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'Panama Papers' Group Strikes Again with 'Paradise Papers' (theguardian.com)
Long-time Slashdot reader Freshly Exhumed tipped us off to a new document leak that's just revealed massive tax havens used by the world's most wealthy and powerful people. An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian:
The material, which has come from two offshore service providers and the company registries of 19 tax havens, was obtained by the German newspaper Suddeutsche Zeitung and shared by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists with partners including the Guardian, the BBC and the New York Times. The project has been called the Paradise Papers.
It's the same group responsible for the Panama Papers, and the Guardian reports that in these 13.4 million new files, journalists have discovered:
It's the same group responsible for the Panama Papers, and the Guardian reports that in these 13.4 million new files, journalists have discovered:
- "How Twitter and Facebook received hundreds of millions of dollars in investments that can be traced back to Russian state financial institutions."
- "Aggressive tax avoidance by multinational corporations, including Nike and Apple."
- "Extensive offshore dealings by Donald Trump's cabinet members, advisers and donors, including substantial payments from a firm co-owned by Vladimir Putin's son-in-law to the shipping group of the US commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross."
- "The tax-avoiding Cayman Islands trust managed by the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau's chief moneyman."
"The publication of this investigation, for which more than 380 journalists have spent a year combing through data that stretches back 70 years, comes at a time of growing global income inequality," reports the Guardian. "Meanwhile, multinational companies are shifting a growing share of profits offshore -- €600 billion in the last year alone -- the leading economist Gabriel Zucman will reveal in a study to be published later this week. "Tax havens are one of the key engines of the rise in global inequality," he said."
I seem to recall the Prime Minister of India being ousted as a result of the Panama Papers. So, not exactly nothing.
You really need to stop listening to Alex Jones, here is a pro tip: He is deluding you so he can fleece your dumb gullible ass.
Monstar L
Using cash to avoid payment of taxes is in fact evasion.
And the IRS pays finders fees to folks who assist them in obtaining evidence of the act.
> i avoid with cash payments. i don't evade, unless TurboTax does.
You're not just guilty of evasion, but the *felony* variety.
If you accept cash payments and intentionally don't file a return showing those payments, that's misdemeanor tax evasion. When you file a return which says "total income... Under penalty of perjury" which you know does not accurately include those cash payments, that's FELONY tax evasion.
https://www.irs.gov/compliance...
Common tax avoidance methods include 401k, IRA, HSA, and FSA.
I know they all look alike ;-) but it was actually the PM of Pakistan in this case. A couple of famous film stars were smacked around by the Indian media for offshoring a bunch of their investments. The panama papers also took down Iceland's PM and had Cameron suffering from foot-in-mouth disease for a while.
Some Americans pay NO Federal Income taxes: "out of 171.3 million tax units this year, 77.5 million—or 45.3 percent—won’t pay income tax. ... Just because people don’t pay federal income tax doesn’t mean they don’t pay any tax. In fact, nearly everyone pays something. Three-fifths of those who don’t owe income tax work and thus pay Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes. And almost everyone pays state and local sales taxes," -Forbes
Most of those filing single or jointly who make enough to qualify for Federal Income Tax payments use commercial software to MAXIMIZE their deductions, which is perfectly legal and a wise thing to do. That isn't tax dodging, it is tax avoidance. Only stupid people pay more taxes than they have to. The way the tax laws were written by Congress and additional "regulations" added by the IRS, those who earn more money have more deductions and write-offs to claim, all resulting in less taxes. If you want the "rich" to pay more taxes tell Congress to change the rates. Good luck with that if you expect them to increase taxes on themselves or the people that fund their campaigns.
It is also ludicrous to claim that the bottom 20% pay more taxes than the top. How can the bottom 20% pay more income tax if the bottom 40-45% pay NO taxes.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/beltway/2015/10/06/new-estimates-of-how-many-households-pay-no-federal-income-tax/#163cf0a261cb
Sorry I hurt your feelings little snowflake, but where exactly did you determine I'm an "SJW". I didn't refute the point because there was nothing to refute dispshit. You can't go making broad claims with 0 evidence to support it other than some guy who sells you fraudulent products says it's true. I know you don't like being told you are a dumbass snowflake, but you are a dumbass snowflake who sucks Jones' dick because you are too stupid to realize he is raping you.
