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Massive Data Leak Reveals How the Ultra Rich Hide Their Wealth
bshell writes "According to the CBC, there was a massive leak of 'files containing information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries. The leak amounts to 260 gigabytes of data, or 162 times larger than the U.S. State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010...In many cases, the leaked documents expose insider details of how agents would incorporate companies in Caribbean and South Pacific micro-states on behalf of wealthy clients, then assign front people called "nominees" to serve, on paper, as directors and shareholders for the corporations — disguising the companies' true owners.' Makes a good read and there are some good interactive components. Perhaps Slashdot readers can figure out how the source of the leak, the D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists got their hands on this data."
now I need to buy a new island too.
this cannot end well.
Self entitled wealthy bastards go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes. Nobody at all is surprised.
If you've done nothing wrong you've got nothing to hide.
Super wealthy people hide their wealth in shell companies and shady business practices? I never knew that! How newsworthy!
We have no problem asking service men and women to sacrifice time with their families, their personal well being and their lives...all under the banner of patriotism. Yet when we ask the wealthy to sacrifice for their country in the form of simply paying their taxes they hide it in off shore accounts and attack those who question this as "redistributors".
Blow the whistle and blow it loud on these cringing cowards.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html
In this case I'd have to say, "who care how they got their hands on this data" and hope they do more work like this.
Eat the rich.
Kiss freedom goodbye, the rich just got screwed.
If the government pursuing Assange over his crap was bad for "freedom" this is going to be worse, the "wealthy" don't have even nominal citizens interest watchdogs hanging over them.
Interestingly, it's only the very wealthy that are allowed to do such things. A suicide I recall from a few years back had the guy doing something with a trust, that wealthy people did on a regular basis, and he got ripped a new one by the IRS.
Apparently the lesson here is don't fuck with the IRS unless you can keep the bribes up.
Perhaps Slashdot readers can share this story with friends and neighbors instead of looking for the messenger.
How about we DON'T look too hard for how it got leaked... since these leaks are very enlightening for the world.
I wouldn't trust or believe any "news" that comes from there.
Unionized workers that hold no accountability for false information.
Is there potential legal repercussion for reading these documents? I remember the Wikileaks files were off limits because they were still classified, and anyone reading them would be potentially in breach of their clearance. Would the person who released these be held responsible for any judicial action? Or just the person who obtained them?
None of us know everything. Therefore we're all naïve.
we're gonna get you
we're gonna get you
we're gonna get you
Given that there are interoffice emails in the stream, that implies that someone was able to access:
1. the mail server archive/backup
2. the mail server's scrubber (whatever they call the thing that scans email for sensitive info).
Do they all share a mailhost or something like that?
You'd think a guy moving his accounts offshore for the tax break had just been awarded the Medal of Honor! It's a badge of honor to a lot of people that you avoid paying taxes by any means necessary.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
The files contain information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries.
Oh, no no no, tax evasion for the ultra rich that can play international games isn't the reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. No! From Forbes' response to the viral video "Wealth Inequality in America" they say:
Look — we’re moving into the opening years of an economic revolution. The floods of Big Data pouring from the Internet and related technologies are washing away the foundational reasons for the existence of several of our most critical – and comforting – societal structures, potentially changing forever the very notion of what a company is, what a job is, what a brand is, what an educational degree means, and how we’ll work and govern and care for ourselves while attempting to live long and prosper. Almost every part of our existence is being restructured, and quickly, by the stunning power of nearly infinite information.
Don't you see? It's not tax evasion or unfair taxation, it's just the magical power of the internet. Stop asking questions and demanding an equal opportunity to skirt income laws! It's "Big Data" that's changing things rapidly and excitingly. Stop fighting the Economic Revolution!
What an absolute crock of shit.
My work here is dung.
so.... Occupy Wallstreet is still just a bunch of lazy malcontent college hippies?
Free society is incompatible with individuals wielding thousands or millions of times more unchecked power than others.
As somebody whose relationship with goverment is a net loss, I applaud tax evasion. If your relationship with government is a net gain, then naturally, you will condemn tax evasion. As for me, every tax dollar denied to government is a net gain.
For reference, I am a US citizen and make under $40,000 a year, so I don't have much reason to engage in tax evasion myself.
Nice and all to see the info come out but seriously, with that much money and that many wealthy, influential people involved, what is going to happen with this information? Nothing. A couple of hippies are going to protest against the 1% thingy while texting from their iPhone 5, be discredited, a couple of journalists are going to get vanished, the whole thing will get swept under the rug of the media coverage of an imminent war with North Korea. Problem solved. Damned i'm too young to be this jadded
Perhaps Slashdot readers can figure out how the source of the leak, the D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists got their hands on this data.
The story on the CBC national news last night suggested that it was snail-mailed anonymously on a portable hard drive to a DC based journalist. This doesn't explain where the data ultimately came from, but does explain how the ICIJ came to have it.
The husband of a Senator has been named in the leak thus far (who is a high profile class action lawyer), and his Senator wife was named as the beneficiary of the accounts. This is the same Senate that had a member (Patrick Brazeau) charged with both sexual and vanilla assault while also under investigation for expenses claimed. While we Canadians sat around scratching our heads about how to get rid of the lifetime appointed Senators, he then had the audacity to April Fools tweet his resignation, only to thumb his nose at us the next day. I'm thinking about sharpening the tines on my pitchfork right now...this adds fuel to the fire.
These are our Republicans' "Job Creators"
Whoever got this should be considered a hero. Let's hope they keep going.
I wonder who collected these records in the first place? Either it's all from the same business or someone collected it across many such businesses. In that latter case, it could be a government spy agency with resources or a particularly powerful and well organized blackmailer.
100,000 shell companies over thirty years is significant but not, I think, a large share of the overall market. I gather that these sorts of businesses process millions of new shell companies a year.
It'll be interesting to see who gets caught as a result.
