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Panama Papers: Data Leak Exposes Massive Official Corruption (theguardian.com)
An anonymous reader writes: The hidden wealth of some of the world's most prominent leaders, politicians and celebrities has been revealed by an unprecedented leak of millions of documents that show the myriad ways in which the rich can exploit secretive offshore tax regimes. The Guardian, working with global partners, will set out details from the first tranche of what are being called "the Panama Papers". Journalists from more than 80 countries have been reviewing 11.5m files leaked from the database of Mossack Fonseca, the world's fourth biggest offshore law firm.
Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens. Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Vladimir Putin, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt's former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson. The leak is one of the biggest ever - larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013. More here. Search the Offshore Leaks Database here.
Twelve national leaders are among 143 politicians, their families and close associates from around the world known to have been using offshore tax havens. Among national leaders with offshore wealth are Vladimir Putin, Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan's prime minister; Ayad Allawi, ex-interim prime minister and former vice-president of Iraq; Petro Poroshenko, president of Ukraine; Alaa Mubarak, son of Egypt's former president; and the prime minister of Iceland, Sigmundur Davio Gunnlaugsson. The leak is one of the biggest ever - larger than the US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2010, and the secret intelligence documents given to journalists by Edward Snowden in 2013. More here. Search the Offshore Leaks Database here.
But I am not surprised. Time to do some 1789?
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
It's Sigmundur Davið - that's an eth, not an o. And yes, people were already furious with the way he's been running our government, now it's boiling over. Hopefully we'll be getting rid of him soon enough....
If I ever become wealthy and mad, I'll leave Companion Cubes on desert islands for shipwreck survivors.
Remember citizens, 'conspiracy theorists' are just nutjob losers who want to blame the reptilians or whatever for the fact that their lives suck and their tinfoil hats are too tight. The world is, in fact, basically decent and as-described. Carry on.
Looking around, it doesn't look like there are any people listed from the US.
https://panamapapers.icij.org/the_power_players/
Concert cellist Sergei Roldugin has known Vladimir Putin since they were teenagers and is godfather to the president's daughter Maria. On paper, Mr Roldugin has personally made hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from suspicious deals. But documents from Mr Roldugin's companies state that: "The company is a corporate screen established principally to protect the identity and confidentiality of the ultimate beneficial owner of the company."
Tomorrow's papers: Sergei Roldugin was found in his Moscow apartment this afternoon, apparently from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the back of the head.
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
these papers implicate lots of western politicians directly, esp from uk. to quote "Six members of the House of Lords, three former Conservative MPs and dozens of donors to UK political parties", and david cameron family .
in contrast, putin's implication is indirect at best, with vague indefinite connections,"The Russian president’s best friend – a cellist called Sergei Roldugin - is at the centre of a scheme in which money from Russian state banks is hidden offshore. Some of it ends up in a ski resort where in 2013 Putin’s daughter Katerina got married."
best friend not described as that before? and location of a wedding reception?
but this summary only mentions non western leaders(if we ignore iceland), as of now. curious! /. afraid of ?
who is
Though there is nothing unlawful about using offshore companies, the files raise fundamental questions about the ethics of such tax havens
So the leaks don't expose much of anything. This does raise the obvious question of where did that money come from in the first place, but that's old news.
Hmmm... Weird. Also, Canadians, British, Germans, etc. Something is not right.
so as little dirt as possible falls on the U.S. Corruption in global sports organizations, corruption in global oil business, and now this as well, and very little of it falls on the U.S. Very suspicious.
I believe all of these have come to light and under investigation on intentions by the U.S, to wash their hands a bit after the NSA fall-out, and to make the whole world look bad and corrupt, while trying to look like shining white knights themselves.
Is that so? Are you sure?
The man who once ran Putin's campaign to take over all independent media in Russia was found bludgeoned to death in a Washington, D.C. hotel room. He would have been privy to all kinds of insider information, including money Putin has stolen from the Russian people. Take note of the NY Times article where, before an investigation had even begun, the Russia state media was already lying about what happened to Lesin: he had a heart attack.
But this wasn't the first Russian who had inside knowledge of Putin's thefts, and who met a similar fate. Considering the billions Putin has squirreled away overseas, it's understandable people such as Lesin would need to be liquidated, especially, if the reports are true, they are giving inside information to the U.S. or others.
This other article from the Guardian appears to be more in depth, detailing how Putin and his oligarchs have amassed personal fortunes worth anywhere from hundreds of millions of dollars to billions of dollars, all stolen via the endemic corruption of Russian business. Bank Rossiya is essentially Putin's personal bank from which he doles out billions to those who please him. To those who fall out of favor, they have to watch their backs or face the same fate as Lesin.
I'm sure there will be denials about all the facts, but since there is no word for truth in Russian, it's understandable. After all, how can a report about someone's death being from a heart attack come out when the investigation hadn't even begun if you don't want the truth to be known?
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Nobody is starving just because people with money are using legal tax shelters.
Sure they are; government assistance programs are not as funded as they could be.
I can name a nation of people suffering because fucks like David Cameron and George Osbourne are removing welfare that WORKING people need in order to work and be independent, while they and their cronies all benefit from a wage increase.
And now to find out they are probably throwing money through these tax schemes on top?
They will get destroyed if any link is found. Absolutely destruction of their whole party.
I would hardly be surprised if the lying hypocrite fuck is part of it. He lies through his teeth so hard every single day.
These people, just like scummy multinationals, are stealing money from taxpayers in every country they work.
Money owed to the state.
Don't give me your "but capitalism" bullshit, capitalism is at the core of corruption in the financial world and regulation IS needed to keep them in order.
