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Google Maps Used To Find Tax Cheats

Posted by Soulskill on from the novel-use-of-resources dept.

phantomfive writes "Some countries are worried about the privacy implications of Google Maps, but Lithuania is using them to find tax cheats. 'After Google's car-borne cameras were driven through the Vilnius area last year, the tax men in this small Baltic nation got busy. They have spent months combing through footage looking for unreported taxable wealth. ... Two recent cases netted $130,000 in taxes and penalties after investigators found houses photographed by Google that weren't on official maps. ... "We were very impressed," said Modestas Kaseliauskas, head of the State Tax Authority. "We realized that we could do more with less and in shorter time."' The people of Lithuania don't seem to mind. 'Authorities have been aided by the local populace. "We received even more support than we expected," said Mr. Kaseliauskas.'"

33 of 174 comments (clear)

  1. But of course they do! by war4peace · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The people of Lithuania don't seem to mind. 'Authorities have been aided by the local populace. "We received even more support than we expected," said Mr. Kaseliauskas.'

    It's only normal and expected. I would help authorities catch the assholes who don't pay their taxes. Unfortunately, where I live authorities don't even try catching them, mainly because they're all the same.

    --
    ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
    1. Re:But of course they do! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Aside from 'fairness' in itself(which probably is a motivator, you can even piss off some of the smarter flavors of monkeys by presenting them with 'unfair' situations), I suspect that perfectly sensible self-interest is at work:

      When the tax man comes, the poor are least able to hide(they have no lawyers, no accountants, and they tend to spend close to what they earn, so even if they are being paid in cash under the table, they still show up in sales taxes); but they also have fuck all money to collect.

      The wealthy(especially so in countries with high levels of economic inequality) are where the assets are, often a commanding percentage of them; but they also have by far the most sophisticated measures for avoiding taxation.

      It's the intermediate cases, who might actually have enough money to even be worth the trouble of collecting; but have neither the money nor the influence to engage in effective tax evasion, who end up footing the bill(since going after people poorer than them is nearly pointless, there just isn't any wealth there, and going after people richer than them has traditionally been difficult). Why wouldn't they resent tax evasion?

    2. Re:But of course they do! by JimMcc · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The wealthy(especially so in countries with high levels of economic inequality) are where the assets are, often a commanding percentage of them; but they also have by far the most sophisticated measures for avoiding taxation.

      Like the USA? We have greater economic inequality since the robber baron era. And we seem hell bent on becoming the newest third world country.

    3. Re:But of course they do! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 2

      Yes, the US is an unfortunately good example of this behavior in action.

    4. Re:But of course they do! by JDevers · · Score: 4, Informative

      That proves nothing other than that the top 10% make most of the money, substantially more than 90% of it in fact. Why the fuck SHOULDN'T they have to pay more?

      The top 15% in this country make $100,000 or more a year, that is a long way from "wealthy" in most people's books and it makes perfect sense that all the people who make greater than $100,000 a year should pay more than all the people below poverty level even if there are MORE people below poverty level.

      If it makes you feel better, look up what percentage of their income the top 10% pay in sales taxes versus the bottom 50%.

    5. Re:But of course they do! by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The problem is, and the GP hinted at it, taxes are regressive.The rich can simply move to avoid taxes, while the poor are left holding the bag. Rich can avoid taxes, the poor cannot. Additionally, when the wealthy move or move their assets to avoid taxes (confiscatory) it hurts the poor more than it does the wealthy, taking jobs with them, but leaving those that fill the jobs behind.

      They once tried a tax on "Luxury" items, like boats (yachts) and other things, the rich simply stopped buying them. It didn't hurt them, it hurt those that built, sold, maintained and staffed them. It was repealed fairly quickly. Problem is, this admittedly anecdotal evidence, is never remembered by those who keep trying to soak the rich.

      Really, taxing the RICH doesn't help anyone. It just makes you feel better.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    6. Re:But of course they do! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You really need to fact check yourself, and maybe cite a source for why you'd ever factor in the taxes owed by his C-corporation into his personal tax obligation. If Berkshire were an LLC maybe, but it's not and you're dead wrong.

      In 2010 Warren Buffett earned about $62.8 million and he paid about $6.9 million in tax after deductions of about $23 million.

      I know $23 mil is a lot more than I deducted last year. He paid in an effect rate of 11% on his gross earnings, which is much lower than my rate, and my wife and I are of those bottom 85%.