I've been looking for a walkthrough for hiding my wealth in low-tax countries. The eHow article wasn't cutting it. I'm thinking of sending my gazillion dollars to the Bahamas.
sudo make me a sandwich
its a filthy wealthy steamy pile a shit in that crook you got.....these people have ruined and are aiding in the ruination of earth and its people
ALL OF US......would be better off if that wealth was taken and given evenly to every human on earth
they should be hanged , killed drawn and quartered for there acts of treason and crimes against humanity.....while people starve and die in places and europes and the worlds economic woes.
Buddy the internet was invented in the 60's bud.....the only difference is that there are 2.5 billion people using it now.OH wait al gore mad ethe net....right yankies with 37th ranked math are trying to tell me anything is hilarious.
The biggest question I have, now that the general public is also aware of how the ultra rich "hide" their money (and oftentimes to avoid taxation):
What are the politicians going to do to address these loopholes?
These are the kinds of people the Occupy crowd always railed on as the "top 1%". They may be /in/ the top 1%, but they're nowhere representative of it. These people are, quite literally, less than the top 1% /of/ the top 1%.
Of course, the Occupy folks don't care about this, as their true, stated aim was simply opposing capitalism, "consumerism", and pitting Americans against Americans in some kind of imagined class warfare, when the vast majority of the "top 1% are the employers and business owners who are part of the solution, not the imagined fat cats on yachts in top hats sipping champagne and lighting cigars with 100s.
Get their hands on this data to then make a boycott app for the smartphones so we know who to not do business with.
Want to know how the super wealthy "hide" their money in off shore accounts? Call an off shore bank and ask? They'll be happy to tell you. For a couple hundred bucks they'll even set up the company for you and open an account.
Problem is, you'll need to get money into your account somehow. To do so will take a wire transfer that the IRS will be notified about. Going the other direction would also take a wire transfer, that the IRS will be notified about.
Here's a radio show about it:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/27/157499893/episode-390-we-set-up-an-offshore-company-in-a-tax-haven
Also, it doesn't let you magically hide money from the IRS like most people think:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/09/18/161358307/episode-403-what-can-we-do-with-our-shell-companies
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
Sounds great! Where do *I* sign up?
How exactly did they get this amazing mass of information? I doubt it's been carefully extracted by some super duper hackerz. Whoever provided or requested it be published is likely to not have their info exposed in there. Whoever is pulling this class warfare crap to upset 'the poor' against the rich is a lot more powerful. These are the same people that decide that the Russian mafia needed bitch slapped in Cyprus and make sure the leaders of the world are busy sewing hate and dividing everyone.
... I for one would like to see whether any of the politicians from my country are implicated. We're going through our 13th General Elections, and it would be nice to see if the person I'm voting for is involved. With scant media coverage on these sort of things - the local media is heavily controlled by the ruling government - we over here tend to have to rely on other alternative sources for exposes.
The Wknd Sessions - Malaysian and South East Asia independent music
Having money in offshore accounts isn't illegal in Canada. You do have to declare the existence of any offshore assets greater than $100.000? (I think) and you have to declare any earnings on that money as income. Of course if you fail to do either of those 2 things you have committed a crime and Revenue Canada will slice and dice you. Not all of this money is being hidden from the taxman, I bet that a lot of it is assets being concealed from spouses in divorce cases, creditors in bankruptcy and so forth. This is going to reverberate through the rich and politically connected upper crust for years.
None of them can see the clouds; The polished wings don't care.
Things like this are why I like the idea of a flat tax. It doesn't matter what the source of your income is, you (person or business) pay a given portion in taxes. Get your money from stocks, working, day trading, who cares, pay the same as everyone else. Don't punish success and don't let people weasel their way out of their obligations. If you hide money like this it should be subject to 100% forfeiture. Get rid of things like the Irish sandwich that is a favorite for getting out of business taxes (why don't multibillion dollar companies pay their share).
Let people earn assets and property and don't tax them on it. This gives people a reason to work hard, succeed and own things like houses or condors (homeowners are better neighbors). Tax income and give people incentive to spend their money wisely.
You then have to do one other thing to make sure that a flat tax doesn't disproportionately affect the poor. Get rid of all other taxes such as sales tax, fuel taxes, and so on. This would have the added benefit of saving literally billions of dollars spent every year by people and businesses that have to pay accountants just to do their taxes.
Once you have done that than you go back to your partisan bickering over what the rate of the flat tax is. This is not a bad thing though as it would expose a lot of hidden taxes that most people don't realize they pay. Have an honest debate and meet somewhere in the middle.
According to the report I just heard on the BBC World News, estimates place the total value of these hidden assets around $32 trillion.
"I zero-index my hamsters" - Willtor (147206)
According the CBC interview this morning on the radio, the ICIJ received a hard drive in the mail.
Rumor has it, The Rothchild family is worth over a Trillion dollars.
You'd see that they talk about some of the ways that you can indeed sneak the money back in. Illegal, but easy to do.
No, they don't have to be intelligent. All they need is money to pay someone who IS intelligent to avoid taxes they don't want to pay.
Here, try this for size: intelligent people go to great lengths to get something for free, hence burglary, copyright infringement and fraud.
Sound fair to you?
Until we get a transnational regulatory authority with teeth, the wealthy will simply use nations as convenient operating environments to skirt environmental regulation, labor laws, taxes or any other inconvenient regulation. Wealth is political power. Unelected, frequently dangerous political power. We either choose to control it, globally, or we will continue to be victimized by it, globally.
The people who are freaked about losing "sovereignty" or the new world order are just dupes of the wealthy, as far as I can tell. Independent nation states, banks and lawyers serve rogues and villains better than any number of guns.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
You are making a false assumption here. The false assumption is that you have the ability to decide for other people how to value their relationship with government. Human nature tells us that nobody on this entire planet has that ability but the one person in question. After all, if human beings can simply be "told" how much they are getting out of government, then what point is there in discussing government at all? (By definition, they would always be right.)
that means only two million left for me!!!! I'LL STARVE!!!!
