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Data Leak Spurs Huge Offshore Tax Evasion Investigation
New submitter lxrocks writes "Tax authorities in the U.S., Britain, and Australia have announced they are working with a gigantic cache of leaked data that may be the beginnings of one of the largest tax investigations in history. The secret records are believed to include those obtained by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that lay bare the individuals behind covert companies and private trusts in the British Virgin Islands, the Cook Islands, Singapore and other offshore hideaways. The IRS said, 'There is nothing illegal about holding assets through offshore entities; however, such offshore arrangements are often used to avoid or evade tax liabilities on income represented by the principal or on the income generated by the underlying assets. In addition, advisors may be subject to civil penalties or criminal prosecution for promoting such arrangements as a means to avoid or evade tax liability or circumvent information reporting requirements.'"
Nothing will come of this.
Kinda sucks to be one of the fools that thought they wouldn't be found out, though. I heard rumors that in order to engage in illegal betting online (in the USA), you needed to have some secret squirrel bank accounts. I'm not sure if that's legal or not. I really don't know.
I feel bad for all those people that knowingly decided to violate the law and are now getting punished doing so. My crocodile tears are soaking the floor.
This has been public knowledge since the end of March, yet there has been almost zero coverage of it in the mainstream U.S. media. Here's a bit of info in map form from the CBC on April 3, 2013:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/icij-map/
and an interactive feature, also from the CBC:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/interactives/offshore-tax-havens/
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
There, corrected it.
When it's the governments data that is released to the public it is helping terrorism/illegal/national security issue. When it is private data that the government obtains without permission (usually defined as "illegally") it is "A “weapon” against tax evasion". The hypocrisy is deafening.
Just wait until they start finding out who's names are on the list and see where it goes. Here in Canada we had the story of a Senator's husband running having accounts in tax havens. http://www.cbc.ca/m/rich/news/canada/story/2013/04/03/merchant-offshore-trust.html
"The IRS said, 'There is nothing illegal about holding assets through offshore entities; ..." Stopped reading after that. This story seems to rely on the reader's sense of right and wrong; morals and ethics. Fail.
The party's over
My bet is that the actual investigation targets "who got this data" rather than "who does this data show cheated on their taxes". Mark my words, it'll be along the lines of "we can't use this data in court, so we HAVE to find out the source, so we can have them testify", only when the source comes forward, they'll find themselves jailed and the tax evaders will either never get prosecuted or make a sweethart deal.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
100,000 people world wide..... that's 500BUCKS stolen for every man women and child on earth....are you feeling angry yet?
This is one bank
I'll bet most of these are drug dealers, gamblers, or con artists hiding dirty money.
Usually it's easier to simply pay your taxes. The stereotypical argument of the rich always evading taxes typically doesn't happen. It's just not worth the risk of having everything taken away from you if you already run a legitimate operation.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
This entire article is alarmist, and I even wonder if that information can be used in a court of law. As the IRS points out, here is nothing wrong in owning an offshore corporation or accounts. As long as you report it properly.
International Business Corporations are ridiculously common. You don't have to be rich, many people with average income have those. It just depends on how you spend your money and the business you're in.
100,000 people world wide andso far the USA and UK have copies and shortly canada's govt will too. The measure of democracy in all this will be if anyone is arrested.
This entire article is alarmist, and I even wonder if that information can be used in a court of law.
Actually, my guess is that it's a deliberate leak of accounting info by the intelligence community so that it would be reported in the press without an origin (and thus isn't attributable to state action that violates the fourth amendment) and then could be followed up on by government agencies like the IRS.
The stereotypical argument of the rich always evading taxes typically doesn't happen.
It's not that they always evade taxes (although that happens too), it's that they have full time staff dedicated to not paying taxes.
Sometimes, it's just middle class people not having all the tools to find ways to sidestep taxes that the rich do.
In the same way the government wants to tax the sales of internet transactions across the United States, they should be taxing US corporations who set up shop in (foreign countries) and yet do tons and tons of business in the US. They know who they are..
Not so hidden agenda:
http://www.acting-man.com/?p=22604
In the same way the government wants to tax the sales of internet transactions across the United States, they should be taxing US corporations who set up shop in (foreign countries) and yet do tons and tons of business in the US. They know who they are..
Dude, I'm with you. But when we, the US, have the most Byzantine Tax Code on the planet, something has got to give.