The free market is the worst thing. It should be banned universally.
All it has lead to it regulatory committees being paid off, or being created BY said companies just to appease a government-run agency, despite them doing absolutely nothing to stop the corruption they should be stopping. (hell, then you have groups like the FDA and FCC in the US being paid off all the damn time to turn away and ignore things)
People are literally dying horrible, painful slow deaths because of these companies releasing toxic foods and products that go out for years before 3rd parties catch them.
It matters for naught, as nothing can be done anyway besides "hey, hey guys, stop selling these things okay?", so it is pretty pointless them saying anything!
It needs to stop. NOW.
Yes they are you colossal asshat
How is this legal? And by that I mean the acquisition and distribution of legal documents. No matter there contents these are legal documents and they are usually protected in most countries so I wonder if any of the papers will be under fire for revealing any details in them.
And now to find out they are probably throwing money through these tax schemes on top?
So you're basically just ranting with no actual facts, just blind ignorance.
Made more ironic that it's been known for years that Cameron's family fortune was in fact made through tax havens:
http://www.theguardian.com/pol...
Try and be a little more informed, a little less blinkered and a fuckload less bloody stupid.
Each has secrets that can destroy the other.
so I hardly see this as news. At worst It's moderately annoying for the people involved. Also the leakers are probably going to die soon (poor bastards).
Remember all those reforms that happened after Snowden's leaks? No? That's because there weren't any. So long as social issues exist to divide the working class into easily manageable groups you're not gonna see squat. Let me know when you figure out how to get people to stop caring about Abortion, Gays and guns long enough to care about economics..
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I can name an idiot whose swallowed Rupert Murdoch's cumload
It's cute that you are smart enough to post on Slashdot, but stupid enough to lap up drivel not backed by objective statistics. You are just another bigoted moron too stupid to realize that people feeding you the crap you parrot are your real enemies.
If it's American documents released, there would've been 50 comments in the first 5 minutes begging for military trials and how these leaks are damaging to the country, how we need to protect our military and their assets. People were crying out for the DoJ to arrest, prosecute, stow away in Guantanamo and even execute the leakers. Now that it's primarily about other countries, I don't see any of that outcry. I don't see any media, mobs or prosecutors demanding for these leakers to go through anything like what Assange, Swartz or Snowden are going through.
I hope they find a Hillary/Obama/Sanders threesome somewhere in there.
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Non sequitur... It does not follow. Literally.
It does not follow that if the government had more money that they'd be spending it on social safety nets. It does not matter the government, it simply does not follow. It is not necessarily true that they'd be more inclined to feed the hungry than they would be to make a down payment on yet-another-expensive-defense-project.
I've been alive for quite a while and that doesn't necessarily make me wise - but it does mean I've had the chance to witness a lot of things. One of the things I've witnessed is that governments, at least the more stable of them, don't actually have an income problem. Not at all. They have a spending problem. We talk about the tax breaks and the tax rates while ignoring the fact that the overall taxation rate on GDP is actually as high was it has ever been.
No, the governments have plenty of money. They just spend it on some really stupid things - like another bomber, fighter, aircraft carrier, or straight up hookers and blow. A trivial, nearly meaningless, sum might actually go/have gone to needy people but that's not even a certainty. Hell, it's not even a high probability. So, that doesn't follow. If the government had more money, there's almost certain more hookers and more blow and those just aren't going to do themselves, you know.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Beware,
This 'event' was 'sponsored' by a Soros funded entity AND there are currently no USA names on the list AND the biggest fingers are pointing at people the USA doesn't like.
Sounds like a setup.
46137
Is not the Clinton's money, it's a charity organisation and their books are open for inspection..
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
The system is broken
Some journalists are going to publish only part of it, to damage only those that they have interest in hurting. Wikileaks publishes everything, and that's what we need, so that every citizen can go through it and show what's inside.
People who have access to it, please, leak it all.
(I was checking the journalists in ICIJ from my country, they are not from very different media outlets. I can see a lot staying hidden and I imagine it will be the same for other countries)
No, people might not literally starve. But the rest of us will pay more in taxes to cover the costs of running the government while the ultra-weathy exercise legal options to avoid taxes that regular taxpayers can't. Even if you accept that government simply spends too much, what it does spend still comes out of those taxpayers that pay their taxes, whether at full rate or spectacularly discounted through creative legal methods. Sure, we can work to lower the costs and the need for tax revenue in the first place, but it has to come from *somewhere*, and the ultra-weathy have done fine income-wise or in terms of lower tax rates over the last couple of decades.
That's assuming the methods being used are actually legal.
Not so surprisingly, Slashdot is about the only regular site I go to that I've found allowing comments on this leak. Most news sites & others I frequent have them all disabled. Funny that. Journalistic bravery, or self-preservation? :)
Even less surprisingly, top Russian communist leader corrupt...news at 11.
In any case, rather than follow the money, just keep en eye out for Mossack Fonseca's execs who are reported suddenly 'missing', or have 'accidents' in the near future. The shitstorm over this hasn't even begun yet. Popcorn time.
David Cameron and George Osbourne are removing welfare that WORKING people need in order to work and be independent
What is wrong with this is not that they are removing it but that working people need welfare in order to work and be independent in the first place. Paying welfare to people who are in work just allows companies to pay lower wages increasing the profits for the fat cats at the top.
A guy who once left [grapevine.is] in the middle of a parliamentary session while answering questions because he had a craving for chocolate cake?
Leaving seems to be a thing with him: he apparently walked out of an interview when they asked him about his off shore accounts. Perhaps there was some more cake on offer.