Seriously, if you wonder why taxes are so high it's because these arseholes you're defending aren't paying theirs. the difference comes out of your pocket.
This is big news.
'The System', the status quo, is working very poorly in nearly every country in the world.
The Progressive vision of 'rule by the intelligent' has produced massive public debt, unbalanced population structures, high unemployment, failing economies and an oligarchy that owns the political system in every country that it has been tried in.
We are now entering a Greater Depression, world-wide. There will be a shakeout of countries and governments that have not scaled well, that continue to be run as economic commons for the oligarchs. That is why politics is getting so ugly everywhere.
$4,000 each, even if you're a toddler. average western family ~$16,000. Which gets spent. Even if it's on another bowl of rice (where the hell do YOU buy your rice from? Starbucks Switzerland?), that means someone got paid for growing that rice, packing that rice, sending that rice to the shops and selling you that rice. Where it is it's doing fuck all.
And this isn't the only offshore tax haven.
Before the data itself becomes questionable, this guy had better have shared it with a LOT of people. God, I can only hope.
Call them simply what they are: Leeches. Taking everything civilized society has to offer (such as no roving hordes stringing up the filthy rich), but give nothing back but excrement.
Recall long ago when the US State Department cables thing was going on that Wikileaks said they had something MUCH MUCH bigger. I wonder if this is what they had to offer. They said it would embarass and damage a lot of people and it kind of sounds like this. It would seem like enough to keep honest law enforcement and tax offices business for a decade. (Note that I said "honest" because we generally know how it will play out in the U.S. We'll hear things like "too big to prosecute" and massive offers like 10 cents to the dollar or less.)
I hide my vast wealth in a box buried under the tree in the North West corner of my backyard at 124 Main St. Podunk USA. No online data breach will ever release that information into the public...
oops!
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
Problem is, you'll need to get money into your account somehow. To do so will take a wire transfer that the IRS will be notified about. Going the other direction would also take a wire transfer, that the IRS will be notified about.
Your "non-story" assertion is a bit short sighted from what I know ... if you divert all your income to Ireland or the Netherlands you can get it there nearly tax free. What you perceive as a hard time getting your money to the states is trivial if you find someone who will accept those accounts as collateral for you to borrow against. Oftentimes, the rate of the loan is lower than what you would lose getting hit with capital gains taxes in the US. On top of that, you can put that money in Ireland into a highly rated international fund to cut that loan rate down. Just because you had enough money, you get to skirt tax law enacted by our democratically elected politicians. Congratulations, you're a dick and I'm sure you can blame the socialists and "the system" for forcing you to do this and I'm sure you'll ask me if I donate extra money when I'm doing my taxes -- I don't. But I sure the hell don't tell my employer that I actually have accounts in Grand Cayman and they'll be moving 75% of my paycheck there for me and I'll take 25% of it here so I get a huge rebate for living below the poverty line while building bigger assets in the Caribbean.
... I can't wait for the bean counters to poor over all this data and find some of the other pieces. Either give me and every other equal citizen the same rights to avoid taxes or shut this crap down.
These offshore accounts? This is just one piece of a very large puzzle
My work here is dung.
When is the information going to be published in an easily accessible place for the public? The problem with all these data leaks is that they rarely make it to the main stream population. For this information in particular, will /. post names and banks from this data?
So... where's the analysis showing the list of ultimate beneficiaries that are being exposed? And specifically which ones are people in office?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Is there any way to access the raw data to analyze it personally?
23Trillion is the ammount. And BVI isn't the only offshore tax haven.
My guess is that the DoJ together with the CIA/NSA have had access to such information since the invocation of the Patriot Act. Supposedly, financial transactions needed to be monitored to ensure they were not being diverted to terrorist activities*.
Our administration, desperately in need of tax revenues, just packages it all up on a hard drive and ships it off to the press. In order to foment public rage over "the wealthy" and generate public support for extending taxing authority.
There is no way one single entity in the banking world has a need (or ability) to accumulate such data across hundreds of private institutions and dozens of government jurisdictions. This is the product of a powerful national intelligence organization.
*This has been a specious argument from the outset. The entire 9/11 operation could have been financed by the weekend gambling losses of one wealthy Saudi prince. Just slip a few chips to the plot's operatives and it's laundered. There are numerous other ways to hide such relatively small fund transfers.
Have gnu, will travel.
Well, if the data is real, I'm more interested in new found tax income and the jail time.
Privacy is terrorism.
It is technically called: "International Tax Planning"
And, of course, it is legal and available only to those wealthy enough
And those people would not be a drain on society. They would spend the money they were paid on goods and services, requiring that people be employed to make those goods and provide those services.
So, really, what you're saying is that even if all that money never gets back as a net tax gain, it's still a great economical idea.
Job creation, as it were.
Sounds interesting... but there's very little information here. They list about 20 names of people I haven't heard of mostly in 3rd world countries. Where are all the US citizens? The Euro zone? Name names, give us account balances... Put the data on the pirate bay and I'll start believing this.
...except when the invasion is of the hated rich. Got it.
I would be more impressed if the leak were limited to people in government, especially those who shouldn't be "rich." But those who rake money of stealing from Peter to pay Paul would no doubt object...
Until we get a transnational regulatory authority with teeth, the wealthy will simply use nations as convenient operating environments to skirt environmental regulation, labor laws, taxes or any other inconvenient regulation. Wealth is political power. Unelected, frequently dangerous political power. We either choose to control it, globally, or we will continue to be victimized by it, globally.
Why exactly, do you think a transnational regulatory authority wouldn't come under the control of the wealthy? In fact, if anything you are setting up a single point of failure that would be the best target for control by those with wealth, where from there they could influence the world rather than having to spread their resources around to gain influence in individual nations.