The US Congress has drunk the "use taxation as a policy tool" Kool-Aid as well as helping their cronies.
We're all about Crony Capitalism here in the US and it sickens me that we still hear the fairy tail of "work hard and you'll get ahead!"
When I see some dork become a billionaire because his "Hot or Not" cruel, insulting, simple, beginner web coder and assholish website became a marketer's wet dream, I just want to get a sandwich board with "The World is cumming to a end!" written all of over it while I just repeat, "Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!" until the cops kick my ass.
I have seen talented and creative people - more talented than anyone you see in the media - get drowned out just because he doesn't know the right people. OR he doesn't know how to promote himself. We are not a meritocracy: we are an aristocracy.
The last true meritocracy was back in the late 70s.
face folks, the America you think exists died out a long time ago.
I had to watch several thousand kids graduate today. Most of them with marketable degrees - half the auditorium stood up when the school of nursing was called, for example. Just a couple in the Arts and Humanities - with a few snickers heard here and there.
The Lefties who ranted here years ago are being proven right, I'm afraid.
The Right is Happy in their Delusion; the Lefties are Right - mostly; sort of.
This. My dad is in this business, and they're all neck deep in "tax avoidance" and many of them dabble in outright tax evasion.
My dad also tries to do the same thing with very middle-class amounts of money...not much comes of it, I'm convinced he enjoys paperwork.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
30% of any amount of money is still 30%. If your dad's managing to save some income from the tax man, more power to him.
These people arent going to go to jail, as the data was obtained illegally.
BUT, their accounts are now known, AND linked to current tax accounts... whats going to happen is more auditing on accounts, they then refer to this illegal data to then pressure the people to pay more tax.... the threat of court would be more than enough to get people to conform
It's not a typo if you understood the meaning!
This is what passes for journalism?
Australian and British citizens as well as families and associates of long-time despots, Wall Street swindlers, Eastern European and Indonesian billionaires, Russian corporate executives, international arms dealers and a sham-director-fronted company that the European Union has labeled as a cog in Iran’s nuclear-development program.
Way to be fair, objective, and unbiased.
My dad is in this business, and they're all neck deep in "tax avoidance" and many of them dabble in outright tax evasion.
Why on earth would you post this on a public forum?
I'm anonymous enough, why not? It's hardly a secret, ask any accountant.
Pointing it out for those who don't know has value.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I don't know why he has such a problem supporting the society we live in. He says it's all going to be mismanaged so you might as well keep as much as you can...not too different from US libertarian rhetoric really. I think he enjoys the challenge of hacking the tax system more than the savings.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Why not? Hearsay isn't admissible as an admission to knowledge of a crime.
Thats all that will come of this. Earmarked endowments and guaranteed income for those who didnt benefit the first go round.
Good colleges aint free you know. Esp if you have to afford a mistress and a gambling problem at the same time.
He says it's all going to be mismanaged so you might as well keep as much as you can...not too different from US libertarian rhetoric really
Who do you think spends your money better, you or the government? The government wastes vast sums of money on nonsense and bullshit, so I can certainly understand why somebody would want to make sure that as little as possible goes to them by way of taxes. From where I sit, it doesn't look like anybody in Washington DC has a damned clue what it means to really work or how difficult it was for many of us to earn that money in the first place. Most of America is having a hardscrabble go of it these days while dishonest politicians and their fellow travelers in DC just keep spending like drunken sailors, it's disgusting.
Well the government runs law enforcement, public education, welfare, and infrastructure maintenance, I like having those things and can't pay for them all by myself...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Well the government runs law enforcement, public education, welfare, and infrastructure maintenance, I like having those things and can't pay for them all by myself...
You don't have to be the only one paying. We don't need taxes to publicly fund this stuff. We can just run a Kickstarter.
Well the government runs law enforcement, public education, welfare, and infrastructure maintenance
And it's hard to see how anyone else could do a worse job of running those things.
Not sure if serious...
In government by Kickstarter, money would truly equal political power (and Kickstarter would be the world's largest megacorp from all those transaction fees)...doesn't sound good to me.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Your imagination is quite limited, so let me point you in the right direction with two words: Company Town.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Password set to "Welcome123!"
Who did what now?
its cause half the govt mps in hte ruling party are on the list.....
of the 450 canucsk i bet a majority are conservatives.
I like having those things and can't pay for them all by myself...