I don't really have a problem with tax breaks, as some call them. Many people don't understand them and will call them "subsidies" or "tax-breaks" or other things without actually understanding them. For example, it'd be fucking moronic to tax a business on income other than its profit. Lots of people who complain about things like taxation (and this is NOT an accusation about you personally - let me make that clear) don't even know the difference between revenue and profit.
I've had conversations that went a bit like this:
They: That company had 1.2 billion in revenue. There's no reason they shouldn't be paying half of that in taxes. .3 billion.
Me: Their profit was
They: Then they need to make more money.
They: All corporations suck!
Me: Did you mean that? Really?
They: Yes. Every corporation is evil, money-grubbing, thieves.
Me: You mean like the EFF or Linux Foundation? How about the ACLU, Habitat for Humanities, or BSD?
They: No, they can't let the guy park his car in the underground parking lot for free. It's against the law.
Me: Wait, what?
They: They have a legal obligation to make all the money they can, at any expense, and anything else puts the CEO in jail.
Me: Are you high?
They: It's called fiduciary duty, you fucking idiot. Look it up on Wikipedia! It's predatory stock-holders doing it!
I've had multiples of those conversations in the past month.
So, you'll have to pardon my skepticism when it comes to people, on this site in particular, attempting to discuss matters not pertaining to computers and technology.
I don't know what your income bracket is but I know that I sold my business and retired 8 years ago. As such, I know what the "wealthy" pay in taxes. I also pay attention to the numbers.
Now, this part might be confusing for you. I'll try to make it clear but I'm not the most articulate.
I have a few dollars. You'd call me rich or wealthy if you saw my bank account. And yes, if you need verification then I've actually met multiple people from this very site - in person. I have also been doxxed, back before it was even a thing.
My tax records are not a matter of public record but I pay capital gains rates. I don't do short-term investing. Just so that you know, a good rule of thumb is that if you hold onto it for longer than a year then it is taxed at capital gains rates. If you hold it less than that then it counts as regular income and is taxed at regular income rates - on the same exact form that you have access to. But, so you know, my overall rate, prior to reducing my burden, is 23% - counting both State and Federal. I can reduce it further than that, in a whole host of ways, but I don't really bother.
This is leading to the confusing part...
I not only don't mind taxes but I feel that I could pay more in taxes and not even notice. It's my duty to not really pay more than is required. I'm not very good at that - ask my accountant. I don't save receipts, I donate anonymously, I don't write off/down most of the things I buy that are business related.
Business related? Absolutely. I'm still very much the chief executive officer for several incorporated groups of people. They're rather passive things but the information, the articles of incorporation/corporate charter, can all be dug out of the records easily enough. That's besides the point.
The point is, you can incorporate if you want. Hire yourself as a sub-contractor and pay you to go to your day job. It might be worth it, if your tax burden is high enough.
But, like I said... I don't mind taxes and would actually happily pay more if I had any reason to believe it'd be spent wisely. When I sold my business, I did donate to the government. Yes, donate. I gave the US Government money, my money, and without force. I specifically was able to donate to NASA. In case your'e curious, you can donate to NASA but you can't earmark the donation for a project. Donations must go to the general operations fund. I was wantin
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Tax havens exist for everybody.
Everyone can craft a limited liability company or incorporated in a tax haven. They are actually usually no "tax havens" but have simply retarded laws regarding "offshore companies". Try to live in such a tax haven and they tax you like any other country.
Most of the time it is easy from any country - where ever you live - and obviously even completely legal.
Everyone who is not doing it, has his own reasons, probably just o lazy to do the paper work or lack of trust in the the lawyers needed in the "destination country".
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
https://offshoreleaks.icij.org...
Intriguing. Please tell more.
It would be fun if letters of marque could be used for people who engage in tax doges. Find the cheat and get a large share, not the relatively small share that the IRS alleges they will give you with a ton of strings attached. Another notion is what a cool book or movie it would be for someone to take over a small tax haven and transfer the assets before the law shows up. You could have fun with that plot line. The sequels could involve various extortion angles while the thieves are on the run. It would be one of the times that people root for the pirates.
Consult a legal professional.
However, filing an application to incorporate isn't hard. You generally need three people. One will be president, the VP, and the third will be the treasurer. Or, COO, COE, or COO. Or whatever, really. You just need to fill in those parts of the document.
You basically use your SSN as your tax ID number - they work just fine for that purpose. If the asset's primary use is for the business (in this case, you doing your job) then you can write it off. You can't write off lunch with your wife - necessarily. If she's in sales and you're entertaining a prospective customer then you can write it off. You probably won't be able to write off your whole car but you might get some depreciation. (Don't forget to claim it when you sold it or traded it in.)
There are lots of things to do. Incorporate AND hire an accountant and keep the lawyer on retainer. Depending on how much you make, it'll probably save you money in the first year. You can incorporate and get the protections associated with it. Your boss might need to be amicable to this.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
You made a reference to the first macaroni machine brought to the US by Thomas Jefferson on his return from Europe in ... 1789.
Well done Sir.
The point is, you can incorporate if you want. Hire yourself as a sub-contractor and pay you to go to your day job. It might be worth it, if your tax burden is high enough.
Intriguing. Please tell more.
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Non-ct wait for evidence. CT people simply throw their claim without evidence backing it. That a broken clock is correct twice a day does not mean we should start using it to measure time.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
For one as limited as you, you may struggle to see the connection but it is obvious. It is largely a zero sum game with a run off valve. There are X pounds in tax to be paid, there are Y pounds circulating around the economy, there are also Z costs that need to be paid. When greedy citizen A uses the run off valve to remove some of the money for his own purposes, this means that the shortfall in X has to be covered by the rest of us in the form of higher taxes. This affects the lowest earning citizens the most and yes, in many cases literally means they cannot afford food or other necessities.
