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Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

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Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#331

Post by vidarh »

StreamBright wrote: post #310
smsm42 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliminating inequality of taxation means flat tax instead of progressive tax. That would require either substantial reduction of the government expenses or substantial raise of the taxes for low incomes. That probably won't be very popular.

The only "fair" tax type is VAT for humans. Buying a SUV -> You pay 10,000 USD in taxes. Buying bread -> You pay 0.01 USD in taxes. We could get rid off income tax at all and just increase the VAT to ~20 - 50% depending on the type of the product. This way it is almost impossible to cheat. Solving taxation for corporations still an issue though.

VAT is crazily regressive because those who make the least spend far larger proportions of their income buying stuff for it.

Most countries with VAT end up with complicated rules for exemptions for basic goods as a result, to try to balance it better.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#332

Post by pistoriusp »

r3bl wrote: post #143
wyck wrote: post #21

Panama just passed compliance with FATF (February 2016) and it's a message that their political leader/law firm owner/world's largest money launderer (his name is in the OP's title) is no longer open for business after decades of being the go-to place for hidden $$$. http://www.fatf-gafi.org/countries/#Panama "The FATF recognised that Algeria, Angola and Panama have made significant progress in improving their regime…

> Real leaks don't have fancy websites with responsive vectorized portraits and a full on content /social media structure. Yes they do and you're welcome. Sincerely, somebody who worked on this for way too long and practically hasn't left the office this entire weekend.

It's not really usable on mobile though?

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#333

Post by vidarh »

smsm42 wrote: post #284
SilasX wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This x1000. It's the perfect opportunity for a startup: nation/globe sized potential, something people are willing to pay for, and accomplishes a public good: eliminating the inequality in taxation and making the effects of the tax code more readily transparent. (Though if you're too successful at that they'll rework tax systems to be more sane and less vulnerable to this kind of thing, which I would count as a victo…

Eliminating inequality of taxation means flat tax instead of progressive tax. That would require either substantial reduction of the government expenses or substantial raise of the taxes for low incomes. That probably won't be very popular.

"Inequality" here is a weasel word, because it sounds bad without further argumentation.

The argument for progressive taxation is that the same tax rate is a far lesser burden on someone who makes more than on someone who makes less. If one agree with that, then progressive taxation would seem to be fairer. Of course "fair" is entirely subjective.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#334

Post by pilsetnieks »

xg15 wrote: post #321
r3bl wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Real leaks don't have fancy websites with responsive vectorized portraits and a full on content /social media structure. Yes they do and you're welcome. Sincerely, somebody who worked on this for way too long and practically hasn't left the office this entire weekend.

Indeed the website looks very good - and analyzing and presenting such a huge amount of data deserves respect. But I was also wondering why this leak had to be embargoed for a year . Why not release the complete raw data very quickly (with irrelevant, privacy-sensitive areas visibly redacted) and follow up with a detailed analysis later?

> Why not release the complete raw data very quickly (with irrelevant, privacy-sensitive areas visibly redacted)

Did you see the sheer volume of the data? You cannot redact 11+ million documents quickly.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#336

Post by deepnet »

StreamBright wrote: post #310
smsm42 wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eliminating inequality of taxation means flat tax instead of progressive tax. That would require either substantial reduction of the government expenses or substantial raise of the taxes for low incomes. That probably won't be very popular.

The only "fair" tax type is VAT for humans. Buying a SUV -> You pay 10,000 USD in taxes. Buying bread -> You pay 0.01 USD in taxes. We could get rid off income tax at all and just increase the VAT to ~20 - 50% depending on the type of the product. This way it is almost impossible to cheat. Solving taxation for corporations still an issue though.

Inflation is a fair tax, it taxes money.

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#337

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

StreamBright wrote: post #308
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd replace wrongdoing with illegal. If you ask me, if you're a billionaire and you're not willing to pay taxes and spend 0.0001% of your wealth on the expertise to reduce your tax bill by 99%, in legal ways that 99.99% of the rest of the population doesn't engage in, then by all means that's wrongdoing to me and I think most would be with me on that. Of course it's not necessarily illegal.

Could not agree more. Our society is based on the foundation that everybody does her/his own fair share, if the leaders of the world think it is not the way then lets just stop paying taxes and see how fast things change. One funny thing about humanity, we used to pay 1/10 of our income that was enough for the "state", I am paying 65% (that is right) of my income to the sate right now and it is not enough, I have to…

Where do you live that has a >65% top income tax rate? Because I quite like the sound of it. Or are you conflating other taxes and presenting an overall figure?

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#338

Post by deepnet »

darkr wrote: post #114
randomname2 wrote: post #24

Selected quote: "The ICIJ findings include evidence that: - Offshore companies linked to the family of China's top leader, Xi Jinping, as well as Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, who has positioned himself as a reformer in a country shaken by corruption scandals - 29 billionaires featured in Forbes Magazine's list of the world's 500 richest people - Icelandic Prime Minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson and his w…

> British Prime Minister David Cameron, a leader in the push for tax-haven reform There was a load of rhetoric in 2011 about offshore/tax reform, but very little in the way of action since then. As with tradition in Cameron's brand of "Compassionate Conservatism", it's a depressingly cynical slight of hand and nothing more.

Cameron's father uses this company to offshore some of the family fortune.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-...

But as David Cameron has stated the real villian is Jimmy Carr /s

Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens

#339

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

hartpuff wrote: post #294
tootie wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure Putin's cash is ill-gained but I'm extremely doubtful it will be exposed in these docs. The NY Times has a story that he straight-up murdered a guy on American soil. That probably won't stick either.

> The NY Times has a story that he straight-up murdered a guy on American soil. This seemed extremely unlikely to me, so I Googled it. If you mean this story: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/us/mikhail-lesins-strange-... it doesn't say anything even remotely like Putin straight-up murdered a guy (a scumbag who has spent his life associating with and/or making enemies of other scumbags) on American soil. In fact it…

Alexander Litvinenko's death [1], on British soil, was definitely murder, though. According to the investigation, the Russian state was involved. Obviously, Putin didn't actually do the deed himself, but it seems more likely than not that he ordered it, or at least knew about the order.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Alexander_Litvine...

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