    7. Re:But of course they do! by dryeo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      (I'm in Canada which shouldn't be much different) That's true for the bottom 10% or so, it's the next 40 or 50% that really suffer. There was a recent study, no link sorry, that the bottom 50% of Canadians actually pay a larger percent of their income in taxes and government fees then the top 50%. It's the fees that are the real killer. Need tires? Well there's a $20 environment fee so if all you can afford is the $60 cheap Chinese tire that you'd be nuts to take on the freeway, well there's a 33% tax, I mean fee, plus the sales tax and GST on the fee bringing the price up to close to $100 per tire plus mounting and balancing. Buy a top of the line S rated tire for $300 a piece, well the fee is still $20 so you're paying $320 plus taxes. Either way disposal consists of throwing the worn tires into a container and shipping to Africa for a small profit so the environment fee is just a tax that hits the poor
      There are a million example of similar fees and taxes that actually hit the poor harder so even though they pay little income tax they don't have any near the money left over from taxes etc compared to the rich who also get low income tax and pay a much smaller percent in fees. Oh, GST is reimbursed if you're a business as well here and if you're rich, you have a business and tax number.

      --
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
  2. Why wouldn't the people support them? by Qwavel · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Personally, I would think that people would be happy to help the tax cops find the tax cheats. When rich people and corporations cheat on their taxes I have to pay more.

    And yet I understand his surprise. For some reason, ordinary joes & janes (who get a salary and have little opportunity to cheat on their taxes) often seem to be against the idea of clamping down on high-end tax cheats. For some reason, their feeling that taxes are unpleasant (to put it mildly) translates into an aversion to the idea of them being properly enforced.

    1. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by gnasher719 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Here's how some people think:

      1. I want to be rich.
      2. If I was rich, I wouldn't want to pay a lot of taxes.
      3. Therefore, I don't want rich people to pay a lot of taxes.

      It's totally irrational, but that's how it goes.

    2. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

      ... or maybe they have a sense that taxes are a necessary evil. One might feel schadenfreude at the violators due to the former ... but also sympathy due to the latter.

      I think that the surprising thing is that anybody would think that a necessary evil badly and unevenly enforced would possibly be better than a necessary evil efficiently and fairly enforced.

      There is, arguably, nothing more corrosive to the rule of law than flagrantly spotty and selective enforcement of it.

    3. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by h4rr4r · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, it seems nearly all Americans think of themselves merely as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Which leads to stupidity like people voting for politicians that promise to cut the taxes of the rich and end the programs that the voter needs to eat.

    4. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by pla · · Score: 4, Interesting

      3. Therefore, I don't want rich people to pay a lot of taxes.

      I normally would agree with you on "typical idiot" grounds, but in this case, I think you've sold a lot of people short.

      I, along with plenty of others, object to taxes - Mine, Bill Gates', yours - Because we have a government that doesn't even pretend to represent our interests anymore. we therefore view starving it out of existence the most rational course of action (and don't give me that crap about getting to choose between Tweedledee and Tweedledum every few years).

      Yes, we have a country that really should just get it over with and split in half along red/blue boundaries. But deeper than that, we could find far more common ground than disagreement, on which the government consistently goes against the will of us all, in favor of either itself or its non-compulsory financial supporters (ie, Fritz Hollings, D-Disney). We have wars no one supports, prohibitions no one supports, social controls no one supports, entitlements only those receiving them support, a justice system that protects serial rapists and murderers from real justice while putting good people away for technicalities. Even down to the petty BS, we have red light cameras proven to cause more accidents, speed limits everyone goes at least 10mph over, a drinking age that practically no one reaches before getting drunk... For each of the "big" laws we can agree we need to keep us from each other's throats, we have a thousand papercuts to which we add the insult that we have to pay to inflict them on ourselves.

      So I don't want the rich to cheat. I don't want to get rich out of a delusion that someday I'll get to cheat. I don't want to not pay my "fair share" - More like I don't want a share at all of what they offer.

    5. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by niado · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I'll take "stupid" people voting for liberty over "lazy" people voting for a living any day.

      You put the scare quotes on the wrong words.

      I'll take stupid people voting for "liberty" over lazy people voting for "a living" any day.

      Fixed that for you.

    6. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by Nadaka · · Score: 2, Interesting

      In an environment of sufficient economic inequity. The ability to effectively express ones rights and achieve liberty is reserved almost exclusively for those with the means to control the system to their advantage.

      To create a greater liberty for the larger population, by necessity the license of the plutocrats to corrupt and distort the system to their own advantage must be limited.

      I am a libertarian socialist.

    7. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

      I don't know how a person could come to believe this without becoming a violent revolutionary soon afterwards. If you honestly want to starve your government to death and go through the bloody transition to a new one, why not take a shot at seeing it happen within your lifetime rather than "suffering" your whole life for the supposed good of future generations?