You see the issue is, when you and I, as working stiffs hide our money from Mr Cameron, he sends some nice men from HMRC to your house with a nice letter that says "pay or go to jail". However when someone like Mr Cameron does it, he's hard done by.
Only the truly naive believe this. The fact is a lot of costs need to be paid and if not paid by the government end up being pushed onto you with a markup. The US health insurance system is a good demonstration of this. Despite all the flaws of the NHS, it's still cheaper than the US system and more effective for anyone except those earning above 150,000 pounds.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Even less surprisingly, top Russian communist leader corrupt...news at 11.
Nyet tovarich,
He is now top Russian capitalist leader corrupt.
All hail glorious march to bright capitalist future.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
"congress had an overall approval rating of 13%. Yet, 95% of the incumbents retained their seat." Only they don't call it cheating they call it gerrymandering. A nasty little way to make sure the districts are sliced in a way that popular voting does not count, (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering "how to steal an election") you probably know that but I wanted to remind all our US friend how they get fucked in the ass by their politician.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Anyway, that's not what I came to say. While it is most certainly true that everybody could profit from these tax havens by "filing the paperwork", that is not entirely true. Many require you to create companies and I know as a fact, than in my country that's not cheap. Well, okay, it'll cost you about the price of a small family car. Is that much? Not really if you've got millions or billions. So, that is one barrier of entry.
Also keep in mind that many smaller businesses and private persons, need their income to actually live. So, that 100000$ income you have? You need it. No way you offshore it all, so you can save on taxes. Bigger companies and very rich individuals have the luxury of having a certain fluidity and can do with that "extra money", including making it disappear in shady tax schemes.
Finally, the above problems didn't exist, you have to look at the return of investment. If I'm setting up a complicated, perhaps even borderline illegal, tax scheme to avoid taxes of, let's say 500$ a year, am I investing my time wisely? We're talking 1.37$ saved a day... That's not even the overpriced latte at Starbucks. Drop the caffeine habit, and save more...
So, I'm not really all that sure it's a matter of "too lazy to do the paperwork".
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Nobody is starving just because people with money are using legal tax shelters.
That claim is almost certainly false.
Not paying your taxes is a crime and must be treated as such. It's really that simple. If you don't like the way the taxes are spent, you can move somewhere else, but then you really have to move, i.e., reside most of the time of the year in the country you've allegedly moved to. Otherwise it's tax fraud, and everybody knows that. The other things you're talking about are also misleading. Social security is among the highest posts in the budget of most countries, and of course massive tax evasion will take away money that would otherwise be spent on it. We're talking about billions of dollars, so yes, people will likely starve if many rich people in a society evade taxes. (Your argument is basically the "yeah but if it's just me who breaks the law, then strictly speaking almost no harm is done" defence, which has always been lame.)
http://www.theguardian.com/wor...
It does not follow that if the government had more money that they'd be spending it on social safety nets. It does not matter the government, it simply does not follow.
In the US; the government is no longer funded by tax revenue..... they just have their partners at the federal reserve (private banking cartel) print out whatever debt they need to fund the government.
The purpose of the income tax is Enslavement..... that is to bestow (or withold) political benefits and favors (bribes) in the form of tax exemptions, to give some people or companies competitive advantages over others, AND also to take money from the middle class and anyone not dependent on welfare in order to make them financially dependent on the banking industry partners (for loans) by separating these people from their wallet....
An idea: The right panel of Slashdot shouldn't change when someone logs in.
...or makes little money so having a tax haven is pointless.
Most people gain nothing from them, either due to limited income or and, the income they do manga to get is already taxed via withholding.
They will get destroyed if any link is found.
No, they won't. They will go as before. Sorry.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
You drank the Sun and the Daily Fail's Kool-aid. Why be a fool when you can be a hateful fool.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
Everyone who is not doing it, has his own reasons, probably just o lazy to do the paper work or lack of trust in the the lawyers needed in the "destination country".
Half of the world live on less than $2/day, I'm sure there's probably other reasons than not trusting your lawyer...
Non sequitur... It does not follow. Literally.
It does not follow that if the government had more money that they'd be spending it on social safety nets. It does not matter the government, it simply does not follow. It is not necessarily true that they'd be more inclined to feed the hungry than they would be to make a down payment on yet-another-expensive-defense-project.
That will still help. Because even expensive defense project money eventually finds it's way into local contractor and employee pockets, and those people buy things with that money and pay taxes, and then the people working in the stores earn more money and also buy things and pay more taxes. Eventually some poor person somewhere gets a slice of bread (even if that person is in China).
Now you could argue that if the company pays less tax, it can spend more money on projects and the same result applies, but a government is more likely to include public education in it's spend, and ultimately that is the difference between us an the apes. So I prefer the govt gets it's share at some point.
In many countries, rather than being paid directly you can register as a business, whether that's as a sole trader, or some other type really depends on your country, it's laws, and it's options.
Whilst it's getting harder in some countries, such as the UK, what you were long able to do is get your employer to pay your business entity, rather than you, and then pay yourself from your company the minimum salary you can get away with that is either tax free, or low tax. The extra money paid to your business will typically then be paid to you via a mechanism such as dividends, which you will not pay standard income tax bands on, but will pay capital gains bands, which are generally lower.