And you know what? Government doesn't pay for them either. That means everyone does. Shouldn't you care about how to provide for the golden gooses paying for all that wonderful stuff you want, but aren't willing to pay for yourself?
>> From where I sit, it doesn't look like anybody in Washington DC has a damned clue what it means to really work
If that's the case, then Washington DC and the 1% have a lot in common.
30% of any amount of money is still 30%.
That's not very relevant. 30% of $100 is $30. 30% of $1 million is $300,000. For who is it worth more to reduce their taxes? The person looking at a $300k tax bill.
And suppose you could, for $5000, reduce your tax bill from 30% to 29%? For the first taxpayer, that's $5000 spent to save $1. For the second, it's $5000 spent to save $10,000.
So, uh, which firm does your dad work for, exactly? I'm sure the IRS would love to know...
Tax avoidance and tax evasion are markedly different. Tax avoidance is straightforward: You plan decisions and investments so that all money is taxed honestly, but at the lowest rate for the return. For example, if you need to raise cash, you can choose to sell a stagnant stock at a loss, which will raise the cash you need and build a capital loss credit, rather than selling a stock that's moving up and will likely make even more money than it will cost in capital gains.
Tax evasion is where money is dishonestly hidden from being taxed, such as claiming the purchase of that new fishing rod is really a business expense for your car dealership, or moving it offshore to a country with lax enforcement and claiming to the IRS that you're paying taxes there, while telling the foreign government that it's being taxed here. It's pretty easy to tell when you're "dabbling" in tax evasion, because somewhere in the paper trail, somebody lies.
Effectively avoiding taxes does require having enough money to be able to maneuver around so that the minimum taxes are paid. The taxpayer must have enough money available that they can move their profits into inaccessible places (foreign companies, unrealized investments, etc.) while still having cash to live on. Then when the time is right they can move that money back into something easier to work with, paying a lower tax rate and profiting from the time spent.
Source: I work at a financial advising firm. We do some tax avoidance, but no tax evasion.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
and then they fire 2000 people that would do the work removing 230 million fomr the agency
ya smoke meet mirror
I don't follow your argument. The "golden gooses" (I think you mean geese) are other people like me, who are not able (not just unwilling) to pay for everything themselves, but like me are willing to chip in (unlike the tax "avoiders.")
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Tax avoidance is legal but IMO, can be horrendously unethical. And I think you vastly understate the difference it can make. GE paid zero taxes one year through tax "avoidance" and the famous tech megacorps are only "avoiding" as well.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Well the government runs law enforcement, public education, welfare, and infrastructure maintenance, I like having those things and can't pay for them all by myself...
You don't have to be the only one paying. We don't need taxes to publicly fund this stuff. We can just run a Kickstarter.
Where's that '-1, moron' mod when you need it?
I'm a drunken sailor, and I do not spend money like the US Government! I actually have a budget!
Well the government runs law enforcement, public education
The first two are done by state governments, not the feds. Maybe all the tax money should go to the states?
welfare, and infrastructure maintenance
Of which they do an absolutely horrible job. You're correct in that you can't personally afford it -- but for what the population is paying in taxes, we should get a hell of a lot more than what we're getting. Frankly, I think things would be better if they privatized it, and decided, whoever has the lowest bid gets to do it, as long as they meet certain standards -- through competition, taxpayers could get a more efficient deal.
What's unethical is Congress not having produced a reasonable and effective tax code. This is their job. Seriously the quality of the work products of the US Congress is really bad.
Corporations are required by law to operate to the benefit of their stockholders. Not avoiding taxes is in fact illegal.
Also I'm amazed the idea of GE not paying taxes is still prevalent. It's not true.
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/04/warren-ge-pays-no-taxes/
sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health
Both cause the same harm, both show contempt for the citizens of the country evaded, and both represent and enable more criminal activity than any "legitimate" activity - yet only one of them gets punished.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The brunt of the tax burden is borne by the middle class.
The lower classes just don't have much money to tax. The rich upper classes use their wealth to manipulate the law such that they do not have to pay taxes.
Of course, the middle class is also shrinking, as wealth only flows upwards and the upper class makes most of their money by charging the middle class high prices while paying them low salaries. So, as the middle class shrinks, the tax revenue will shrink as well.
The most natural response will be...more taxes! For the middle class! And the problem will perpetuate itself until the middle class dries up completely and there will be no means of upward social mobility at all.