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    8. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I can't speak for him, but I want my fellow countrymen to feel good about themselves, have opportunities, make opportunities, and not be beholden to the people they vote into office for their livelihood. I want them to earn their housing, food, and medical care, because not only do we all get the benefit of their labor, but we also get less crime, better cared-for children, and other benefits. They too will get benefits that can't be had any other way: self-respect and personal growth for instance.

      Should there be a safety net? Almost certainly. But if even a quarter of the people who talk like you put their money where their mouth is (as I do), handling it privately will not only work out just fine, but will also be fair, less violent (follow *any* law backwards and you get the use of force), more efficient, actually create opportunities, and be much less prone to corruption.

    9. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by ifdef · · Score: 2

      I'm not sure that that accurately describes the situation in Lithuania.

      Many of the people who are rich there are perceived, rightly or wrongly, of having made their money, not by working hard, but by having influence. When Lithuania privatized large sections of the economy, state assets were often bought at a bargain price by those who were friends of the officials handling the privatization. These may have been former communist officials, kingpins of organized crime, or both (assuming that there's a difference). Or so the perception is.

      Some of this "if I can't have it then nobody can" mentality and suspicion of neighbors may have been there for centuries, but Soviet communism added its own twist. Under the communist system, it was almost impossible for someone to lose their job. They would get paid, no matter what they did. On the other hand, the work that they did was often useless, in the sense that if the farmer harvested his potatoes, they might end up rotting in a warehouse somewhere anyway, so why bother working hard to harvest the potatoes? Especially because you wouldn't be paid any less, since they were not YOUR potatoes anyway. The only way to get ahead, in those days, was by stealing from your employer (and boy, do I have a lot of stories, but that's for another time). But the ordinary person would only have a limited ability to steal without getting caught. The big shots, however, could get away with a whole lot, and they were resented by the ordinary people. Even people who may have made their wealth legitimately were suspected of doing so by theft and fraud, because that was just the way the system worked.

      People who were not in positions of influence (i.e. the Party) didn't have much hope at all of EVER bettering their situation through any legitimate means.

      Keep that in mind when you read about politics in any of the ex-Soviet states. It explains a lot.

      So, in Lithuania (and also presumably Russia and any of the other countries that haven't fully recovered from sovietism yet), it seems perfectly understandable to me that "ordinary" people would be glad to see rich people get caught and punished for any kind of cheating. It's not the same dynamic as one might expect here.

    10. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by mc6809e · · Score: 2

      Here's how some people think:

      1. I want to be rich.
      2. If I was rich, I wouldn't want to pay a lot of taxes.
      3. Therefore, I don't want rich people to pay a lot of taxes.

      4. Make sure the government taxes income instead of wealth.
      5. Profit!

      #4 is nice because if you're rich, you can look like a saint by calling for higher taxes on the wealthy knowing that most people are ignorant of the difference between wealth and income. You can smile knowing hard working highly paid (but not necessarily rich) professionals, like engineers, nurses, or doctors, are paying your share.

    11. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 5, Insightful
      You are delusional. Government is not the major threat to your liberty now. It is the corporations and rich guys who threaten your liberty. The rich will use any means to threaten your liberty. Right now they buy politicians, corrupt the government, run astro turf organizations, hire shills and liars to get you. Among all these instruments they use, democratic government is the only thing that you can use at some point to get the control back, get the country back. At some point enough people will pay enough attention to clean up the mess.

      And the rich know it too. So they use all the resources they have to create a pathological irrational antipathy to all government and persuade you to reduce taxes and reduce it ability to enforce laws. Just remember this, if you actually manage to starve the government out of existence, there is nothing to stop you from being enslaved by the rich once again.

      If you are not rich, the democracy is the only weapon you have, the only way to achieve liberty. Starving the beast is a snake oil sold by self serving rich people and the shills bought by them.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    12. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2
      People had the fruits of their labor stolen before 1912 too.

      Slavery is the obvious point. Even if you ignore slavery, the minorities were exploited ruthlessly. Would you care to look at how people other than Whites fared at that time? Chinese gold prospectors were systematically discriminated and driven out. Indian (from the Indian subcontinent) were denied property rights and the farms they owned were confiscated. US Supreme Court (Justice Sutherland) ruled that "yes, yes, Indians are caucasians, but they are not White, so not eligible for property rights."

      Let us leave the racial minorities and focus on Whites alone. They too were systematically looted by the banks, the companies colluded to keep the wages low, and stole the fruits of their labor. They stole the farms through banks. Life for poor people was pretty hard, then the depression hit.