The people who are freaked about losing "sovereignty" or the new world order are just dupes of the wealthy, as far as I can tell. Independent nation states, banks and lawyers serve rogues and villains better than any number of guns.
I believe people who think like you are the dupe my friend, you think that somehow magically a when something is made "transnational" it was somehow work as a moral entity that will not be corrupted, when in fact it would work to consolidate power in once place which would be an easy target for those who purchase influence.
They would not be able to employ the workers at the wage they offer if the workers had to have one person stay at home to look after the kids.
The workers are more productive if educated. Which they would have done at the state school system. And the owner gets a cut of their production.
Still using the same hospitals, roads, bridges. Though the latter you're hiding under rather than using in any normal sense of the word.
Their food will have been delivered not by heli but by the roads. Their driver got there by car, not heli. etc. The workers got there by road and if they had to buy a heli ride in, they'd need more pay to work.
And when it comes to police protection, you get more protection and more access to it.
But come on ted.com? The dystopian population controller bill gates gets time on there as if his words are scientific - it's just straight population reduction programs.
Any other good sources for this? I refused to support suppressed scientific information and eugenicists at ted.com
Planet Money did a series of stories on this very thing not long ago. They opened two shell companies, one overseas and one inside the US. They laid bare all the details of how it works with the fake board and trustees, etc.
George Bush, Sarah Palin.
Rule by the intelligent?
No, I don't think so, you're just trying to pin the blame on someone else's ideology, not the inevitable consequence of yours.
Why does everyone assume tax evasion? I know a few people who keep substantial assets offshore, and their reasoning is primarily to avoid our legal system. It's downright crazy how plaintiff-centric our legal system has become. Any joker can file any lawsuit for any reason, and even if they don't win on the merits it still drains their assets trying to fight them off.
These people keep their assets offshore so they don't have to worry about guarding it 24/7 from the loonies and their lawyers in this country.
The thing about taxes is that we are all being double taxed.
If you receive a paycheck you pay x% to federal, state (sometimes), city (sometimes), but I haven't been to a city yet that does charge sales tax. This is a tax on money you're already been taxed on. Then if I want to set up an IRA or a Ross IRA with my remaining funds from my pay check, I'll be taxed again. So I have to wonder how many of these "super rich" are all hiding wealth to not pay taxes at all, or how many are hiding what they are worth so they aren't taxed additionally for being successful in business?
I'm not justifying tax evasion, but just a different perspective on the super wealthy. I know that if I was super wealthy, I would be miffed, to say the least, if I had to pay more taxes on my hard earned money simply because I was successful, and this is assuming all taxes were paid within legal guidelines. After seeing what is happening in other countries, I would want to hide how much I own and am worth too.
At this point, if you want to get rid of the hateful attitude of the low/middle income folks against the wealthy/super rich income folks, make all taxes flat taxes. And all government spend budgets must always 15% lower then the projected incomes that way a government is ready in the event of a short fall in those projected income $s. Get rid of extreme salaries and if you offer any sort of pension plan, it should be set up to you get out what was put into it. When $ runs out, it's done. I'm all for people making a lot of $ but not when they are tax payer paid extreme salaries.
Legal fees should be charged back against the salaries of our leadership that enact laws in haste that are repealed within x years.
Close all legal loopholes on taxes and simplify the tax code structure to make it easy to pay taxes.
Or get rid of all income tax and only create a consumption tax.
And government leaders who want to take a vacation have to pay for their vacation from their own pockets (this includes the cost of Airforce One and all of the secret service folks that go to protect them.) Watch how few vacations they take then.
The super rich can only hide their wealth because our governments have set things up so that they can.
Life takes interesting turns, but the most interest is when you're off the beaten path.
When I report my income, do I really report all my income or is much of the real income available to me hidden in deferrals, tax free municipals, etc? I'm not rich, but I can assure you even my reported income is very different from the real income with the difference mostly in the ability to defer income on investments (iBonds, IRA, 401K, etc.)
Every businessman I know writes off things which personally benefit him be it the yacht (qualifies as a second home), the vacation place, the golf club, the charity deduction (designed to provide positive exposure for his business), the gas for his truck, the company car he commutes in, etc.
The poor have no such investments or write-offs. So their reported matches the real.
I filed my taxes the other day, I was shocked at the low % amount of tax relative to even reported income.
So I question the stats of tax paid versus income percentages because if one of those figures isn't the same (real) for all the strata being compared, you get a very false picture.
Well with all this out in the open we all know that bugger all will get done, as all the rich people employ us average folk, who in turn pay the taxes, et cetera, et cetera.
Find a job you love, and never work a day in your life.
They feel that people of different ethnicity and low income are the cockroaches. I know, I had to listen to it from one of the 1%, a family member.
It was amazing.
"You obviously didn't have enough intelligence or moxy to become rich yourself"
'nuff said.
If the first world countries don't control it, they're not signing on. Why would they?
If the second or third world countries don't benefit from it, they're not signing on. Why would they?
And why would tax havens sign onto this regardless?
There's no world government that could just decree it. And you need folks with guns to enforce it. Only way it'd work is if it was used by First World countries to loot third world countries and strangle tax havens, but create dependency in which it provided something they needed. Maybe if you refused any banking transfers to countries not a member of whatever agreement, and added in "loan packages" for compliance.
The solution would probably be worse than the problem.
Tax structures ARE incentive structures. If they are breaking laws they should be punished. If they are playing by the existing rules and incentives we should expect nothing else. This isn't to say our tax rules are fair... our tax code is way too complex favoring lots of groups (homeowners over renters ect) and no-one should end up with a combined tax burden after state federal and local ect over 50%. Regardless, if ppl aren't safe when they play by the existing rules and incentives something is terribly wrong.