So for example, in the UK, the tax bands on standard income are roughly as follows:
£0 - £10,000 = 0% tax
£10,000 - £42,000 = 20% tax
£42,000 - £150,000 = 40% tax
£150,000+ = 45% tax
So if you were earning say £60k a year, you'd pay 0% on the first £10,000, 20% on the £32,000 between £10,000 and £42,000, and then 40% on the £18,000 between £42,000 and £60,000. That is:
£0 (0% rate) + £6,400 (20% rate) + £7,200 (40% rate) = £13,600
(Note: You also pay NI tax in the UK, but I'm keeping it simple here).
Now, if you'd instead paid via your company using the aforementioned low salary + capital gains combo, the capital gains tax rates were, until Friday I believe roughly:
£0 - £11,000 = 0% tax
£11,000+ = 20% tax IF you are paying 40% income tax
£11,000+ = 10% tax IF you are NOT paying 40% income tax
So you'd end up paying:
£0 (0% income tax) + £0 (0% CGT tax allowance) + £3,900 (10% CGT tax) = £3,900 tax.
This is because you're paying yourself a salary of £10,000 on which no income tax is owed, and then £50,000 in dividends which are owed at only the non-40% CGT rate, because your salary paid to yourself isn't in the 40% bracket, so 10% is owed on this.
Now, you do typically have other costs from doing this - you have to pay a chartered accountant for example, which narrows the gap, but these costs are typically fixed.
Again this is a very simplified example, other taxes and costs do come in to play, and countries have been cracking down on this kind of avoidance to varying degrees, but hopefully this illustrates the sort of tactic that has long been abused. Effectively it's only worth it if your salary justifies it - the problem is if you're on a lower salary (say £30k), you may find that by the time you've paid your accountant et. al. that you've not really achieved anything other than wasting an awful lot of your time filling in tax returns - it's not worth the effort unless your salary is high enough for the fixed costs and hassle to disappear into irrelevance compared to the tax saving.
Again, depending on the country you're in this may not even be possible any more (if it ever was), or the rates may be adjusted to make it not worthwhile - i.e. some countries have more progressive tax rates than the UK, and some have smaller gaps between income and CGT rates. I don't know how the numbers work out in the US to put it in the context of the GP's point.
It's never a zero sum game when the government can legally print all the money it wants. If it were a zero sum game, we'd eventually have to balance a budget and pay down debt... But we don't.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
it'd be fucking moronic to tax a business on income other than its profit
No it wouldn't. It would be moronic to tax a business on income other than its profit at the rates that currently apply to profit, but there is a lot to be said for a low rate of tax on turnover:
The point is, you can incorporate if you want. Hire yourself as a sub-contractor and pay you to go to your day job. It might be worth it, if your tax burden is high enough.
Or low enough. I did this exact thing in college when I was doing some software development in my free time. Rather than actually pay myself a wage, though, I used a bunch of employee benefit programs to drive the business profit down to 0 and provide my self with non-taxable benefits. The company didn't turn a profit but the IRS lets you keep a hobby business as a tax shelter for long enough that i was able to just dissolve the business without ever running a profit after graduating. I had a paying internship that I used to pay the monthly bills and used my connections there to get the contracting gigs. I didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt doing it, either. I grew up poor but didn't qualify for school grants because of unusual family circumstances that made me ineligible. I do everything I can to avoid paying taxes at the end of the year now, but I don't complain about the money that has already been withheld, I just wish it were being used more appropriately.
it seems that these documents were leaked from a prestigious law firm no? So that being the case it seems that you would be better served to hire them to deal with hiding your money. Now I'm not sure that the people that used this law firm "did the paperwork" themselves. And so there is a financial barrier to entry obviously
so your arguement falls flat on its face hard
Don't give me your "but capitalism" bullshit, capitalism is at the core of corruption in the financial world and regulation IS needed to keep them in order.
Stopped reading there.
All you need to do is a quick review of the Quality Of Life of the population's lower and middle class during the last 5000 years to conclude that, while capitalism isn't perfect, it's the best system humanity have come up with so far.
Elok
If you think the market is anything approaching an idealistic "free," you've been drinking the kool-aid without reading the label.
So, think of the suffering hookers, pimps and blow dealers who aren't getting that additional business because the government is getting end-run and can't tax the hidden money.
To me, the real problem is that the money is hidden - squirreled away in private control, ready to splash out as a personal power-play whenever the urge strikes. Unlike government programs, these guys already have all the money they need to satisfy their hookers and blow appetites. What these guys do is arbitrarily splash out a big pile of cash when the urge strikes them to own some waterfront property, or a yacht, or jet - they employ a ton of people on a more or less temporary basis and then close their wallet and let everybody go looking for work again. As their numbers decline (per capita), there aren't enough of them to form a stable working economy.
If you could rely on the rich to spend their money, they wouldn't be a problem. Hell, even if they only spend 1/2 of it before they die, that's enough to keep the wheels spinning for the rest of the world. But, when they go all Steve Jobs and sit on their billions until they die, and worse yet squirrel it away out of sight, that starves the economy, depression style.
The problem with tax on profit is Hollywood accounting. When businesses start playing that game, some tax on revenue needs to be levied. States do this with sales tax, but the Feds mostly leave it alone.
Really> What percentage of those people receiving benefits are cheats? Go on, provide the statistics.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
"Me: Their profit was .3 billion."
Do you know why their profit was so low? Because (some of them) funneled their profits to the company in tax heaven. How they do that? For example, by buying new logo for 1 billion, taking loan for that witn 20% interest rate, or by licencing for huge value, etc. From the company in the tax heaven.
Legal? Maybe. Ethical? You answer that.
Regulated capitalism. Look at what happened in the US with the train and oil monopolies and you can see that when one person owns it all, lots of people suffer and they don't care.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
The free market is the worst thing. It should be banned universally.