      So your claim that people were living in some sort of golden age before the income tax is totally wrong.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    13. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by Nadaka · · Score: 2

      My ideas are not at all contradictory. Your understanding of socialism and libertarianism is merely limited.

      Your practical expression of liberty can be limited by your means, or by the infringement of a non-government entity, just as much as it can be limited by rule of law. Libertarian socialism seeks to enhance your practical liberty, not just your theoretical liberty, by using good laws to protect the people and their means of expressing liberty from exploitation and by removing the bad laws that can be exploited by both government and plutocrats to harm you and your means of expressing your liberty. Unregulated markets lead to slavery just as much as pure command economies, because in the end you will inevitably come to a position where one entity holds a monopoly on power and can force compliance on the populace.

    14. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by h4rr4r · · Score: 2

      Thats a nice straw man you have there. I guess that is easier than a real argument.

      Also I commend the way you managed to work bigotry into a totally unrelated discussion. Would you care to tell us how you feel about other minority groups?

    15. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by Velex · · Score: 5, Interesting

      What the hell does gay marriage have to do with it?

      Seriously. I should just keep my yap shut and just mod you flamebait, but I'll bite.

      I am sick of dipshits like you asking me to constantly choose between voting for smaller government and the political values I believe in and being a second-class person or else voting for big nanny state government but at least knowing that if my significant other is in the hospital, I'll be able to see him.

      I mean, seriously, what the hell is wrong with you dipshits? You're telling me that I can either have small government, which I assume means ending the meaningless war on drugs and terror that are turning us into a police state, or I can get married to the person I love?

      No, I'll tell you what the hell you mean by small government. You want a government that tells me what I can and cannot put in my body, from substances that have been used throughout human history safely and are beginning to be recognized as legitimately medically useful to my boyfriend's body parts. You want a government with TSA checkpoints at every airport, railroad station, and probably at every freeway interchange if you had your way. You want "small government" that will dump billions upon billions of dollars into bombing the shit out of third world countries and propping up dictators. You want a border patrol with the right to stop and search anyone, anywhere, anytime solely based on the color of their skin.

      Hell, what the hell do I care?

      I used to be a Libertarian. I still have a Libertarian keychain I bought four years ago. Let's face it. The Libertarian party isn't going to get into power or be in a position to do jack shit until hell freezes over.

      I guess you've convinced me. If voting Democrat will continue legitimizing homosexuality and transgender identities and if voting Democrat might get the gears rolling to respect the people of states who have voted to end marijuana prohibition, I guess I'll vote Democrat.

      Because there's sure as hell no way that the Republicans represent anything I even remotely care about. Either way, social security will remain a joke. "Obamacare" (federalized Romneycare) will continue to be a handout to medical "insurance" companies with little hope of real reform. We're going to continue being Team America World Police. The imaginary property crowd will continue gaining clout in Washington, in Redmond, and in Silicon Valley until I'll probably need to register my general-purpose computer without a DRM locked bootloader just the same as a firearm. We're going to continue throwing orders of magnitude more money at pointless wars and "cyber" warfare and "omg the terrirists" than we do at exploring our own solar system and basic scientific research.

      But hell. Why the hell not. At least with the Democrats, I might be able to get married, maybe adopt some day, and buy the only substance I've ever used that seems to do jack shit for my anxiety attacks over the counter at any corner Walgreens. (Sorry, I need something more effective than a placebo, so anti-depressants, 5-HTP, St. John's wort, you name it, they're all out. If anything, everything I just listed makes it worse.)

      Having Libertarians in power would be great. No more gay marriage and no more straight marriage either! Get the government out of the damned marriage business and separate the legal implications from the religious issues. It's not going to happen, though. The more shit I hear out of Republicans and right-wing nuts like you just makes me wonder whether or not I should vote Democrat for the first time in my life in 2014 and again in '16. (Might be amusing to have another Clinton in the white house, and Billy might just be able to pull off being the first first husband evar.)

      --
      Join the Slashcott! Stay away entirely Feb 10 thru Feb 17! Close all tabs to prevent autorefresh!
    16. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 2

      It wasn't a strawman anymore than the GP poster "You want your fellow countrymen to vote for the liberty to starve?" comment was.

      The clear implication is that without Government people would starve, and with government nobody starves. Neither of which is entirely accurate. It is this fear tactic that doesn't deal in facts which is designed to illicit emotional responses to get people to vote a certain way. It is Liberalism 101.

      You can go on a hunger strike anytime you want, that is really what "liberty to starve" actually means.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    17. Re:Why wouldn't the people support them? by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 4, Informative
      The day you shrink the government small enough to be drowned in a bathtub, some rich guy will drown it. Then you will be subjugated by some private guy and you have no chance of ever getting back. It would take centuries to overthrow them and bring back democracy.

