Assange and WikiLeaks does, has done, and is about... and no you cant use FoxNews or any republican hate rag as a information source.
So, only the compliant media that supports your viewpoint can be used to argue against you? No matter how well documented or reasoned the dissenters are*? I assume you don't lose many arguments.
*I forget, now that a liberal Democrat is president, is dissent still the highest form of patriotism?
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
in the same way that "I'm going to out on a limb and..." is.
We need to change it to "no representation without taxation"
That means all the elderly folk sucking the life out of our youth, and the people on welfare, don't get to vote.
Why?
Because people just vote themselves money anyways. If you already have money you're less likely to vote yourself more.
Interesting that in your view knowing what the government is doing, and complete anarchy are one and the same. This of course is only true if everything the government is doing is utterly evil and without any redemptive value -- an assumption I have to reject in order to go on sleeping at night.
Changa hates change.
Outing honest people whose only so-called "crime" is wanting to avoid the theft of their hard and presumably legitimately-earned dollars is completely and totally wrong
Tax is not theft. Someone evading tax is not honest.
Black is not white, whatever you libertarians might like to believe.
how dare you make such a reference on MLK day. I am offended on behalf of all 3 black people that visit slashdot.
Am I the only person thinking Assange is just painting a giant bullseye on himself now?
It has been said countless times that if everybody paid their taxes, we'd all have to pay a lot less. That is probably true, although lowering the tax will 'reset' the tax screw and open op for more spending and thus raising the tax again.
There are two things that makes people try to avoid taxing. The first is simple greed and really not that interesting. The other is the feeling of being overtaxed which may or may not be justified. It is a fact that many countries, especially the European ones, have a proportional tax system where the percentage increases as your income increase. It is a socialistic thing ("the widest shoulders have to carry the greatest load") of course which in itself makes some people take offense from a political point of view.
But a lot of people also see it as unfair on several levels, mostly because they not only have to pay the most, they're also the ones making the least use of the system (less in need of health care, social security, unemployment benefits, public schools etc.) and thus feel double-taxed. Add to this a lot of extra burden on the system from people not seen as part of the system (not contributing), especially 'chronic losers' (drug addicts, homeless, refugees, an-alphabetic immigrants and so on), and people feel yet more burdened by what could be (has been) described as 'freeloaders' or 'leeches on the system'.
So instead of just chasing tax evaders, some effort should be put into making people more happy to pay their taxes. A beginning would be to take a good, long and hard look at what the tax is used for, and then to make the taxing more fair, for instance by allowing for 'opting out' of certain public services. If you know you don't want to use the public schools or government health care you don't have to pay for these but cannot make use of them either. After all, it really isn't fair that these people pays for both the public schools and the private school they chose for their kids to attend. Also an effort should be put into making the tax more fair in itself. You should not be punished for working more or for spending more. Both these are really good for the community on several levels so it should really be taxed less, not more.
So maybe tax evaders are really freedom fighters, not just criminals... ;)
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Those in the know can buy land near the rail projects ahead of time and reap the profits.
Land Value Tax would solve that; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Land tax is, dissimilar to other taxes, also isn't distortionary; it doesn't carry a dead weight loss.
So taxing land would improve the overall wealth of society, and get rid of corruption. Note also the most recent bubble and burst? Was it a mortgage crisis or a land speculation crisis? How can you tell?
The public highway system definately benefits americans. Or do you prefer to drive/walk/cycle on dirt roads? I suspect you prefer having public police rather than street gangs or private armies running each area of the city. Having enforced standards for food is in your best interest, unless you like having your kids get food poisoning.
I also liked buying civilization with my taxes. But then it turned out that my taxes were wasted/lost/embezzled/pocketed by bureaucrats/spent on bailing out banks/...
The natural resources and shared infrastructure of a nation belong to everyone in that nation, not just the latest generation of robber barrons who benefit from it.
To disprove that point, name 20 CEOs and their amazing contributions to American life in the last 20 years.
you might want to rethink you position on liberal arts: they might be useless for 99% of their students, but by no means for society
I'll give rethinking my position a fair shake if you'll help me rethink it.
As you have used the term, what are the liberal arts? What is the societal use of people being well versed in the liberal arts? What is the social use of people getting degrees in the liberal arts?
While in theory, I agree with you, economic efficiency asks for pooling.
In my country most of these services are no federal issue. They are offered by the community and are paid by --- community taxes.
You're too fucking stupid to understand why nations who tax progressively have a middle class and a vibrant economy, and why places like Brazil and vast parts of Africa resemble pre-Revolutionary France.
Stop wasting my time, and get back to mowing that lawn so you can buy more overvalued gold coins.
Citation needed. Which OECD country has progressive tax system, and has a middle class and a vibrant economy? Scandinavian countries? Hahahaha!