Most of America is having a hardscrabble go of it these days while dishonest politicians and their fellow travelers in DC just keep spending like drunken sailors, it's disgusting.
Less than 1% of the 1% got there through hard work. The most important predictor of success is who your parents are, and it's not simply because they raise you. Indeed, that's far from the most important factor. Nearly no one in American government (at least, at any significant level) has ever really worked for a living.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Usually it's easier to simply pay your taxes
Oh yes, I paid my taxes
The $64 trillion dollar question is --- How much tax should I pay ?
Especially when my tax money is being used for purposes that I find wanting
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
They functionally do the same harm and are chosen by the same groups of people.
They're both dishonest, one's just illegal.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
That's because the people known to use offshore vehicles and presumed to be dodging tax are not on the list.
In fact none of the USA RICH AND MIGHTY people seem to be on the list. It's almost as if they simply took the SWIFT data, filtered it by British Virgin Islands AND 'people we don't like', and published a list.
Nobody will go along with that, because it just means they have a bank account, not proof of anything, and they don't want to be sued (or worse used) for false accusations.
They're hiding behind the "we're not required to" statement of convenience when it comes to actual proof.
So until there is definite proof (such as the information "not required"), they could say anything.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Not only do you evade taxes (which if you were to hit the hornets nest enough, you would find out that nobody and nothing is out of reach of the US), you deal with the US's enemies.
GITMO would be too good for you since it's too close to a few tax domiciles.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
It might not have the adjectives you wish to see, but it describes the evaders.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
While there is a very good case for tax cuts, the enforcement of existing tax code comes first along with a permanent disincentive against evasion/"avoidance".
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
As a drunken sailor I am offended by your comparison. (For proof I will admit it took 3 tries to write drunken)
It's one of those things that sounds like a good idea at the start, but the more you look at the logistics of, the worse it gets.
Thief! If you expect others to pay for things you want then you are a thief. Maybe if the government didn't steal so much from you then you would have sufficient to pay for the things you want.
Well no, the 32.3 trillion is the balance of money transferred into private banking countries vs money transferred out. The people who did the calculation did the innuendo to claim it is illegal money, but it's just money transferred into private banking countries. Given the rich can pay zero in capital gains in the USA, the reason for moving money outside the USA into into private bank countries is more to do with privacy and concerns about the dollar.
If you have nothing to hide, you don't need privacy?
If you want an example, consider that lowest-bidder defense contracting hasn't exactly worked out as well in terms of quality versus a government-run alternative.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
The brunt of the tax burden is borne by the middle class.
The "middle class" tend to pay the highest proportion of their income in taxes, but the wealthiest in society pay the largest chunk of the total personal tax bill.
In the UK, for example, the top 1% pay 24% of all Income Tax and the top 10% pay over 50%. The next 40%, which could reasonably be classified as the "middle class", pay 35% which leaves less than 12% being paid by the other half of society.
So in both absolute terms and per-capita terms, the richest 10% pay the most tax.
The top earners are also the most mobile and "international" members of society, so the unfortunate conclusion is that countries have to retain those top earners, and one way they do that is to give them a fabvourable tax position. While they pay lip-service to stopping evasion, most countries would prefer to have the richest paying some tax rather than losing them and getting no tax at all.
I think things would be better if they privatized it
Always chilling words. You're right that something is rotten, but you're wrong that privatizing it will help. In actuality, the government is in the hands of corporations now, and it's not a good thing.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
But this takes time. If your income is 'reasonable', then you can probably get more money by just working more, instead of spending this time trying to reduce your tax burden.
It's only when your income reaches a certain point that avoiding taxes (or paying people to help you avoid taxes) becomes profitable.
That's how it's done in the UK. It doesn't improve anything and in plenty of cases it makes things worse and more expensive as the bidders all lie on their bids and then have to be bailed out because the infrastructure can't be allowed to collapse.
You are an idiot. Really.
Repeat after me "the market is not a magic wand". Some things, such as roads and bridges are natural monopolies. The private sector will do even less than the government to keep these up. For a higher price, too.
You think the government is inefficient, but this is only because the government is really bad at hiding what it does poorly: it is massively more transparent than private sector corporations. Fact, the private sector s even more wasteful, because on top of the laziness and incompetence, profits need to be extracted.
Simply, successful companies have evolved really good abilities at giving the illusion of efficiency. It's called marketing.