      Yes, the rich people are using the power of the government and threaten you. What good is liberty if you have been looted completely and left without any means of using the liberty for in any meaningful way? The solution is not to weaken the government, but to reduce the influence of money on government. That is why the ruling "money is speech" should send chills down your spine. The top one percent have not more "speech" than the bottom 90%. It is our government, we need to take control of it, make it powerful, powerful enough to give the man on the street a fighting chance.

      --
      sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  3. Re:Here's one person who doesn't support them by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Don't forget the aqueducts!

  4. Moon the IRS! by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 4, Funny

    Dear Mr. Google,

    Please tell me when your satellite gadget is going to be flying over me taking snapshots. I would like to go outside, and show the IRS my better side.

    Thanks,

    Mr. Kid

    --
    Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
  5. Re:Here's one person who doesn't support them by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

    That's stupid for 2 reasons:
    1. I'll bet you good money you believe in more than 1% of what the government is doing: 1% of the US federal budget is $38 billion, which just about covers either federal law enforcement (including prosecutions) or transportation infrastructure (including air travel, highways, rail, and cargo shipping), but not both. Cut out law enforcement and you might as well not have a legal system. Cut out transportation and all that stuff you currently see showing up in your local Walmart won't get there. I highly doubt you want to live in that kind of country.

    2. If Paul evades taxes successfully, the government will simply try to collect revenue from someone else. If they can't, they will borrow the money to function. If they can't borrow the money, they will inflate the currency.

    Basically, your argument, which I'm guessing you think is libertarian, is actually anarchist - a coercive authority with no money can't do anything at all. So on that basis, I'd recommend that you move to Somalia, Afghanistan, or one of the other areas of the world that has no functioning government whatsoever, and thus no taxes.

    --
    I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
  6. Re:Here's one person who doesn't support them by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Informative

    You may be unaware of this but libertarians have solutions for all of this - 4x4s and mud trails instead of roads, dudes with guns instead of defense, open pits of burning garbage, DIY sewage systems and surgical masks instead of sanitation.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  7. Re:Here's one person who doesn't support them by AuMatar · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We tried that. People were dieing from unsafe food products- meat that was slaughtered in unsanitary conditions, alcohol that has gasoline and other non-edible fillers added in, and crooks who just plain lied about what was in their product. Read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle sometime.

    Foo and shelter for the poor? Non-government efforts have been attempted since pre-Roman times. They all failed miserably- people would literally die of starvation in major cities. Now we have government efforts. They're not perfect, but they work- the starvation in western civilizations is damn near zero, the remainder being child abuse cases.

    Defense- please tell me how you're going to self organize for defense against an opponent that can kill you by tens of thousands from a continent away, and pay for this effort? Oh, and please tell me how you'll do this without creating an organization that will just take power.

    Roads? Well since we never prevented anyone from building them, the US must have a had a sweet set of private roads for cross country travel before the government stepped in and fucked them up. Oh wait, it was the exact opposite- the government was needed to build and finance the interstate system. In fact, there's been no time in the history of the world where an extensive network of private roads was made adequate to the nation's transportation needs.

    Step the fuck out of fantasyville and into the real world.

    --
    I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
  8. Fuck Tax Cheats by FreeUser · · Score: 3, Funny

    It's only normal and expected. I would help authorities catch the assholes who don't pay their taxes.

    Agreed. Or put another way:

    Dear Tax Dodger,

    Fuck you. Pony up.

    Most Sincerely,

    The rest of us who pay our taxes honestly.

    --
    The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
  9. This is not a new approach by knorthern+knight · · Score: 2

    http://boingboing.net/2010/05/04/satellite-photos-cat.html
    > As the nation of Greece teeters on the edge of bankruptcy, its tax authorities
    > are taking aim at Greece's notorious tax-evading rich elite. Using satellite
    > photos, the tax authority examined the claim of the residents of Athens's
    > wealthy suburbs and discovered that, rather than the 324 swimming
    > pools claimed by the locals, there were 16,974 of them.

    http://www.italymagazine.com/italy/olbia/google-earth-reveals-tax-evasion-scam-italys-finance-police
    > Google Earth reveals tax evasion scam to Italy's Finance Police

    http://gizmodo.com/5603054/officials-are-looking-for-your-swimming-pool-on-google-earth-right-now
    > Officials Are Looking For Your Swimming Pool on Google Earth Right Now

    --

    I'm not repeating myself
    I'm an X window user; I'm an ex-Windows user