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Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

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Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#71

It's the wrong angle. One should not look at corporations as the moral saviours. As Supreme Court Judge Learned Hand once said: "Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing 851*851 sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, n…

Can we just bury this facile argument? Corporations spend a fortune on lobbying and enjoy huge asymmetrical advances. These facts are hardly obscure, and to wax pious without acknowledging their existence borders on bad faith.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#72
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure plenty of people wouldn't care. If someone offers you $100m for your business today (Ford), and a Russian company offered you $300m (Gazprom) -- guess which one most would sell to? Facebook might not like it now, but at the time, you could be quite certain they didn't care.

I'm not up on the Magnitsky act, but does it make a difference if it's illegal for you to take the $300m from Gazprom?

Only if you're an American. Afaik it doesn't apply to Europeans and others based outside of the US. Now, that said, if there are sanctions that cannot be avoided then obviously that would be a clear no. Assume companies without sanctions in this example.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#73

Let's not act like tax avoidance is some Big Deal. Taxation is theft to begin with, so there's no reason to begrudge people who are protecting their assets. The real question we should be applying our intellects to is "how do we fund the things that are currently funded by taxation, which are actually necessary / desirable, without using violence or the threat of violence?"

OK, then rent is also theft.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#74
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure plenty of people wouldn't care. If someone offers you $100m for your business today (Ford), and a Russian company offered you $300m (Gazprom) -- guess which one most would sell to? Facebook might not like it now, but at the time, you could be quite certain they didn't care.

I'm not up on the Magnitsky act, but does it make a difference if it's illegal for you to take the $300m from Gazprom?

Well that’s when you set up a subsidiary in a third country which is not following US led sanctions.

Aaaaaand we’ve come full circle.

The root here is that money is fungible. The government has developed legislative tools to ATTEMPT to deter behavior it doesn’t like. Over the past 50 years it has attempted to leverage financial institutions to block the flow of payments based on a miscalculation of how much leverage the USA has over international finance. It requires widespread support over its claims to morality to maintain public support for these fictions and you are merely being exposed to the futility of that particular effort.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#75

It's funny how the people of Russia and the US are framed as being such great enemies when in reality many of the rulers of both countries have more common interests with each other than they do with the citizens of their own nations.

It's to keep people's minds off a spectre that's haunting the world.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#76
post #48

It's the wrong angle. One should not look at corporations as the moral saviours. As Supreme Court Judge Learned Hand once said: "Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing 851*851 sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, n…

> It's the wrong angle. One should not look at corporations as the moral saviours. [...] Rather, it is the governments of the world we should be going at if we want this behaviour to change. Let us pretend that corporations have no influence over laws and governments, and merely play a game they had no hand in designing.

So the corporation is still the symptom.

What we should be doing is insulating the government from outside influence.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#77

It's the wrong angle. One should not look at corporations as the moral saviours. As Supreme Court Judge Learned Hand once said: "Over and over again courts have said that there is nothing 851*851 sinister in so arranging one's affairs as to keep taxes as low as possible. Everybody does so, rich or poor; and all do right, for nobody owes any public duty to pay more than the law demands: taxes are enforced exactions, n…

"wrong angle"? :) sure, maybe we should focus on why only 0.001% of the population can play this pay-less-taxes-with-a-shell-corporation-in-a-tax-haven game...

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#78
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not up on the Magnitsky act, but does it make a difference if it's illegal for you to take the $300m from Gazprom?

Only if you're an American. Afaik it doesn't apply to Europeans and others based outside of the US. Now, that said, if there are sanctions that cannot be avoided then obviously that would be a clear no. Assume companies without sanctions in this example.

EU, Canada, and probably others now have an equivalent of the Magnitsky Act.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#79
Since there are no top level comments putting this out for probably obvious reasons, here is a supportive comment for the article.

This is what people feel in their guts when they drive out on tattered roads and avoid going to the hospital even though they are sick, when they don't have a real increase in wages but are working longer hours. They have the sense that something isn't right, that there are two sets of rules and they got the shaft when it comes to that. Where police forces are cashstrapped and turn to civil forfeitures and ticket quotas while they see famous celebrities and politicians get off for things magnitudes more illegal than what they've done, whether it's smoking a joint or driving while black.

People already have a sense that things aren't fair. There's a reason why tax reform is polling so poorly. There's a reason why most of the country thinks taxes should be higher on the wealthy and corporations. They have a feeling that they are not seeing the rise of productivity in their own life, and they want justice.

My SO lives in SG. She is lower middle class (going to school, father works in a factory) and I asked her about income inequality, for there it's quite extreme. She says it's not that bad because people there have a reasonable standard of living; they can go to school, they can go to the doctor, they have access to affordable food, etc. Income inequality I think isn't a bad thing as long as the poorest among us have some basic level of livelihood. The problem is that in the US, that isn't true, and so, people clamor for justice.

Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm

#80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's a tax cut for billionaires bought and paid for by the GOP donor class I am a small business owner setup as a LLC single member company and the new cap will be a positive for me. It will reduce my tax burden allowing me to buy more software from companies, hire, expand, increase advertising spending, etc. I am a very real case, and there are lots of other small business owners like me who are certainly not bill…

Money that you spend on buying software, hiring etc isn’t generally taxable anyway. A business is generally taxed on income, not revenue. You also have to ask, where is the money coming from? In this case, it would appear to be through radically increasing the deficit. There will ultimately be consequences to that (for instance, in a few years, as the US’s credit rating comes under pressure, increased repayments may…

> Money that you spend on buying software, hiring etc isn’t generally taxable anyway. A business is generally taxed on income, not revenue.

But reducing my quarterly and annual tax liabilies allows me to spend more on these things because there is more cash for the business at the end of the day.

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