If you tax income, ppl but offer housing interest deduction more ppl will buy houses bc you created that incentive. If you tax money made in one country but other countries don't ppl will try their best to 'make' their money in other countries. This is how incentives work. The more someone makes the more worth it worrying about these things is. If I can only save a buck doing these things it doesn't make sense to hire an accountant. If we start talking about 10k dollars suddenly an accountant who spends his life reading thousands of pages of tax laws pays for themselves. Personally I just use tubo tax and do what it tells me to because I don't make enough to make an accountant worth it. US tax laws are certainly complex enough to justify me buying an expensive 1 use program every year just to avoid(minimize) liability of messing my tax returns up through lack of knowledge.
In fact, if anything you are setting up a single point of failure that would be the best target for control by those with wealth...
This goes both ways. You're also setting up a single point of repair. Democracies, real ones, tend to do that.
In fact, I expect corruption forever. What I also expect is that the world is a big place with many competing interests. Any unitary political entity will be difficult to maintain, but have the advantage of serving no one group exclusively. If, for example, there was a minimum global wage, many business groups would fight for exceptions, however many more would fight for its maintenance. Currently, efforts are fragmented by nationalist "beggar thy neighbor" strategies. An international playing field eliminates this.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
Tossing out numbers is idiotic at best, but since you fabricated numbers it's pure propaganda. The establishment of a tax system is based on percentages, not dollar amounts. Why? Because this is the only way to make the system fair. If I make 1 billion dollars and pay 10% tax, and you make 50 dollars and pay 10% tax, the system would be fair. What is unfair, is that someone holds the ability to make a billion dollars while other people in the same society starve.
I guess "The Allegory of the Artisan" is foreign to you, but your ignorance is no excuse for spreading propaganda.
In the US, we have over 65,000 pages of "Tax Law" which gives legal loopholes to the wealthy. No wealthy person currently pay's the same percentage of tax as someone of middle class or in poverty. Even with the legal loopholes, they act immorally and illegally to get more money while everyone else is expected to pay for them.
The people in society are not asking for 1960s laws to be returned which had income taxed at 90% for the wealthy (which is more in line with "The Allegory of the Artisan"), they are asking for a fair system in which everyone pays an equal share. I personally believe we should return to the 1960s tax laws, but don't mind "equal" as a starting point. Then again, I understand why Socrates presented that particular allegory.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Can I get a copy? I'd like to try and protect my earnings from inept and corrupt tax and spend liberals!
The average "peon" or billionaire cannot even begin to know how horribly wrong this will/is going!
Go ahead and Google SHTF..
I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
Where can I download the file?
Income tax accounts for about 45-50% of total revenue the Federal government collects (shouldn't forget about States btw). About 40% comes from payroll taxes which doesn't touch income (this year) above $113K. So in the broader sense, the rich pay a lower proportion of "Taxes".
Torrent of the data yet
Your'e all thinking it, I just said it for you
My guess:
$500k, even though they saved millions by breaking the law.
25-30 years for the person who leaked the info in the first place.
Let's consider for a second what the implications of the government taxing that wealth is.
The way I see it, if they tax it and use it to pay down the debt, the money is just destroyed outright. That is not necessarily a bad thing. These "rich" people have all of that money just sitting there. It is not productive money currently. It is not being used to create jobs, pay salaries or in any other way contribute to the economy. For your average citizen, if all of that "money" vanished into thin air, they would not notice. They do not see it now, they will not see it if governments tax it and pay down debt with it.
On the other hand, if the government confiscates that money through taxation and then uses it to fund programs, the money enters into circulation. The more money in circulation, the more inflation we see. Long term, any programs that are funded with that money create a problem because taxation of that money is a one time event. The programs are perpetual. Perpetual programs will require funding long after the one time windfall has been exhausted.
What do all of you think? Even if the governments were to get together and find a way to tax all of that offshore income, would it be a good thing for the economy?
The mattress.
Please note, I didn't say "going to the mattresses" (I could tell some of you got a bit excited)
What austerity?
There's your missing taxes.
Now send some drones and repurpose the DEA to go after them pronto.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
So... where's the analysis showing the list of ultimate beneficiaries that are being exposed? And specifically which ones are people in office?
Every time the Greek government was given a list by the IMF head LaGrande, it would go missing within the day, never to be found.
Same thing here.
Guillotines are cheaper, and far more effective, as is automatic unclaimed asset forfeiture.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Generally speaking, the more wealth a person has the LESS hard they work to earn it.
Hard earned super wealth? Total BS propaganda for suckering actually hard working people into feeling sympathy. Also, even lazy people feel THEY are hard working.. most everybody is going to identify with such phrasing.
Just think of it in terms of math: Say you work 70 hours per week on a hard stressful difficult job that shortens your lifespan and burdens your health. Say you get $1000 for that week of hard labor. Compare that against somebody who makes $100,000 doing the exact same thing. For the amount "earned" the high wage earner is actually working less for the money. This is just 1 way to view it. What is defined as hard labor is a whole other topic.
One could say their job is more important so they earn more. Well, that is unrealistic too. Nobel prize winners (in the sciences) are more important and likely worked harder to get to that level. They don't get paid much for the significantly more important work they do for the human species.
Consumption Taxes are inequitable. Not to say they couldn't be done equitably; they could. An equitable income tax can be done; the flat % tax is one method (but totally unrealistic in a dysfunctional democracy.) Since the accumulation of great wealth permits unwarranted levels of power that are a great threat to civil societies (especially governments,) one can't allow private entities to gain too much power - just as government design tries to separate and balance the powers, the private sector needs to be balanced and limited or it'll corrupt government just as an overly powerful executive can push around the other branches and harm the effectiveness of a government. How this problem can not be obvious to everybody baffles me; we live in an age where governments are subject to external powers (HSBC being immune from the law, being a recent example.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
so this is what Grover Norquist meant by "starve the beast".
I, like most of you, have a deep distrust of the super-wealthy. I certainly believe that their financial transactions should be monitored by honest and capable regulators. However, leaks like this make me nervous. The privacy of many completely innocent individuals has most likely been compromised, as I'm sure not all of this data is illegal or even unethical. I feel like I would be a hypocrite if I applauded this leak, while feeling strongly that my personal finances should not be public.
of the United States.