So wait. You complain about corrupt politicians, and then say the free market should be banned. Which means you would move control of the economy from the corrupt capitalists to the corrupt politicians you were just complaining about.
it'd be fucking moronic to tax a business on income other than its profit.
Nope, it's called a sales (or consumption) tax and properly applied, it would even the tax burden on everyone by forcing all transactions to pay tax.
My problem isn't taxes, it's the way they're spent.
Everyone has those issues, for instance, a large group wouldn't want to support welfare, the war apparatus, unpopular wars, etc. At least that's what I get from the complaints about their taxes and government activity. That's why you don't get to earmark your tax money. However, you can effectively earmark a portion of it via donations, as you get to write it off.
As for Congress incumbents being re-elected, that's a problem the founding fathers could have addressed by not allowing anyone to serve 2 consecutive terms. Think how much that would have affected politics over the years. All for the better, IMNSHO.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
I know in the train monopolies the hand of Government was considerable, no one entity can acquire the vast stretches of land without the heavy hand of Government and a good healthy dose of corruption to grease the political wheels. Most people confuse Capitalism with Feudalism.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Really> What percentage of those people receiving benefits are cheats? Go on, provide the statistics.
Here's a couple. By the UK government's own figures 0.7% of the entire welfare budget is accounted for by fraud. That's less even than the amount due to clerical errors by the Department of Work and Pensions, which comes to 0.9% of the total budget.
Better yet, there is good evidence that the welfare system is effectively subsidising large companies, like Tesco and fashion chain Next, who are paying employees on or below the poverty line and letting the welfare system pick up the pieces. Of course you will never see wealthy companies (or their wealthy executives and shareholders) called "benefit cheats"; they are merely "optimising their cash flow".
Bad mod.
Just because an argument is idiotic doesn't mean someone hasn't posed it. He saying he's heard the arguments in conversation, not stating that anyone in particular in this conversation are accused of holding them. "If all dumb arguments are strawmen, then only dumb strawmen will have arguments." yup pretty sure that's how that quote goes
I've never understood why anyone would want to tax a corporation anyway, sooner or later the profit is either retained or distributed as a dividend or a draw, then it is taxed at the stockholder's personal rate which is always higher than the Corporate rate anyway; just tax the distributions to foreign national at 25% and be done with it. That would end all of your Evil(tm) Tax Havens.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Beware, down that path lie page-widening trolls.
You might be eaten by Zalgo.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
You may be confusing Social Security with the repayment of money and interest the USG borrowed from Social Security.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Here it's either a 30k€ for the full blown SA, or something like 12k€ for the SARL (which would be the Ltd). That's the capital you have to raise. You can spend it afterwards, but you need to have it for creation... That's without any lawyer and consulting fees.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
$700/year is a significant expense to normal people. You need at least to save $700 in taxes, in order to make that work for you.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
In that system, tax effectively becomes the snake that eats itself. If your business isn't instantly profitable, tax can start eating away at your new business, ensuring that you can never quite get into the black. And since most businesses have startup expenses, having a tax become something you pay as a business, no matter what, will start causing weaker businesses to cave in and fail. When those businesses cave in, there will be less tax coming in, so the taxes will have to be raised. And that will cause even more struggling businesses to fail, continuing the cycle.
Any tax policy which adds to the already high burden of startup expenses or the possibility of having a bad year or two, will cause serious difficulties. If you are only taxing profits, you can at least ensure that the engine keeps running. If you tax a business, irrespective of gains or losses, the government has quite literally become a parasite, which does not care if it kills its host as long as it gets fed.
Capitalism is the engine of the universe and so of men. You want to hit hard at offshore wealth, then look to the laws that drove them there. Blame it on the collectivist pols, not on capitalism. It's just an innocent bystander of an economic model who's origins date back to the big bang. Don't blame it for the folly of men wanting to keep as much as the can. Also, what foods and products are killing people in a literally horrible, painful slow deaths?
Maybe, maybe not.
You're making a huge assumption. There are businesses with offshore accounts, but many who have no such thing. If you treat all businesses like the worst of their kind, you're doing a grave disservice to the ones that you want to foster... those who do pay their taxes properly.
Yes, some businesses are able to hide or otherwise obscure their real earnings, but others do not. Revenue does not equal profit, especially if you are in an extremely competitive business where you need to spend money on marketing, R&D, and even higher quality production.
The original post was asserting that you should not make an assumption that someone who brings in huge-sounding revenues can afford some arbitrary percentage of tax based solely on how large the number looks. Anyone who understands business would know that is patently ridiculous as a notion. I would think that a better counter argument to that is that governments are not that stupid and will be able to take more without killing the source, although individuals who post on forums could certainly be that ignorant of how business works.
Ultimately, I don't believe that the government is entitled to our money. It needs to justify the money it gets in tax. I have no stake in caring whether the rich person evades their taxes using legal loopholes. They're legal. The government itself passed those laws. Are we not to assume that a government with trillions of dollars in budget can't even figure out how to write a tax law that doesn't let corporations get away with this stuff?
Here's the problem. The government only cares about this when something like this leak comes up. Otherwise, they're happy to scurry behind the walls and do their deals and (re)create those loopholes. I don't feel like I have an "ethical" duty to feed that beast any more than I feel I have a duty to pay higher prices for things that I buy. The rich are rich, and they're going to stay rich. The amount of money they make has little relevance to me.
What I care about is the fact that the government is consuming ever greater amounts of money, while convincing everyone else that no one can do as good a job as it can in running just about everything, while at the same time, the legal, but "unethical" loopholes that exist are solely the invention of that same government.
