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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."
Now that tax avoidance is proven to work we should all do it. It's irresponsible to pay money when you don't have to. You don't send an extra $100 to your cable provider just because, do you?
Fuck all.
Are we still talking about Hillary Clinton? I kind of feel like she is not important anymore. I mean, she is not the president and never will be. We have already poured something like 100 million dollars into investigating her and Bill Clinton and all we got out of it was a lie about a blowjob. Seems to me we should just let it go, let her retire and move on with it already.
Unless you want every election to be a choice between criminal A and criminal B, you have to stop covering for your side's criminal when your side's criminal gets caught. If people hadn't covered for the Clintons so many times over so many years, they wouldn't have had the opportunity to collude to fix the primary election.
How can we have good government if every fucking official is dirty? Clinton, Podesta, Trumps crew, all filthy. Whatâ(TM)s a responsible citizen who wants reasonable government to do?
The Rep control both houses and the white house. But yet I keep reading how the US is supposidely run by leftist liberals and that they somehow keep the right from doing reforms.
Explain how that works.
where did I suggest that America put on tariffs? I did not. I said that we need to equal the field. What we have now, is insane, and allows nations like CHina to cheat like mad.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
As usual, Trump idiots and Alex Jones idiots are the exact same idiots, and debating them prima facie would be similarly idiotic.
Because thinking beyond extreme rigid one-dimensional binary extremes is VERBOTEN.
So it can't be, that you may think both parties are shit and work for the same group.
And those who don't, will use the old "is this still news" tactic.
Where something utterly fucked-up happened, it got reported, nobody did fuck-all, so it got repeated until the fuckers finally get it into their thick skulls, and they then call it not relevant anymore on the grounds that it is old. Yeah, it's fucked-up and YET it is old! That makes it even worse!!
Aggressive tax avoidance by multinational corporations, including Nike and Apple.
It is legal in the US to avoid paying a tax. It is not legal to evade a tax, however.
What's the difference?
Burger King was "bought" by Horton's, a Canadian company, and licenses back all the Burger King IP from Horton. If this consumes effectively most of the profit, Burger King can legally not pay US taxes on it's income. (Previous statement is opinion, assuming facts I have not verified.) This is why I don't go to Burger King anymore.
It is my understanding that Apple does that as well, but again, I have not verified it to be factual, and is thus to be considered opinion. This is why I don't purchase Apple products.
This would appear to be completely allowed within the US tax code. (I am not a tax professional, if you want to do this, you should purchase an opinion from a licensed tax professional.)
What is not legal is for company Blah to use false accounting to evade a tax. That will get you an orange jumpsuit and those fetching chrome bracelets.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
Unless you want every election to be a choice between criminal A and criminal B, you have to stop covering for your side's criminal when your side's criminal gets caught.
He says without a trace of irony in a thread about Trump's shady financial ties.
Do you know how the Primaries work in the USA? How do you rig primaries? They are run by the states.
Voting is run by the states. The candidates and campaigns and everything else including and plain ol' deciding whether or not to go along with the vote, is run by the party. Why do you think Hillary "won" all those instances where they kicked out Bernie supporters or pretended not to hear them when anything came up that was to be decided by voice?
The DNC rigged their primaries for Hillary. I don't agree with Bernie's crazy views or policy, but I would have voted for him over Trump, and he would have won the election over Trump.
The DNC torpedoed itself in its attempt to stage a coronation for Hillary. The fact that any voter is loyal to the DNC after that is worrying. It's almost a one party system now.
Gun control will happen when the wealthy fear for their lives.
Did you really write that? You included in your own post a quote indicating the "NO taxes" claim is horseshit.
Tariffs are for people that don't have a clue how economics work. Your phone, your food, your car, your clothes are all cheap because you get them from wherever the cheapest source in the world is delivered to you without interference from the government. It doesn't help pay taxes, it never could, and even if it did all the things taxes pay for would cost more to begin with so you'd never get "more" out of that revenue to begin with.
BTW Britain, France, and plenty of other places use VATs and hey look at all the tax avoidance while Apple's profits go to Ireland! You are on top of the Dunning-Kruger effect in economics if you think VATs or Tarrifs have anything to do with tax avoidance or evasion.
Judging from the size and scope of Donald Trump & Family's dealings with shady overseas "investors" and "stakeholders", it seems like he may be the real globalist among recent presidents. I mean, he's surrounded himself with people who either straight up lie (Sessions, etc) or have terrible memories (Sessions, etc) when it comes to meetings with oligarchs, Russian con men, pro-Kremlin "lawyers", etc.
Has there been a single member of the Trump cabinet who does NOT have some shady business deal or a history of meetings with Russians? Maybe Betsy DeVos, but her brother is a war criminal who can't set foot in the United States and maybe Rick Perry, who may be the stupidest man ever to set foot in the White House.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Imagine if the US put hefty tariffs on everything
VATs are not tariffs. Chinese companies pay VAT on products sold in China, but not on exports. American companies pay income tax on all their sales.