While Shay's Rebellion had an effect on the terms penned in the constitution, as the Whiskey Rebellion proved (with Washington's direct involvement no less!), is that the rich will do whatever is necessary to put THEIR negotiated war debts on the backs of the poor, and the poor inevitably end up back under the threat of force of the rich if they disagree over who should foot the bill.
Eat the Rich
I hear they're very tender, because they never do any manual labor to toughen up the muscle.
So Leverage was a documentary after all..... :P
Please tell me what was learned that isn't already known.
Exactly so.
This is perhaps the most intelligent thing I have read all day. I burned through my mod points yesterday so when I get some more I'll throw ya one. It is simple divide and conquer, making us fight with our coworkers and neighbors instead of turning our ire on them. Its a classic play from several of the great literary works, and it's obviously very effective.
I wish I were rich only so I could pay less taxes than I do now and fuck over the government, who I hate.
In Soviet Russia, dot slashes YOU!
Enlightened self interest, that's why
There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. ... You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn't have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea. God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is, you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.
Elizabeth Warren.
If you neglect your part of the social contract then it makes easy to others to break it too and descent into anarchy. Yugoslavia collapsed not only by the ethnic tensions, it collapsed because their economy collapsed itself before. You don't care about the race or what have your neighbor when you and your loved ones have a job, a roof, food on the table and a hope for a better future. You don't have that and then you are easy prey of demagogues or criminal gangs.
The same tax avoidance schemes criticized by most here, the same preferential treatment to the super rich was implemented in Mexico 3 decades ago, when the country had a better development than South Korea. Now Walmart Mexico pays less than USD$6 a year on income tax, while I as a middle rank public servant paid USD$17,600 on income tax last year plus all the other taxes. Even with their crazy neighbor up north they are way better than Mexico now, and thanks to the hi tech development program financed by their government in the late 1990's they are now a technological power house that rivals with the USA or Japan.
The insane concentration of wealth combined with low or no taxes for the rich and low wages-high taxes for the middle class and the poor destroys the market economy that is consumer based. There aren't many wares or services that can be sold to the homeless or the extremely poor. On the social side, people that not have anything to lose by breaking the rules and the law join criminal gangs that offer a change to a living wage. In my city the ones that planned a mass murder of 18 people earned from the cartels the same wage than me, the gunners earned 5,000 pesos weekly, at least two times more than what gets earned on average by the workers of the local branch of IBM or HP.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
This focus on income brackets in these discussions is stupid. Making $500k doesn't make you "rich"; it may not even make you a multi-millionaire. Many people who make that kind of money are often two-income professional households that happen to have a particularly good year and need to save aggressively in order to be able to retire reasonably well and pay for college for their kids.
You're rich if you actually own a lot of stuff; you don't become a billionaire by saving a salary and the rich, as a rule, don't work or don't make big salaries if they do (because they don't have to; just look at Jobs or Ellison with their $1 salaries). And you can't tax that kind of wealth because it doesn't show up anywhere and it never actually gets spent. If you try to tax it, people will just move it into some asset class that governments don't account for.
Income tax never gets at "the rich"; it mostly just penalizes the upper middle class and professionals. And the truly rich you can never tax or reach no matter what you do.
s/Internet/Information/
Even today information is in many ways more valuable than money. These tax evaders obviously knew some information that less privileged people don't normally have access to, be it the name of a corrupt government contact or a tax loophole buried in GB's of legalese. Now if we can put that privileged information onto the Internet, maybe this might make a difference in tearing down the Information/BigData tyranny of the elite.
For recommending this valuable service. I have completed the interactive component, choosing British Virgin Islands, $10M laundered in via phoney lawsuit with 3% interest over 5 years and payed out as a rigged gambling 'win'. Now all I need to do is sit back and wait for the money!
My only complaint with the component is the loud 'bloink' sound it produces repeatedly brought everyone in the house running to see what was happening and look over my shoulder. Now I must share the money when it arrives. And I fear the IRS might be able to monitor for that sound... there was a helicopter in the area soon after I had placed my order.
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
Please elaborate. You're being vague.
So Mr. Birkenfeld's voluntary disclosures directly led to the recovery of $5 billion for taxpayers and the end of the illegal $20 billion UBS tax fraud scheme.
And out of the 15,000 people implicated the only person in jail for that whole sordid affair is ..... Mr. Birkenfeld
Yes if you step on the wrong toes you will be crushed. So let that be a warning to all peons out there who want to do the right thing.
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=934&Itemid=108
And you all thought the government was elected to serve you? Ha. What a laugh you gullible people are.
Seriously I hope the person who leaked this just hides their tracks real well because the government is OWNED by rich cheats.
This is nothing new. If you had blobs of after tax earnings, you would be seeking some way of earning interest on it while not calling to attention to perhaps some of your enemies (forget about governments unless you want to include Obama who is very vindictive).
Somebody has been murdered because of this leak. Maybe a whole department somewhere.
Guillotines have worked remarkably well in the past. The rich should start investing in guillotine manufacturing derivatives!
It is possible that the entire leak was fabricated by someone with an axe to grind, a political point to make, or an enemies list.
Murphy was an optimist
I understand that some people don't like what they get for their taxes in USA; certainly, compared with what taxpayers get in scandinavian countries, Australia or Germany they are not getting a very good deal, but still they get:
-A working state without an impunity rate of 96-98% for murder for the general population, 99% in case of the press like in Mexico, I doubt that is much different in any country with a weak/failed state
-A proper enforcement of transit laws that makes 2 to 5 five times less likely to die every time you hit the road than in Mexico
-5 times less likely to be murdered than in Mexico
-A powerful Army and Navy that for the last 200 years have imposed to hundreds if not thousands of governments around the world treaties and policies fairly advantageous to the interests of the american government and american companies
If they don't like what they have in the USA just by working hard and the government that they get by paying taxes to Uncle Sam we can trade places. In fact, they would find that they can trade places with 90% of people around the world.