Government is an enabler of the rich, not their sworn enemy. If you want better distribution of income, I would look elsewhere.
so your arguement falls flat on its face hard
Why does it? I don't get it.
There is always a financial barrier. Regardless if you found an Ltd in your country or elsewhere. Founding an off shore company costs around $1000 - $2000 depending on country and a yearly fee of roughly $1500, depending on country. And probably costs for an tax accountant, besides the fact that you pay no taxes you have to make a declaration.
As soon as the taxes you would pay at home exceed roughly $3000 the off shore company is cheaper. And e.g. for authors writing eBooks etc. it is completely legal.
It is only fishy if you have a business in your country and you write your bills from the offshore company and not from the company doing the actual work. But even then there are plenty of legal constructs how you can transfer the earnings into the offshore company.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
When I sold my business, I did donate to the government. Yes, donate. I gave the US Government money, my money, and without force. I specifically was able to donate to NASA. In case your'e curious, you can donate to NASA but you can't earmark the donation for a project. Donations must go to the general operations fund. I was wanting to earmark my donations for educational outreach programs but that's impossible.
How? I half-assedly looked into this not long ago and was unable to find any information that would suggest this is possible. Is there a particular threshold that must be met? (I'm not wealthy)
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
Agreed. Tax is evil, anyone who gets round it is good in my book.
LOL That would be true IF I was using that as an argument. Read the whole thing there, guy. I know it is long but it kind of helps pull the whole thing together.
Also, I was stoned as all hell when I wrote that.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
It looks like they've updated a few things.
http://nodis3.gsfc.nasa.gov/di...
By the way -- I almost missed your reply. I also came across this while making sure that one can donate - you made me wonder if it had changed.
https://www.reddit.com/r/space...
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Remember how former Gov of Massachusetts and former candidate for the US Presidency was 'discovered' to have 'secret, overseas bank accounts' to 'avoid paying taxes'? Funny thing was, no one noticed that the accounts were 'discovered' from his tax forms - he reported the income on his US tax forms! (Funny how his detractors forgot to mention that...)
Before you do anything like that, consult a lawyer and an accountant at the least. It's possible, and generally legal, but you can easily mess things up so that you're in legal trouble or aren't saving money in the long run. You'll probably want the accountant at tax time anyway, and reasonable consultations with lawyers aren't that expensive.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
If you're driving the profit down to zero, you can drive it down to a small positive number. Make a profit enough years (three out of seven?) and the IRS will assume you've got a bona fide business. Make no profit and they might start inquiring about whether you've got a legitimate business or an illegitimate tax dodge.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Pot, kettle, black...
Where are YOUR facts?
Pass the popcorn! This should be good, though only the tip of the iceberg.
May there be copycats at the other firms that do this type of business (But make sure you have good encryption and opsec. A lot of these people play very rough.)
Organized crime syndicates and Pyramid schemes operating for past ~2000 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_minority
Casteism
Or they could, you know, create a progressive tax, starting from 0% tax rate up to 60 or 70% for the largest and wealthiest corporations.
I haven't studied the UK government in detail, but the U.S. government for at least the last 20-30 years has had more tax money (even adjusted for inflation) coming in than ever before, pretty much year after year.
They've just always managed to spend even more than they had come in every year. The government doesn't have a revenue problem, they have a spending problem. Specifically, a spending on lots of things that don't need to be spent on problem.
Don't even get me started on how they spend other people's money via regulations (as opposed to actual taxes and appropriations) more and more every year as well. The wonder is how the economy manages to function at all with the year after year ever increasing burden of government on it.
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
so your arguement falls flat on its face hard
Why does it? I don't get it.
Well, if you really think a little harder, the GP has pointed out that the "lawyers" you are talking about and/or trust them to do the work cause the whole leak issue. Thus, you wasted money on them and they couldn't do the job right.
And $1000 is worth A LOT for many families around the world. Many of them do NOT own a house. Also, many who own a home pay less than $3000 or NONE for their property taxes (in some countries, you pay for the house and land once, and you do NOT pay taxes on the property again). These amounts may be a peanut to you, but they are NOT to many others. Thus, not everybody can do it because they are "too lazy to do the paperwork" as you claimed. Some others who replied to you earlier have already pointed out reasons of why many others can't do. You are using your self as a standard in your answer, and that is a very bad sample.
Per a link -- http://www.theguardian.com/new... -- which is linked by TFA, "Are all people who use offshore structures crooks?" and the answer is NO because there are other legitimate (non-abuse) reasons to do so. "Are some people who use offshore structures crooks?" and the answer is YES. A simple way to explain it for me is that these some people know how to abuse the system and they do.
If you're driving the profit down to zero, you can drive it down to a small positive number. Make a profit enough years (three out of seven?) and the IRS will assume you've got a bona fide business. Make no profit and they might start inquiring about whether you've got a legitimate business or an illegitimate tax dodge.
Oh I had equipment purchases and other things and I turned a small profit my last year of school by liquidating the business assets according to the IRS's own amortization tables. Like I said, it was all side work in addition to a regular job to help pay my expenses during school. The IRS never even blinked. I had a friend whose dad was a CPA that did nothing but corporate taxes and he thought my paperwork was legit. He's the type that wouldn't let one of his clients (or friends) do something shady with his knowledge.
Your very first sentence is self-contradictory. People need government welfare programs so they can remain independent. What? If one is dependent on a government welfare program, you are not independent. I stopped reading after that. It just wasn't worth my time to continue to find fallacious assertions such as those.
Other than this text, there is no discernible information contained in this sig.