Also, the tax burden in the US is really low. I mean really, really low -- not so much the taxes on labour, which are more or less on par, but all the rest. Whenever I travel there, I think to myself "ugh, the infrastructure is like that of a third world country, also houses are made out what seems to be cardboard". And then I shop, consider the taxes and think "well, duh, they pay as much as in an undeveloped country".
+1 insightful I think.
I think its the SWIFT data. The bank transaction data, I think they've just filtered it for countries considered tax havens, and financial companies. I think they've also removed major US political figures, if the rich and powerful in the US was on the list, they'd investigate the origins. I noticed nobody major in the US was mentioned in those press leaks from a few weeks back.
So they put out the list with a lot of innuendo, and that gives the IRS etc. power to investigate the list without anyone questioning the source.
As to whether GP comments as to whether this can be used in a court. I think it never gets that far, the IRS just visits them and demands they pay up or be audited for the rest of your life, and they pay up real or not.
The utility of money is not linear, it is logarithmic. Let us not pretend that human inability to count properly is a valid measure of what is right.
1% of what?
Most successful tax avoiders still pay many times more taxes than average people.
That must be some new definition of the word 'unethical' I have not previously seen. In my opinion, all means for minimising the taxation above one's fair share are ethically sound. Of course, it is wise to restrict oneself to those that are legal as well.
Taxation based on income is unethical, avoiding excess taxation (essentially theft) is not.
Your moral values have nothing to do with the amount of taxes you owe.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Because he has costs that don't scale as a proportion of the tax avoidance he's enabling.
The reason that only one of them gets punished is that only one of them is a violation of the law. I have a question, do you claim any deductions when you file your taxes?
If you do, you practice tax avoidance.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Just wondering if this is the Wikileaks cache of data they had talked about.
It would not be to the benefit of USA and it's "allies" to admit they got it from there, though.
The utility of money is not linear, it is logarithmic.
That makes no sense. It depends what you're trying to do. For small quantities, the utility of money is linear. For large quantities it tends to be modestly superlinear due to the economies of scale from buying in bulk. And if you're trying to buy all of a particular thing in the world (such as CO2 emission credits in Europe) then it goes to zero (you can't buy more of the good than exists so at some point, you can't buy any more of the good in question at any price and further quantities of money have no value for that particular task).
If you're speaking of the value of money to collective society as trade, then it is collectively constant. Doubling the money supply provides no additional value.
I doubt you can find a case where the utility of money is nearly logarithmic. That just isn't a natural fit.
Let us not pretend that human inability to count properly is a valid measure of what is right.
Yes, let's not do that. Let's also not pretend that the occasional inability to count properly is at all relevant to the current discussion.
No way ever. Privatisation has failed every time it's been implemented for the society. For the mega rich that own the private companies its been a massive success though...
Right, because the FED trebling the money supply just caused 300% inflation. Oh,wait, it didn't.
Also, no studies ever show that happiness correlates with the log of money. Oh, wait, they all do. Perhaps more tellingly, the probability density of income within countries (and amongst countries) is log-normal. So yes, the proper way to count the utility of wealth is in log.
Remember kids, libertarianism only makes sense if you ignore reality.
Not correct. While they don't have to say how much tax they pay in specific categories, they do have to reveal the total.
It's a billion per year in the US.
That's far from zero.
And take far more as well. They benefit hugely from public education (subsidized and cheap workforce), pollute in huge amounts with air transportation, practically rape the road system by profiting from truck transportation, and considering that they'd be first into the guillotine they benefit the most from welfare as well.
And as a fraction of their earnings they pay the least.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
I (like many people) loathe the tax deadline. Every time I file my taxes, I feel like I have stepped in the medieval times. Fair enough.... we can now file on-line but still.... the core of the system is a bizantine set of rules full of loopholes. So much so that some professionals dedicate their whole careers to understanding the tax system and keeping up with all the latest changes. In addition, the system requires the maintenance of an imense bureocracy with the sole objective of enforcing these bizantine rules.
This is ridiculous. We are in the age of big data, of the information revolution. There must be a better and more efficient way of taxing people and companies. Tax evasion and avoidance is a byproduct of the current system. It must be possible to come up with a system that would be very hard to avoid. I feel like we need a technologically inclined revolution in this area.