Monstar L
Are they going to release the source material to the public so that we can find anything that the 380 journalists "accidentally" missed or forgot to report in their zeal to be completely unbiased and impartial while on the payroll of major news organizations?
Last time they did release a complete searchable database of the leak - https://panamapapers.icij.org/..., https://offshoreleaks.icij.org... - so there's every reason to believe they'll do the same this time.
Indeed, last time after the full release there was no indication that the journalists had failed to be unbiased or impartial in their initial reporting. So there's zero grounds for you to be suspicious this time.
Consensual for whom? Paula Jones didn't want sex, even if Monica Lewinsky did. Bill lied in court about Monica to cover up the harassment of Paula when he was sued. Monica isn't the one who sued him!
Bill Clinton was held in contempt of court for perjury. As part of that, he surrendered his license to practice law for 5 years. He also settled out of court with Paula during the appeals because of how his lies had been uncovered. This led to articles of impeachment, which failed, but that's purely a political vote in the House of Representatives.
You guys always divert things to Monica & the BJ when the problem is what Bill did to Paula.
What you described ("kicked out Bernie supporters or pretended not to hear them") is a caucus, not a primary election. Some states have caucuses, some have primaries which are run just like any other election -- secret ballot, no discussions or voice votes. Bernie actually did quite did well in the caucuses, Clinton did much better in the primaries which bring out more "regular people" rather than the fired up activists. Over 3 million votes better than Sanders in the primaries.
I don't know. The government seems to be doing a great job at borrowing money to funnel into weapon manufacturers and then inventing wars to waste those weapons. The F-35 is just one of many other great examples of this. Meanwhile, wealthy individuals can't well funnel money into weapons production like that because we, oddly, probably wouldn't tolerate their inevitable rise to warlords. In all seriousness, the role of the US Federal Government today is job creator for weapon vendors and food/medicine/health care production with a massive side job of buying off the elderly. There's no way the wealthy could afford that even if they wanted to given the US Government can't even.
Honestly, if you want companies to pay taxes you make it so they can't avoid paying taxes. Imagine if employers weren't mandated to withhold income for income, social security, etc for employees. You think the solution at that point would be to just keep lowering taxes until eventually people choose to accurately report their income? The obvious problem isn't the tax rate. It's the obvious unwillingness of lawmakers to enforce it.
Not spy, stooge.
They badly damaged Marine Le Pen, the far-right candidate in France's last election.
The Icelandic government lead by Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson was brought down by information in those leaks.
We learned a lot about how Russia's leaders and their friends hide wealth and funnel it covertly overseas, to interfere in the democratic processes of other nations.
The investigation of FIFA was aided by the release, resulting in raids on their offices in Switzerland. A lot of the bribery that was going on was only proven by these papers becoming available.
Ukraine's government fell apart due to the leaks.
The impeachment of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff was in no small part due to the Panama Papers, and several members of her government and the Brazilian state have been prosecuted.
That's all I can remember off the top of my head, but Wikipeida has a really, really long list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
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SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I am a tax corporate attorney. My job is to ensure that a Fortune 500 company does not pay more tax than legally owed. When operating internationally, half the game is just making sure you don't get hosed and end up getting double-taxed by two different jurisdictions or not being allowed to use a big loss you have suffered to offset a gain elsewhere- so when I say more than "legally owed" I do not mean more than technically owed after some complected scheme is executed.
These stories tend to confuse tax evasion, tax avoidance, and money laundering. While an offshore company may be used for any of those things, the mere use of an offshore company doesn't necessarily mean a company or person is engaging in any of them.