China taxes consumption. America taxes production. So they build, we buy. This is a major reason why we have massive deficits and debts.
Corporate income taxes should be abolished and replaced with a VAT and a border adjustment tax.
You actually think Julian Assange, who is an Australian, living in the U.K., inside the Ecuadorian embassy under Ecuadorian asylum, and has been holed up there without being able to leave for nearly five years, and is a world-famous individual, is a Russian spy?
Literally none of those things indicates either Russian OR spy.
Not to mention the fact that almost everything Wikileaks published is of undisputed authenticity. Even the Clinton e-mails had DKIM signature verification.
Even if Assange were a Russian operative, despite there being literally 0 evidence whatsoever, none of that has anything to do with the fact that the things Wikileaks has published about U.S. politics are real. You want to focus on the messenger to ignore the message.
Forty or fifty years from now, the nurses at the old farts home will get their kicks by casually mentioning that Hillary Clinton is thinking of making another run for the presidency. The hillary haters will rattle their walkers, piss their pants, and get nose-bleeds as their blood pressure spikes. "Harvey! I told ya that bitch would come back from the dead to haunt us! She's the spawn of the devil!"
But don't mind me. I'm still pissed at Lincoln for wiping out all the vampires.
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Quit pretending that you don't understand the point. The Dems are still so annoyed that their poorly chosen candidate didn't win (and that they've lost nearly a thousand legislative seats, most of the governorships, both houses of congress, and millions of two-time Obama voters who turned away in disgust) that they're STILL trying to excuse it away as being the Russians' fault, with fictional help from the Trump campaign. Somehow, the Democrats figure, the Russians used expert advice from the person too stupid to be president to use special mind-control powers to convince Hillary Clinton to forget to even set foot once in states like Wisconsin, while being careful to call the people in fly-over states irredeemably deplorable racists and worse ... and that, the mind control thing, is how she lost. It had nothing whatsoever to do with her looking everyone in the eye and lying non-stop for a year about her conduct as Secretary Of State. Or her mishandling of classified information, or her spectacularly robotic, smug behavior.
So, when the Dems insist that it was Trump/Russia to blame, it IS appropriate to talk about Clinton's own cozy (and cash-flush) relationship with the Russians as a way to illustrate the degree of hypocrisy in the way the mainstream press is trying to keep the fiction alive. Your own snark on the subject is a strong indicator of just how appropriate those observations still are to make.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Monica only came to light because of rape accusations from Juanita Broaderick and Gennifer Flowers...allegations Clinton has not denied.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
If you are one of those who praises tax avoidance as a laudable life goal, you are a freeloading, coat-tail riding maladroit.
The biggest value of the data dump is that an otherwise closed doorway into a strange world in which the 1%ers exist is suddenly thrown open to show that monetary enrichment dissolves any and all notions of patriotism and shared values.
Sociopaths will continue to praise their own legal proprietary, and imbeciles will continue to cheer on their beloved sociopaths, but those who try to live and excel while doing their share to make their own lives and the world they live in better get chumped again and again by an evil breed. This data dump helps to see this much clearly.
It is not about some phoney notion that tax avoidance is somehow laudable; it is about exposing corruption.
I deny that I have not avoided attaining the opposite of that which I do not want.
From TFA: "Ross, a billionaire and close friend of Trump, retained holdings in Navigator after taking office this year. The relationship means he stands to benefit from the operations of a Russian company run by Putin's family and close allies, some of whom are under US sanctions.
Of course the Commerce Secretary wouldn't have much say in trade regulations, would he?
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
have their money in several different tax heavens and jurisdictions so that no amount of sanctions or other problems can shut them down
To be fair, that's just common sense. Diversify to avoid undue risk in any specific market or locale.
Leaks indicating that a democratic country that has a government accountable to its public is corrupt and is using the security apparatus to spy on its own citizens or destabilise nominally friendly foreign regimes: News.
Leaks indicating that a corrupt oligarchy run by the former head of the security apparatus who uses intimidation as a tool to keep himself in power is using the security apparatus to spy on its own citizens or destabilise nominally friendly foreign regimes: Not news.
If your defence is 'Russia is as bad as us!' then you're in a pretty depressing place.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
TFA mentions that Donald Trump's close friend and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross "stands to benefit from the operations of a Russian company run by Putin's family and close allies, some of whom are under US sanctions."
The link it provides is also pretty damning: https://www.theguardian.com/ne...
I suspect real Americans take a dim view of a high administration official who maintains financial ties to companies being sanctioned by the US government.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Tax avoidance being a problem means the tax laws need to be rewritten. Expecting people not to keep as much of their wealth as possible within the law is foolish. You 'avoid' taxes every time you claim a deduction... go ahead, tell me you never claim a deduction on your taxes...
Tax evasion, on the other hand... that's effectively treason, since you're not giving your share as required by the laws of the society within which you generated your wealth in the first place. Tax evasion makes you a parasite.
The problem is when those doing the tax avoiding start to look a lot like the tax evaders because they have influence and lawyers who let them have the rules altered or escape the consequences of pushing the grey areas too much.