Agreeing to pool money to purchase a shared resource is a delicious orgy of theft that all consenting parties enjoy the spoils of. You should try it some time, it's great.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Interesting. I live in the US. I've been to Angola and Kazakhstan and others. In no way is the US infrastructure like those places.
Like the article says, "There is nothing illegal about holding assets through offshore entities". And if those offshore entities are in lower tax jurisdictions, that's just tax avoidance. As long as its all reported in accordance with the tax regulations of each jurisdiction no laws are broken.
In addition, advisors may be subject to civil penalties or criminal prosecution for promoting such arrangements as a means to avoid or evade tax liability or circumvent information reporting requirements
My investment advisors are located offshore. What they are promoting is legal within their jurisdiction.
Have gnu, will travel.
I'm going to call bullshit on your entire post unless you can provide citations for each of your specific points:
1 - less than 1% of the 1% work hard to achieve their prosperity
2 - that it's something other than parents raising a child that result in that child being successful
3 - that nearly no one in American government has ever worked for a living
I doubt you'll be able to provide any supporting information for your claims, mainly because you've posted this crap before and when challenged you were incapable of understanding the math behind that statistics and what the statistics actually mean.
You forgot corrupt lawyers, judges, politicians, businessmen unless you piled them into conmen catagory.
As for simply paying your taxes, I agree, if taxes were just, a small per centage across the board, not used for war or conquest, it didn't support a corrupt Executive, Judicial, Legislative government. Too many people are in need of proper food, water, housing, medical care, useful education.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
As long as its all reported in accordance with the tax regulations of each jurisdiction no laws are broken.
And that is true. However, just because you have reported it according to the laws in the offshore jurisdiction where those entities are located does not mean that U.S. laws(or those of other nations in which you may reside) for reporting are satisfied (I do not know the intricacies of tax law, but I do know that the U.S. has laws specifying that income gained in other countries, under certain circumstances, must be reported with one's U.S. tax return. I believe that some European countries have similar laws).
I am not in any way suggesting that you are not following the applicable laws, merely pointing out that fulfilling the above sentence is not as much of a "pass" to avoid U.S. tax laws as some may believe.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I'm curious, when you fill out your taxes how many exemptions do you claim? Yourself? Your wife? Your children? Do you take the standard deduction? Do you deduct half your state income tax obligation from your income for the purpose of calculating your AGI? Do you take the mortgage deduction? Deduct student loan interest? Do you fail to pay use taxes on your mail order and online purchases? Take the earned income credits? If you do any of that, why don't you want to support the society you live in? Do you keep any of your income at all? Because there's nothing different between only paying whatever portion of your income is determined by your tax rate than paying whatever your tax obligation is after properly documenting your financial choices. Unless there is law breaking going on you have no basis to criticize whatever choices they make.
Right, because the FED trebling the money supply just caused 300% inflation. Oh,wait, it didn't.
Inflation is defined as quantity of money times velocity of money. They could create many zeroes more of money, but if it's never spent (hence, having a velocity of money of zero), it doesn't contribute to inflation.
Also, no studies ever show that happiness correlates with the log of money. Oh, wait, they all do.
No, I'd go with your first statement here.
Perhaps more tellingly, the probability density of income within countries (and amongst countries) is log-normal.
No, that has nothing to do with the value of money. I think it's telling that your most "telling" argument is completely irrelevant to the claim you wish to make.
Remember kids, libertarianism only makes sense if you ignore reality.
Remember kids, disagreeing with the statement that money has logarithmic value means you're a libertarian. Learn something new every day!
The elites will not be taken down by their servants. If this truly starts to "change things" watch for disease outbreaks to draw away limited (wrt constitutional fuctions) government resources.
Anything that's on the form and legit basically, but I don't move money around in foreign bank accounts or use shell corporations. You think there's no difference between deducting student loan interest and using a private Swiss bank account or a "dutch sandwich" arrangement etc?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Man are you going to be disappointed when you learn that's not tax evasion.
As long as the actions are lawful, then no, there is no difference.
Nobody who cheated. They will go after those who leaked the documents. Rule of the rich, by the rich and for the rich.
http://www.whistleblowers.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=934&Itemid=108
His leak lead to close to 15,000 people "settling up" with the IRS, more that $5 billion in unpaid taxes paid and an $750 million fine against UBS yet he is the ONLY person in jail over it.
So if they don't divulge the amount of tax they are paying how are these congresscritters making statements about the fact they didn't pay any taxes.