In my business, we use offshore companies as neutral third locations. For example, if we need to operate in a dodgy part of Africa, we likely don't want to form a subsidiary in that country because such countries often lack robust corporate law and because it can be very administratively burdensome to form a new company there. The Caymans offers robust corporate law, a functioning court system, quick setup, and quick dissolution. There are both tax and non-tax reasons not to use a U.S. company for that purpose. If we were to sell that subsidiary, a foreign buyer may not want to purchase a U.S. company with all of the administrative and legal burden that comes with owning one. Tax-wise, using a non-U.S. entity prevents that company from being taxed in both the U.S. and the operating country. It would still be subject to U.S. tax if it sends money to the U.S. parent, but it's usually possible to manage tax attributes and cash so that's not necessary.
A tax avoidance motive might be something like an earnings-stripping transaction where intellectual property is licensed to a low-tax country. However, the tax code hardly allows carte-blanche for doing transactions like this, and the time has long passed when you could just set up a Cayman company with no employees that holds all of your intellectual property. Large companies are audited every single year or are under a continuous audit program the IRS runs- nobody in the world of big business "gets away" with something- everything must be legally justified. As a result, the most aggressive tax avoidance transactions tend to be seen from medium sized privately held businesses and high net worth individuals- not large public companies.
For individuals without extensive business operations, offshore companies rarely offer any legal tax benefit. As an individual, you are still subject to worldwide taxation. Rules such as the personal foreign holding company rules in the tax code are specifically designed to prevent offshore companies from being used for personal tax avoidance.
You will find individuals who use offshore company for straight-up tax evasion. This is one of the things Paul Manefort was indicted for. Legally, you must declare offshore accounts- and he allegedly did not. Laws such as FATCA and foreign equivalents are making this strategy tougher to pull off because they require tax withholding on transfer to an offshore location if the individual refuses to provide information necessary to report the transaction to the tax authorities.
Finally, you will find offshore accounts used for money laundering. That is a very different type of operation from multinationals using them for a legal benefit. It's worth noting that not all offshore locations are created equal in this regard. Jurisdictions like the Caymans and Bermuda have extensive anti-money laundering laws that they do their best to enforce. As a result, most Cayman and Bermuda companies are subsidiaries of legitimate business. By contrast, a fortune 500 company would almost never use Panama for a subsidiary unless it was actually doing business in-country.
TLDR: Articles like this talk about offshore companies as if they are always illegitimate and treat tax avoidance, tax evasion, and money laundering as the same thing. There are both legitimate and illegitimate uses of offshore companies, and each of these things are separate phenomena.
I am a tax attorney. What you have described will not work. You evidently need to educate yourself a wee bit more and put in a little more effort. Under the scheme you describe, the license fees received by the Cayman company would be Subpart F income, fully taxable in the U.S. to the individual who owns the controlled foreign corporation. You'd also need to worry about IRC Section 367(d) on transferring your intellectual property offshore. Also, although loan receipts are generally not taxable income, there are rules under which a cross-border loan may be re-classed as a dividend or subject to withholding on the interest payments.
International tax is not an area where it is wise to dabble. Advising people do engage in transactions like this without understanding the rules is irresponsible at best.
Hate to say it, but there's not all that much much a regular W-2 employee can do- certainly nothing using offshore companies that would be beneficial. This is especially the case if you are not itemizing deductions. The thing is, most middle class people don't pay that much federal income tax at the end of the day, so there's just not that much in the way of savings to be had (payroll taxes are another story).
Make sure you are maxing out all of your tax advantaged savings space- Roth IRA, 401k, Health Savings Account, and 529 (if you have children and paying for college). If you are over the income limit for a Roth IRA, you can look into the backdoor Roth, and if you work for a company with a really god 401k plan - the mega backdoor Roth. In some cases, you can get almost $100k annually into investment accounts either tax-free, or with tax-free gains on the investments.
In order to do fancier tax planning you need to be in business of some sort. Real estate investing can be very tax favored. However, it makes little sense to change careers solely for tax purposes. Only do it if you really want to run the business- not because you want to save on taxes.