You know, I would love to buy you a beer sometime if you end up in Maryland. I can be contacted at Gmail if you are ever up here. I would love to chat about how to start a successful business, and financial strategies.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Neither yours nor the parents argument makes sense.
I pointed out: everyone can craft a offshore "tax free" company. And it is not expensive.
If you want to argue some people are to poor for that: well they don't pay much taxes anyway ... and are not self employed or have no "freelance income" ... so what is your point?
Obviously a "tax heaven" only makes sense if you have income that you can "generate" there.
E.g. you give talks and get payed a huge sum per day, the organizations inviting you contract your off shore company, the company gets the money: 100% legal in nearly every jurisdiction.
Is it morally right? In many circumstances: yes. Why should I suffer because my country taxes different things differently to my disadvantage?
E.g. freelance in France, if I earn more than EUR 30,000 I need to form an incorporated company, and I'm no longer free lanced but self employed. In the earning range below EUR 40,000 that is a huge loss for me per year. (Not even counting the founding costs that easily are over EUR 10,000) I have to earn 10k more every year and don't even earn a single Euro more just because my income on paper is above 30,000.
And this is only for "services". If I simply import spices from Arabia and Asia and resell them the income limit where I can not do that anymore is somewhere around 400,000 EUR ... That means: trade in wares I can do freelance without any force to incorporate till I earn half a million, "services" and "consulting" I can't.
Of course I would place all my "intellectual property stuff" into an offshore company if I was living in France and would work as "freelancer".
Example above: I'm freelance, but got forced to incorporate into an SA or Ltd. My earnings "before special costs" are EUR 50,000. now I have special costs of EUR 10,000 for tax accountant and other law things that I would not have if I had not incorporated. So my earnings are down to 40k, for that I pay 30% tax, lets say 13K my money after taxes is 27k.
Now lets assume I could shift 20k into an off shore company. From 50k in sum, I earn now 30k "at home" and get taxed perhaps with 9k and have 21k left. The other 20k I earn in my off shore company. Or in other words: the company earns it. As the company pays no taxes and pays only a yearly "registration fee" of EUR 2000 (estimated) and lawyer fees (1300 EURO) I have 16,700 EUR "saved" in the bank account of said company.
So bottom line I would "safe" over 10k per year. Probably a bad example, but tax laws (or more precisely employment and corporate law) in many parts of Europe are just that retarded.
Why a multi millionaire or billionaire needs to be so greedy to avoid paying taxes is beyond me.
It is also not understandable how "tax breaks" for rich individuals work in the USA. In Europe such things don't exist AFAIK. Only a company can get a tax break.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
World domination and establishing an everlasting ruling class ain't cheap buddy...
When the king heard the words of the Book of the Law he tore his robes.2Kings22:11
Panama Papers – IT Security and Pakistan While Politicians around the world and specially in Pakistan are busy “point scoring” against each other on basis of revelations in Mossack Fonseca’s Leaks or popularly known as “Panama Papers”, IT Security and data protection experts have just witnessed one of the worst nightmares of data breach that can affect any company around the world. The staggering, “Panama Papers” data has been attributed to the breach of an e-mail server last year. So much so that Bloomberg says co-founder of Law firm Ramon Fonseca told Panama’s Channel 2 the leaked documents are authentic and were “obtained illegally by hackers”. The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which is coordinating the drip-feed release of information from the leak, says there’s 11.5 million documents and 2.6 TB of data, this is the largest data leak of the past several years – bigger than either WikiLeaks in 2010 or the NSA files in 2013. It also seems that the method of extracting data, and potentially therefore the person who leaked it, is different too. While the 2010 and 2013 US military and intelligence leaks were carried out by insiders (Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden respectively), Mossack Fonseca is blaming this leak on an attack on its email servers, according to Spanish news site El Español. The website quoted a statement from the company saying it had opened an investigation after discovering that “unfortunately” it had suffered “an attack on its email server” and that it is taking “all necessary measures to prevent this from happening again”. These include reinforcing its security systems and bringing in specialist consultants to determine exactly what information the “unauthorised persons” have accessed, well for many “ too little too late.” So far, the ICIJ says, 140 politicians and public officials have been revealed as having offshore holdings, more than 214,000 organisations have been identified, along with many billions’ worth of transactions. Reports of corporate data breach continue to pass through news headlines with such frequency that they barely merit a time slot in the evening news. However in 2006, as many as 9,300,000 Americans were victims of identity theft. According to the Better Business Bureau, each victim lost on average more than $6,300 and over 40 hours on the phone with creditors and credit bureaus working to clear their names. Businesses suffer greatly as well, losing a collective $50 million each year as a results of data breach. Pakistan is slowly migrating into the realms of IT and new IT based systems are popping up all over the country that promise to provide the general public with simple services of verifying their mobile sims to more complex systems for land records and taxation records. These systems hold and store Tera bytes of data which includes ID card numbers, name, addresses and other private information of millions of Pakistanis. Now is the need that our IT companies both private and Govt not only focus on developing new systems but also have set standards to ensure data security and privacy. IT race between KP IT board and Punjab IT board (both Govt Organisations) is leading to IT system development on massive scale however to out shine and outdo each other no attention is paid to IT security and data protection. There is no information to what security standards these IT Systems adhere too and then off course there are no external security audits to check system security and data integrity before they are allowed to go “On Line”. This latest data breach in Mossack Fonseca makes it clear that data breaches are a pervasive problem for most organizations in the world today. Yet, despite negative repercussions in terms of cost outlays and reputation diminishment, many companies do not take appropriate steps to prevent data breach, or to prepare for and mitigate the risks whe