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New Global Plan Would Crack Down On Corporate Tax Avoidance
HughPickens.com writes:
Reuters reports that plans for a major rewriting of international tax rules have been unveiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that could eliminate structures that have allowed companies like Google and Amazon to shave billions of dollars off their tax bills. For more than 50 years, the OECD's work on international taxation has been focused on ensuring companies are not taxed twice on the same profits (and thereby hampering trade and limit global growth). But companies have been using such treaties to ensure profits are not taxed anywhere. A Reuters investigation last year found that three quarters of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies channeled revenues from European sales into low tax jurisdictions like Ireland and Switzerland, rather than reporting them nationally.
For example, search giant Google takes advantage of tax treaties to channel more than $8 billion in untaxed profits out of Europe and Asia each year and into a subsidiary that is tax resident in Bermuda, which has no income tax. "We are putting an end to double non-taxation," says OECD head of tax Pascal Saint-Amans.For the recommendations to actually become binding, countries will have to encode them in their domestic laws or amend their bilateral tax treaties. Even if they do pass, these changes are likely 5-10 years away from going into effect. Speaking of international corporate business: U.K. mainframe company Micro Focus announced it will buy Attachmate, which includes Novell and SUSE.
For example, search giant Google takes advantage of tax treaties to channel more than $8 billion in untaxed profits out of Europe and Asia each year and into a subsidiary that is tax resident in Bermuda, which has no income tax. "We are putting an end to double non-taxation," says OECD head of tax Pascal Saint-Amans.For the recommendations to actually become binding, countries will have to encode them in their domestic laws or amend their bilateral tax treaties. Even if they do pass, these changes are likely 5-10 years away from going into effect. Speaking of international corporate business: U.K. mainframe company Micro Focus announced it will buy Attachmate, which includes Novell and SUSE.
For those that were unaware, this is my explanation (it should be mostly correct)
double non-taxation, otherwise known as a "Double Irish"
It takes advantage of weakness in Irish law that allows companies to not pay taxes on subsidiaries that are outside Ireland.
So a large multinational corporation, located the United States, needs to subsidiaries for this to work.
They open one subsidiary in Ireland.
They open a second subsidiary in a low, or no tax country like Bermuda.
The Irish company owns the Bermuda company.
The Bermuda company owns the US Companies IP rights for outside the US.
The Bermuda company licenses those rights to the Irish company.
The Licensing fees the Irish company pays to the Bermuda company are as close to 100% of the profits the Irish company makes as possible. Everything over that amount gets changed at the Irish corporate rate of 12.4%
The profits all get transferred to the Bermuda subsidiary where there are no corporate taxes. So they avoid all taxes on that money and other governments can't come after them because there are treaties between most countries that prevent them from charging a company based in a different partner country for taxes. This is to prevent situations where you'd pay taxes in both countries for the same money. Bermuda isn't a part of those treaties but Ireland is. So this loophole in Irish law is upending the entire Global tax system.
Why are you being modded down? The wars are almost entirely off budget. Maybe they'll make up for it with asset forfeitures..
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You people who believe you'd run a functioning society without taxes and the things it pays for are completely deluded.
In a taxless society, there would be no one to run it other than those with wisdom and experience. But they wouldn't "run" the society as we understand it today.
You would not end up in some libertarian fantasy of a self regulating society. You'd end up in a shit hole of a society in which things like roads and schools don't work and don't get funded.
Again, I think you're missing the point. Roads? Why would there be this need for roads? If you walk through the forest a path will naturally develop. And schools? Why would we need schools? Do parents get paid to teach their kids now? I mean, in this taxless society that we're talking about, the need for a lot of things that we have today diminishes.
Blah blah blah. Everything you say is pure fantasy, and doesn't mean anything other than your overly romanticized notions of a world which never was, and which never could be.
Go look up aboriginals, American Indians and/or any other indigenous peoples. Also, if you think that there has always been taxes (as if they're a part of nature) then you are the one that's overly romanticizing the situation. Taxes were invented long ago, for sure, but to say that they've always been there, is wrong, and just sounds obnoxious.
If you think a modern society is possible without taxes and some things being paid for by society, you really are a drooling idiot.
This is where no one can argue, you are 100% correct. However the word "modern" is the reason. But there's no reason that we cannot have a society housing a group of people that have no "currency".
If you want to have a nice civil group of people, working to have food and shelter, this can be achieved without money. The American Indians used to live in a society where they had no money, but they were successful at trading with other tribes. Sure they fought, but there was an underlying mutual understanding that their way of life had a goal of staying in tune with Nature. "Money" is not a part of nature, otherwise all races of beings would have it, not just humans.
Politics; n. : A religion whereby man is god.
VA and officer pensions are not into the Military budget as they should be to do the comparison. War operations for whatever illogical reason are also not in the Military budget. And SS actually mostly pays itself, how can you possibly compare it to the various spending budgets, when it is not exactly "spending"? Please tell the truth.