Something STINKS.
yeah, we need more of this type of welfare:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzspsovNvII
Not sure if serious...
In government by Kickstarter, money would truly equal political power (and Kickstarter would be the world's largest megacorp from all those transaction fees)...doesn't sound good to me.
Ha, well, my "Not Sure if Serious" political science theory is that everything will be better if representative democracy was run like OKCupid, where you could answer a ton of questions about your positions on things, and then delegate your voting authority on the issue to the politician that has the highest % match to you in those matters.
I'm going to call bullshit on your entire post unless you can provide citations for each of your specific points:
Who the fuck are you?
In any case, just for laughs, I went and found a citation. Less than 1.3% of the top 10% got there due to hard work. Now imagine what percentage of the top 1% this applies to. Snicker snort.
that nearly no one in American government has ever worked for a living
The complete quote is "Nearly no one in American government (at least, at any significant level) has ever really worked for a living." You doubt that the majority of politicians have never had a job that required sweat? Also, since you're so free with placing conditions, I will call bullshit on your entire comment if you attempt to cite any job which a politician could fail upwards from, because those jobs don't count.
I doubt you'll be able to provide any supporting information for your claims
But there it is, and I found it with google. Ironically, when I search for "successful people did not get there because of hard work" most of the first page of results are links to a bunch of essays by kids asserting that hard work is the most important factor, and that luck is unimportant, in spite of the simple fact that the opposite is true, and whose vagina you came out of is what matters most, because your social class is one of the most important elements of "luck" which defines success. Which makes me wonder if Google is just being gamed hard again, losing the arms race against SEO dickwads, or if they want people to believe that hard work matters.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Tax avoidance and tax evasion are markedly different.
There is a gray zone in-between, though; financial maneuvers that appear to be consistent with tax regulations, but which have never been formally tested.
Most of America is having a hardscrabble go of it these days while dishonest politicians and their fellow travelers in DC just keep spending like drunken sailors, it's disgusting.
Checked the tax code lately? Really low income people/families don't pay much income tax in USA. They do get socked by sales tax.
I'm the guy who finds your posts to demonstrate stupidity and enjoys pointing out your bullshit. And you came through in classic form. See you took one of the few actual statistics, in what was just a narrative (i.e. not a study or scientific paper but merely the opinions of a man who writes for a living), that said:
And apparently read it as "only 1.3% of the top 10% got there due to hard work." It's not a difficult statement to understand and yet you completely and totally failed to grasp the idea presented. Just like you don't understand the ramifications that the best predictor of a child's future economic status is the parent's economic status. Which in addition to not leading to the result you think it does, isn't even that overwhelming a predictor (see fig. 7 on page 11 for data about sons or fig. 11 on page 15 for data about families) for the middle three quintiles (30% or less) and 41% for the ends.
And then you proceed to redefine your terms. Perhaps in your world view hard work is strictly physical labor, in which case your narrow perspective guarantees that you will never succeed and you will forever be a bitter whiner who blames his self selected failure on someone else. Here's a hint, which I suspect is going to fall on a deaf ears: physical labor isn't hard. It's the easiest thing out there, everyone is capable of doing it. Hard is doing something that takes years of dedicated effort to learn, hard is risking your future in order to found a business, hard is working 16 hours a day most every day of the week year after year, hard is knowing that you have to make trade offs today in order to have success tomorrow.
I'm going to guess that your next desperate attempt to wiggle out from under the feces flowing from your mouth will be to redefine "nearly no one" as being any amount less than 100%, but just in case you aren't too terrified of facing the naked the truth about how full of shit you are, here's a a profile of the 112th US Congress which happens to describe their prior occupations. Of note:
81 educators
17 doctors
2 veterinarians
2 psychologists
an optometrist
an ophthalmologist
6 nurses
3 sheriffs
2 deputy sheriffs
2 FBI agents
a border patrol agent
a firefighter
a physicist
a chemist
6 engineers
a microbiologist
9 accountants
4 pilots
an astronaut
2 pro football players
17 farmers
11 ranchers
9 social workers
9 national guard members
10 judges
26 prosecutors
There's more, but I figure 226 (out of 541) congressional members having held non-political jobs far exceeds any normal definition of "nearly none".
I have severe doubts that I would ever be able to afford to build a 20 mile road across mountains, which is how I get to work. Larry Ellison might, though.
