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Wikileaks To Name Swiss Bank Tax Evaders

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the oh-this-will-work-out-fine dept.

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."

22 of 783 comments (clear)

  1. Hit them back by devxo · · Score: 5, Funny

    I guess Assange didn't like that the swiss bank PostFinance closed his account.

    1. Re:Hit them back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Indeed, I question the motivations of both Assange and this Elmer guy.
      It's probably just another FUDD tactic.

    2. Re:Hit them back by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Insightful

      A lot of his supporters, especially on slashdot, also probably think it's a sign of virtue to evade paying your taxes.

      It's a sign of virtue for me to not pay taxes. It's disgraceful that anyone richer than me should avoid them. Other people hold similar views.

    3. Re:Hit them back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      I guess Assange didn't like that the swiss bank PostFinance closed his account.

      Actually, wikileaks has long disclosed a lot of information about Julius Baer bank, starting a few years back.

      Assange opened the PostFinance account under false pretenses, they were entitled to close it. PostFinance isn't a "normal" Swiss bank, it's owned & run by the post office.

      PostFinance isn't what you use when you're trying to evade taxation by hiding cash, you would use one of the privately owned Swiss banks.

    4. Re:Hit them back by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Actually it would work better the other way. People who are voting to raise taxes hiding money in no-taxed accounts is where the story is.

      Of course people who don't like taxes are trying to avoid them...

    5. Re:Hit them back by tehcyder · · Score: 5, Insightful

      FUD tactic or now, if the information is valid and real, this still carries numerous implications with it. For example, were certain wealthy politicians who rail against taxes found to be holding considerable sums of money in non-taxed accounts...

      Wouldn't it be more damaging for politicians who supported high taxes to be holding considerable sums of money in non-taxed accounts?

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    6. Re:Hit them back by MrDoh! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Either way, it's going to be hilarious.

      --
      Waiting for an amusing sig.
    7. Re:Hit them back by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem is that the system is set up that only the rich can evade taxes. Factory line worker Joe Blow doesn't make enough to go put it all away in a secret swiss bank account, nor does he have enough to hire an accountant to manage some holding companies abroad, etc etc.

      Most people on Slashdot think evading taxes is immoral based on the fact that it's an exploit in the tax laws that only the rich can afford to do. If it were possible for anyone and everyone to avoid paying taxes, I don't think anyone would mind. We're all just pissed off that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and taxation is supposed to help balance that out.

    8. Re:Hit them back by icebraining · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Who cares about the motivations? We don't have to like Assange or Elmer to appreciate the disclosure of the info.

      --
      Dilbert RSS feed
    9. Re:Hit them back by Ice+Tiger · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Turning a blind eye sure worked out for Greece didn't it.

      --
      "Because we are not employing at entry level, offshoring will kill our industry stone dead."
    10. Re:Hit them back by LetterRip · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But in the US, the "rich" - to be specific, let's say the top 1% - earned 25% of the wealth and paid 38% of the income taxes. That doesn't sound like "virtually nothing".

      You, like many others, have confused wealth with income. The wealthy 1% have over 50% of wealth (top 20% have over 84% of wealth).

      http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf

      Also income taxes are not total taxes paid (they are 1/3 of the total US tax base) and the proper measure is total taxes (after transfers) as a percentage of total wealth.

      http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/

      On that basis the poor and middle class are massively overtaxed, and the wealthy are drastically undertaxed. Essentially the middle class and lower class are drastically subsidizing the wealthy.

    11. Re:Hit them back by SETIGuy · · Score: 5, Informative

      In the US, government jobs pay significantly better than private sector jobs on average.

      One of the famous "lie while telling the truth" games that the right loves to play. The average US government job does pay more than the average private sector job. But US government jobs are NOT average jobs. Most require higher levels of education and experience than the average private sector job.