Mexico: 100% conservative's America now!
How the ultra broke stay alive! I find that to be much more interesting.
accurately define good according to a criteria and seek it out.
Lol at slashdot posters identifying with the global poor. What some of us call "middle class" is the world's 1%
Well done! Thanks for sharing. http://www.avowbd.com/
There's been no armed backlash against banks and the like. Instead of a school shooting or bombing a federal bldg why hasn't there been something similar in Wall street?
90% of corrupt money is with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_Caste people in India
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scandals_in_India
IGI Airport scam = $32 billion(FC)
Coal Mining Scam = $213 billion(FC)
Karnataka Wakf Board Land Scam = $39 billion(FC)
Andhra Pradesh land scam = $20 billion(FC)
Service Tax and Central Excise Duty fraud = $3.82 billion(FC)
Gujarat PSU financial irregularities = $3.39 billion(FC) fdes
Maharashtra stamp duty scam = $126 million(FC)
Highway scam = $13.97 million(FC)
Ministry of External Affairs gift scam = $100,000(FC)fde
Himachal Pradesh pulse scam = $200,000/month(FC)
Flying Club fraud = $38 million(FC)
Jammu and Kashmir Cricket Association scam = $10 million (MC)
Punjab paddy scam = $3.59 million(FC)
Arvind Joshi and Tinu Joshi = $50 million(FC)
Uttar Pradesh seed scam = $9.98 million(FC)
Obsolete French Fighter Jets = $11 billion(FC)
NHRM = $2 billion(BC)
Goa mining scam = $700 million(FC)
Noida Corporation farm land scandal = $40 million(SC)
Bellary mines scandal = $3.2 billion(FC)
BL Kashyap EPFO Scam = $118 million(FC)
Hasan Ali Khan = $8 billion(MC)
ISRO-Devas = $300 million(FC)
Cash-for-votes = $715,000(FC)
2G spectrum scam/Tata(MC)/Ambani(FC)/Radia Tapes(FC)/ Kanimozhi(BC)/Raja(SC) = $6.9 billion
Adarsh Housing Society(FC)
Commonwealth Games = $15.5 billion(FC)
LIC Housing Loan scam = $200 million(FC)
Belekeri port = $12 billion(FC)
Lavasa = $80 million(FC)
Uttar Pradesh Food Grain = $44 billion(BC)
APIIIC = $2 billion(FC)
IPL Cricket = $8 billion(FC)
Madhu Koda = $800 million(SC)
UIDAI = $1 billion(FC)
Vasundhara Raje land scam = $4.4 billion(FC)
Satyam = $1 billion(FC)
Scorpene Deal = $10 million(FC)
Oil-for-food programme (Natwar Singh) = $10 billion(FC)
Gegong Apang PDS = $200 million(ST)
Taj corridor = $44 million(SC)
Ketan Parekh = $200 million(FC)
Barak Missile = $200 million(FC)
Calcutta Stock Exchange = $2 million(FC)
Cobbler scam = $214 million(FC)
Sukh Ram = $5 million(FC)
SNC Lavalin = $10 million(FC)
Advani Hawala = $18 million(FC)
Bihar fodder = $211 million(BC)
C R Bhansali = $200 million(FC)
Pickle bribes = $20,000(FC)
Telgi scam = $4.46 billion(MC)
JMM bribes = $59,000(ST)
Sugar import = $130 miillion(MC)
Harshad Mehta = $800 million(FC)
Indian Bank = $260 million(FC)
Bofors = $400 million(FC)
HDW commissions = $4 million(FC)
Antulay = $6 million(MC)
Nagarwala = $1 million(FC)
Haridas Mundhra = $10 million(FC)
Kuo oil scandal = $440,000(FC)
Teja loans = $5 million(FC)
BHU = $100,000(FC)
Jeep scandal = $160,000(FC)
Casteism
I have massive respect for those who serve their country.
Why?
No, seriously, why? It's like a third rail, or a vestige of the almost tribal (and at least nationalistic) notion that one of the most honorable or hottest things a guy can do is fight.
Some service members are worthy of great respect, because they do a great job and are willing to sacrifice themselves for something that is larger than they are, having actively made that decision on their own, rather than merely being taught that their country is great. But that is a rare person. Kind of like how you have people who spend their lives in service to others, working to make the world a better place, whether in nonprofits or commerce.
More people are there because they saw it as the best alternative, or a way to make some money, or they didn't see any alternative because it had always been expected of them. It's quite respectable to use it to get out of a bad neighborhood, to turn your life around or keep it from going bad.
But it's not respectable just by default, because you're trained to fight, kill people, and get shot at. In fact, if anything, that's the opposite of respectable, with the exception that some of the lessons along the way (good hygiene habits, sometimes discipline) can be respectable.
You are training to kill when someone points. That doesn't make you automatically good. It makes you a killer.
I guess the source will remain anonymous.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)
The money has to come from somewhere and not much of it is going to come from the poor.
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Which in most English speaking places means the government owns it - the "public owned" bit in English says that even if it might not be used that way in American English. Confusing maybe but that's what it means.
Anyway that's trivial in comparison to the "parasite" bit which really depends on where you draw the line - compared with farmers we could all be called parasites if food is considered the most important thing in civilisation. Sometimes and in some places there's nobody apart from a government with the capital to set up electricity generation, railways, roads or whatever, so in some places you get almost independent government owned companies doing it that strongly resemble the private ones. I worked for one for a couple of years and it had about 1/10 the red tape and bullshit of a publicly traded steel company I'd worked for previously. However I don't live in the USA and can see how you could get such an idea from the many stories I've heard about how everything the California state government touching turning to shit - but it's not governments in general that are useless, it's only ones run by useless idiots or criminals that fit that picture.