I'll give you 20% of the educators, the firefighter, and the nurses. And hey, just for the benefit of the doubt, the farmers and the ranchers... and the chemist.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Never had to take or structure a deduction in a manner that wouldn't cause a competent accountant to take a long time to explain(without any prior involvement), involve jurisdictional games, nor would rely on untested territory of the tax code. I don't make a point of having my tax forms hit the proverbial hornets nest of Federal, State, and City revenue collections.
If you're suggesting that taking a simple deduction on one's 1040 and receiving a negative sum or a lowered positive sum is the same league as things like Double Dutch, you would be mistaken. That's like asking an amateur in a sport being taken in at the professional level and thinking they won't get outclassed.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Taking a simple deduction on one's 1040 is tax avoidance. It is the same as some of the more complicated things that people do to avoid taxes. The laws were written to encourage people to do those things, just as the tax laws were written to encourage you to do the things which lead you to be able to take the deductions that you take. Now we can discuss whether the law should be written to encourage people to do certain things, but someone taking advantage of provisions in the law to avoid paying taxes is not the same as someone breaking the law to avoid paying taxes.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Exactly according to plan.
That plan was marketed as "Reagonimics".
It's only one of many reasons that fascist traitor should have been hung.
I think things would be better if they privatized it
Give me an example where this has actually worked. For each one, I'll give you three where that has backfired.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
"Source: I work at a financial advising firm. We do some tax avoidance, but no tax evasion."
I think this gives you perhaps a rather distorted view. If what you said was true- that the distinction is clear, then the likes of HMRC in the UK wouldn't need to go to court and win some cases and lose others when it comes to avoidance vs. evasion.
The problem is that even when HMRC wins it often does little more than let them settle (sometimes less than they actually owed). This means it's still beneficial for firms to engage in evasion, wait to see if it's ruled as evasion or avoidance, if it's avoidance they can sit chuckling to themselves, and if it's evasion they can play the "Oh we had no idea! Please we can't afford the full amount now, how about we just give you half of it?".
If you think there's a very clear difference you don't know the market you're working in well, the chances are, if your firm is like most other tax minimisation firms then much of the avoidance your firm is practising is actually evasion precisely because there are so many arguably grey areas that sometimes go one way, other times go the other, but that those that are indeed evasion just haven't been chased up as such yet.
Or to put it another way, often "avoidance" is simply evasion that hasn't been discovered and prosecuted over yet. This isn't to say there isn't genuinely clear cut legal avoidance also, but simply that it's not always as clear cut as you make out.
As an aside I'm not convinced by your definition of evasion either:
"Tax evasion is where money is dishonestly hidden from being taxed"
Starbucks avoids paying UK taxes by having an overseas subsidiary that charges it just conveniently enough royalties to wipe out it's profits in the UK. I'd say this is most definitely a case of money dishonestly hidden from being tax because there's no honest reason why Starbucks would need to charge it's UK subsidiary royalties from a tax haven yet it's still technically avoidance.
I'd argue a better definition of avoidance is simply "tax minimisation with no potential legal penalties" and evasion is "tax minimisation with potential legal penalties if caught". There's no point bringing things like honesty and morals into it because I'd wager 90% of the globe would argue that both avoidance and evasion are dishonest and immoral, only that you can at least legally get away with one of them.
As long as the actions are lawful, then no, there is no difference.
Only if you happen to be an immoral twat trying to justify their argument.
The truth is that thing like paying sales taxes on mail order goods involve you going out of your way to pay more tax. Setting up a dodgy offshore arrangement involves going out of your way to pay less tax. There is a massive difference between these two things in that in one case you are just taking the path of least resistance, in the other you are investing a shitload of extra effort in order to hide money from the taxman. The effort involved is key.
Also, there is the minor difference in terms of reward. By not paying the odd bit of sales tax you can probably save a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars at most. By hiding money offshore you can save millions if you have it.
I dont read
And like every libtard, you don't know where taxes come from and how they are used. Law enforcement, public ed, and most welfare are the result of locally procured taxes such as gas tax, property tax, state and local sales tax, etc. Infrastructure maintenance comes from grants issued by the feds after they have brokered out what states get what; basically they take taxes from the citiznes of states and then only give it back to the states that play along with their rules like drinking ages and seatbelt laws.
how anyone else could do a worse job of running those things.
maybe if you let it be done by a business cutting corners everywhere