      When compared to others of equal education and experience, US government workers are paid about 20% less than private sector workers. The discrepancy is worse for workers in medical fields and legal fields where the discrepancy approaches 45% (i.e. VA hospitals don't pay well) The only government workers that are paid better than their private sector workers are the ones at the bottom of the salary scale, janitors and menial laborers, and those, only by about 4%.

      But apparently the right thinks a government lawyer should be paid like a grocery store clerk.

      --
      Support SETI@home
  2. Better article by AaxelB · · Score: 5, Informative

    There are more details here.

    Personally, I'm just gonna sit back and watch this unfold *grabs popcorn*

  3. Why are they announcing this stuff ? by matt007 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I do not understand why wikileaks is telling everyone what they will reveal later.
    Can't they just post it immediately ?

    1. Re:Why are they announcing this stuff ? by Monkeedude1212 · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't recall hearing Wikileaks making this announcement at all though - it sounds like someone handed over some big leaks than immediately turned the corner to the local news outlet and said "GUESS WHAT I JUST HANDED TO WIKILEAKS".

      This news report is by some other news agency, not Wikileaks.

    2. Re:Why are they announcing this stuff ? by surgen · · Score: 5, Insightful

      During the Iraq war log leak someone at wikileaks, probably Assange, was interviewed on NPR where he said that just publishing something once they got it didn't garner the media attention on the documents that they wanted. It was only because of the fact they pussyfoot around with the media that they're interested in the information.

      When their goal is to get people to see the information they're publishing rather than just let it sit somewhere on a web server, it may be worth it for them to play the games they do. Yes its stupid that to get the attention they want they are forced to play "the game", but they've played it damn well.

  4. NY Times Links Broken Via Submission Process by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  5. Re:Outing criminals is one thing . . . . by whiteboy86 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.

  6. Why Single Out Google? by eldavojohn · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.
  7. Re:I realize this will harm my "Karma". by Solandri · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 inequitable taxation also unfairly hits small businesses. They're unable to offshore their finances, and they end up bearing the brunt of the public's anger at multi-billion dollar companies evading taxes. Consequently in the U.S., small businesses pay some of the highest tax rates among OECD nations. The business taxes passed to assuage people upset at big corporations evading taxes, are instead helping big corporations by crippling the small businesses who could otherwise challenge their domination.

    After a lot of thought, I actually reached the opposite conclusion as you. One of the core objections leading to the U.S. Revolutionary war was "No taxation without representation." That's a principle I think most people would still agree makes sense. And since I believe corporations should have no influence on government, I can't simultaneously justify to myself wanting to tax them.

    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.

    Sure it floats. All you have to do is raise the tax rate on the folks paid millions. I don't think this problem is as large as most people think it is though. If you pour over the IRS tax statistics, you'll find that the vast bulk of the income base (in the U.S. at least) is the upper-middle class and lower-upper class, roughly $75k-$250k/yr. What they lack in income, they make up for in population.

    The area where it gets tricky is perks paid for by the business but which the individual doesn't report as an income-equivalent benefit. e.g. a CEO flies around in a corporate jet, but doesn't report the added expense of operating the private plane over a coach ticket as a taxable benefit.

  8. Re:Only Tax Evaders and Criminals to Be Named by krou · · Score: 5, Informative
    Indeed. The UK Observer had more info direct from Elmer:

    'What I am objecting to is not one particular bank, but a system of structures. I have worked for major banks other than Julius Baer, and the one thing on which I am absolutely clear is that the banks know, and the big boys know, that money is being secreted away for tax-evasion purposes, and other things such as money-laundering – although these cases involve tax evasion. I agree with privacy in banking for the person in the street, and legitimate activity, but in these instances privacy is being abused so that big people can get big banking organisations to service them. The normal, hard-working taxpayer is being abused also. Once you become part of senior management, and gain international experience, as I did, then you are part of the inner circle – and things become much clearer. You are part of the plot. You know what the real products and service are, and why they are so expensive. It should be no surprise that the main product is secrecy ... Crimes are committed and lies spread in order to protect this secrecy.'

    --
    'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
  9. You have it backwards by copponex · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.