You are blaming the dog for it's master's orders to attack.
Without the dog, you can't have the dog bite. And there will frequently be terrible "masters".
I should never have used a metaphor in a discussion with someone that pretends to be mentally retarded enough to take it literally :(
I should never have used a metaphor in a discussion with someone that pretends to be mentally retarded enough to take it literally :(
You poor thing. That's how debate works. I didn't take the metaphor literally. I didn't start looking for bite marks on the seat of my trousers. Instead, I employed a standard rhetorical tactic of turning the metaphor against your argument.
Metaphors are two-edged and your own metaphor can be used against you. It's happened to me before.
I get it now - the petty high school debate game instead of a discussion. That explains the adversarial stance and the very childish pretence at being mentally retarded at times to avoid admitting that something another person has written is true. While I was trying to discuss an issue you were merely stroking your ego until it became engorged.
Are you really blaming the FDA for doing what they were told by elected officials chasing the extreme (and IMHO Godless) end of the "Christian" vote?
The answer was "Of course" with an explanation why. A couple of posts later you wrote:
I should never have used a metaphor in a discussion with someone that pretends to be mentally retarded enough to take it literally :(
Oh look, petty name calling.
All I can say is that if you want discussion rather than "petty high school debate", then don't be the source of the problem.
As to the adversarial nature of this "discussion", it's worth noting the large number of people who just tell me what is self-evidently right. I'm far from perfect here, but it's not that common to see an actual "discussion" here. It's more common to see people just dump whatever opinions they think are true.
Way back when, "seven of five" posted this:
Since these folks enjoy the same public roads, military, police and fire protection, etc as everyone else, then they can help pay for them. Otherwise, they're just mooching off the public good. If it's too much to ask, they can move to some godforsaken island and fend for themselves. Libertarianism cuts both ways --- if you don't want to pay for the FDA, fine, but don't complain when your family members die from tainted medicine.
I was originally responding to the unwarranted assumption that the FDA saved lives. This is not a frivolous argument by me. There are blogs that speak of increasing costs and declining innovation in drug research over the past few decades.
It's reasonable to address one of the big factors causing that. Namely, regulatory agencies like the FDA which place a higher priority on safety of medical treatments than on the health of the people who would need those treatments.
Not petty name calling since I'm describing an action and not a person - once again you are taking the action of pretending to be more stupid than you are by pretending to make that mistake. What a silly game you are playing. I've got no idea what sort of person you really are because you are playing a cardboard cutout character to win some silly ego stroking game instead of discussing things honestly.
I know you cannot possibly be stupid enough to really think that the FDA is a rogue agency that does not answer to any outside force and gets it's funding by magic with no orders to follow, so I'm not accusing you of being so stupid, I'm instead accusing you of pretending be so stupid by pushing such a simplistic and unrealistic viewpoint as presumably some sort of childish game to see how many of the gullible you can convince.
A "devils advocate" is supposed to discuss things logically instead of throwing up a miasma of ridiculous and misleading rubbish that has little relationship with reality. It does not mean being a silly shit stirrer, such a thing is pointless unless it's a sociopathic game to make people angry.
I know you cannot possibly be stupid enough to really think that the FDA is a rogue agency that does not answer to any outside force and gets it's funding by magic with no orders to follow, so I'm not accusing you of being so stupid, I'm instead accusing you of pretending be so stupid by pushing such a simplistic and unrealistic viewpoint as presumably some sort of childish game to see how many of the gullible you can convince.
It can't possibly be that the FDA kills more people than it helps? That can't possibly be it.
It can't possibly be that the FDA kills more people than it helps? That can't possibly be it.
Ok, I believe ya. FDA kills people more than it helps. But my question from before still stands: what's the concern?
Remember what you said way back: protecting stupid people is bad, for it costs the rest of us. So why are you having a concern that lots of stupid people aren't being protected?
I mean, you mentioned the morning after pill. Consider who would need those:
1) Those who did not have consensual sex and risk getting pregnant - aka rape victims
2) Those who did have consensual sex and risk getting pregnant - aka horny kids who can't think straight and control themselves - aka the stupid people
Now note that the ruling for Plan B is that it's restricted to young women if they don't have a prescription. This means the young rape victims still have a way to get the drug - just get a prescription.
The ruling will actually lead to what you want, where the stupid are not protected. The stupid being the horny young kids who can't wait until they're 17. If we let any horny kid get the pill, pills would be more expensive for the rape victims who really need it!
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Please just give up to the Forrest Gump "dumb is good" acting and discuss things honestly. You cannot possibly be so ignorant as to actually believe that line you've written while learning enough to be able to type in the words.
What a truly disgusting little game. What would your parents who would remember polio victims think of you playing this game? How ashamed of you would they be at you trying to mislead the gullible on this issue?
As to the emergency contraception, the key is that it has to be taken rather soon after the act of sex and that it is relatively benign. The delay induced by getting a prescription is long enough to allow for pregnancy. And if I actually were some eugenicist breeding humans for less stupidity, I sure would make contraceptives as freely available to the stupid as possible.
The FDA is far from alone in compromising my life for people who really should know better. For example, consider this warning sign. It's an actual sign that says:
This Disney Resort contains chemicals known to the state of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm.
Proposition 65, California Health & Safety Code Section 25249.6 et seq.
The crazy soccer mom blog that follows that picture is hilarious.
Anyway, the point of the sign is that somewhere inside that Disney Resort are some cleaning chemicals, pesticides, or whatever, which, if you feed them in high concentrations to rats seem to correlate with bad things. California doesn't actually know anything outside of that or care.
There's no consideration of whether any of Disney's guests are exposed to those chemicals or not. Ultimately, it's just a way to scare people who don't know any better. It's just useless as public health information because everybody has those chemicals.
It's not much, but bits of our society are wasted making and putting up those signs.
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