It's interesting how this leak just seems completely devoid of US involvement. No US news media talking about it or involved. No US people mentioned in the leak.
frankly when I saw it I thought, corruption in iceland? good luck making the US news.
Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
401–410 of 452 posts
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#402Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not paying taxes is leaching. Tax dollars pay for the infrastructure that holds society together. If it wasn't for tax dollars, the society in which you derive your income wouldn't exist. You are provided access under the condition that you put your fair share in when you profit from what is provided. We have a democratic process to determine who can and at what rate they should contribute back. What right do you hav…
> Not paying taxes is leaching. Tax dollars pay for the infrastructure that holds society together. If it wasn't for tax dollars, the society in which you derive your income wouldn't exist. This chain of reason justifies North Korean concentration camps. You are simply throwing out a bunch of justifications for terrible things because you state that the things which those terrible things encase are the infrastructure…
That line of hyperbole also justifies ignoring any value or good the state can and has provided.
If that infrastructure can be provided without the state, why hasn't it?
You are positing a hypothetical system that exists without taxes against a real, concrete system that exists and you take part in everyday. That system right now is dependant on taxes and you're throwing it out for a nebulous ideal world that is stateless and exists only in your head.
> I want nothing from the state except its utter annihilation. By choice, I take nothing from the state, and never will.
Do you drive on public roads? Enjoy protection from crime by the police? Enter buildings and eat at establishments that are inspected for your safety? Ever have to use the state to uphold a private contract? Have you used a telephone, cellular or landline?
Do you use the internet?
How can you realistically say you take nothing from the state and never will?
If you are as serious as your rhetoric, there are virtually stateless places in the world where you can actually live out your dream of taking nothing from the state. Areas of Somalia are among them.
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
It is not complicated to me: - food, books, medicine, ... -> lower VAT - cars, luxury items -> higher VAT
Now, fend off the numerous attempts to have goods moved to a different category. We have enough trouble with "prepared food is taxed but raw food isn't".
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#404Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now, define "luxury items", while considering e.g. that in the UK there's VAT on things like tampons (though at the reduced 5% rate), while e.g. imported luxury meat is zero-rated because its food. It's an incredibly complicated tax to apply, because the rules tend to grow to deal with more and more corner cases. For example: Are jaffa cakes cakes or biscuits? It took a lengthy court case to determine that they are i…
I agree with you, when it comes to applying law to real life it is usually lengthy and pricey process. We should just use a better legal system where these things are not up in the air. You can complicate life with broken legislation, just to keep lawyers busy. You could also just ask: do we need a lawyer to determine that jaffa cakes are cakes or biscuits, or we can pick one and go with it. On the other note on VAT…
Laws are supposed to be somewhat stable though, so having to update tax systems based on evolving patterns of what rich people are doing kind of breaks that.
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#405Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not paying taxes is leaching. Tax dollars pay for the infrastructure that holds society together. If it wasn't for tax dollars, the society in which you derive your income wouldn't exist. You are provided access under the condition that you put your fair share in when you profit from what is provided. We have a democratic process to determine who can and at what rate they should contribute back. What right do you hav…
> Not paying taxes is leaching. Tax dollars pay for the infrastructure that holds society together. If it wasn't for tax dollars, the society in which you derive your income wouldn't exist. This chain of reason justifies North Korean concentration camps. You are simply throwing out a bunch of justifications for terrible things because you state that the things which those terrible things encase are the infrastructure…
You can reasonably argue that the government is involved in issues that are not free rider problems, but I've never heard a reasonable alternative solution to the necessary problems that government does address. Do you have one to contribute?
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#406Earlier 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.
Rest of the population doesn't engage in these ways because it's not worth it for them - they do not pay enough taxes to warrant it. Some people, however, pay lots of taxes - so much that it may make sense for them to spend money and go to great length to somewhat reduce their tax bills. They most probably still pay much more tax than average person - just not as much as they could be paying if they didn't use these…
> They most probably still pay much more tax than average person - just not as much as they could be paying if they didn't use these ways.
It's about relative value vs absolute value. If you use 30% of your wages toward taxes but the next person use 12% of his to pay the same absolute amount, there is an issue that needs to be addressed.
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#407How did this become about taxes when it's actually about corruption? New evidence is uncovered of people at the top systematically abusing their power and disregarding the very laws they instill upon everyone else. Yet HN commenters are telling me the problem is that I am not giving these bastards a large enough share of my income.
it's about corruption where the laws are being bent backward to allow seemingly legal tax evasion on a grand scale. It's isn't about you personally, unless you are one of those individual whose moral tells them to evade the tax office at all cost.
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#408Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not paying taxes is leaching. Tax dollars pay for the infrastructure that holds society together. If it wasn't for tax dollars, the society in which you derive your income wouldn't exist. This chain of reason justifies North Korean concentration camps. You are simply throwing out a bunch of justifications for terrible things because you state that the things which those terrible things encase are the infrastructure…
You can reasonably argue that the government is involved in issues that are not free rider problems, but I've never heard a reasonable alternative solution to the necessary problems that government does address. Do you have one to contribute?
Yes. David Friedman covers this quite well in "The Machinery of Freedom":
http://daviddfriedman.com/The_Machinery_of_Freedom_.pdf
(warning: direct PDF link)
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#409Earlier quoted context omitted.
Being Russian citizen I find this critical position actually pro-Russian. It's in our interest to have a professional government and a president elected on transparent and free elections, to fight corruption and to work for the prosperity of our Homeland and for happiness of all our people. The government, the president, the courts and the deputees of parliament that do not satisfy these criteria can and shall be cri…
> It's in our interest to have a professional government and a president elected on transparent and free elections I think everyone has been looking forward for this to happen for hundreds of years. Nothing has happened. It's still land of kleptocrazy (let's not start arguing that there are other equally bad players as well). And even to this day, Russians seem to be like: "there is nothing we can do". And Putin is m…
And to reply to myself:
Now that we have the leaks, look what is happening in Iceland and compare that to what is happening in Russia. In Iceland people are demanding their prime minister to resign. In Russia, people think that this is an attack from the west.
Re: Panama Papers: Mossack Fonseca leak reveals elite's tax havens
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find the idea of people dressing up simple theft as something other than it is, and in the ill-fitting trappings of a global social good, despite the fact that the institutions being financed by this form of theft were the largest non natural cause of death in the preceding century truly objectionable, too. Letalone moving onto a particularly egregious sort of theft involved in modern taxation rackets where the bur…
Taxation is obviously not theft, any more than charging for goods is. "75% of your income" is a very different thing than "75% of your income beyond a certain figure"; I have no problem with basic levels of income being absolutely tax-free. I don't agree with many actions undertaken by my government, including launching illegal wars which I have protested on the street against. That doesn't mean I don't think everyon…
>Taxation is obviously not theft, any more than charging for goods is.
Pretty sure when you force or coerce someone to buy something they do not want, it is illegal and immoral. And if the value of the item is significantly less than the price paid, it is theft in all but the most pedantic ways.