These leaks are juicy and all, but have our oligarchs had to change anything as a result of them? What were the big effects of the Panama Papers?
Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
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Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
All the money that rich people give away comes out of your wallet in the form of tax deductions.
Could you explain why is that the case, I've heard that multiple times, but for me the math doesn't work out. If I earn an amount of (x+y), I would get taxed on (x+y), but if I donate x money, I would get taxed on y, but I've already paid x in donations, so unless there is something fishy going on with the x donations part, it would make sense for someone to not donate, as they are already being taxed on y, and the t…
A lot of times, the donations are something they would already be doing. For example, instead of throwing away a couch, which someone was planning on doing, they could donate it to Good Will and get a write-off for the amount the couch was worth (typically they get to fill that in). This also works for much larger things like buildings or land. So if someone owned a parcel of land that they paid $100K for, used for a long time, but then the neighborhood was blighted or something, they could then donate it. It might be worth $30K on the market, but they could say it was $100K and write off the entire amount, which would earn them $36K vs. the $30K plus sales costs to sell it outright.
There are guidelines from the IRS, but they are easy to manipulate:
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p561
Arm's-length offer. An arm's-length offer to buy the property close to the valuation date may help to prove its value if the person making the offer was willing and able to complete the transaction. To rely on an offer, you should be able to show proof of the offer and the specific amount to be paid. Offers to buy property other than the donated item will help to determine value if the other property is reasonably similar to the donated property.
So that person could get a few friends or associates to make offers on the property for $100K and that would generally be enough to prove value at $100K using the arm's-length valuation method.
Also, another example that Trump did was make donations to an organization that held meetings in his hotel. Using your example, Trump made x+y, then donated x to a charity that then spent x on Trump's hotel, so trump is paying taxes on y even though he earned x+y (it works out a little differently, but that's the gist).
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/06/06/how-don...
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
The havens are not the issue. The fact that YCombinator start-ups are funded by Russian oligarchs (via Milner) is an issue. The fact the the US Commerce Secretary is in business with Putin's family is an issue. The fact that Facebook and Twitter are funded by Russian oligarchs (again, via Milner) is an issue. There are a lot of issues here. These oligarchs have no problem killing people wholesale. You want to give th…
Human rights abuses have NEVER been a red line for US cooperation with a foreign government. Ask yourself who benefits from perpetuating this unique goal post for Russia to maintain McCarthy era paranoia?
> Human rights abuses have NEVER been a red line
Yes they have been and are. See the Magnitsky Act (2012) and Jackson–Vanik amendment (1974) specifically.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
You invoked morality. The moral calculus is pretty clear to me: I’ll take the gay loving advancer of technology over governments stealing money to use it to blow up people any day. Apple has the moral high ground, and that ground is higher the less taxes they pay. Remember military spending is far more than roads.
Military spending got you the Internet, GPS, jet engines, microwave ovens and a million more things that you take for granted ...
And the roads the parent commenter speaks of... remember Eisenhower's highway system was built as part of national defense.
And without military conflict over the last 1 million years, human evolution would not be something to be admired. But when we have in front of us the longest military conflict in US history being against loosely organized foot soldiers living in tents, something is clearly wrong.
If we look at how great thinkers had to tease out right answers from wrong--Tesla for example had a lot of wrong ideas and bad experiments, but eventually he came across brilliance.
The benefits we see here from military conflict all came from real competition, and the troubles we can see here come from a consolidation of power under a global plutocracy that is consolidating power across the globe.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#85I like how they are using neo4j to untangle the relationships...
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#86Let'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?"
I've always felt this argument is a teeny but vacuous.
> how do we fund the things that are currently funded by taxation
One method, in polite society, would be to willingly pay the (minimum, of course) taxes require.
We delegate use of force to the State because we don't personally want to have to clobber our neighbour for being a moocher.
So the real answer is: it's complicated. Any system so far devised has been imperfect. We learn to live with the trade-offs.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
What exactly did land of opportunity mean to you? Some people are playing by a more effective set of rules. You were sold a moral paradigm to stuff government coffers and bought it without even questioning how public services could be funded. Others see the moral relativity and aspire to adapt and do.
Oh, but you weren't sold a moral paradigm to stuff corporate coffers? Your argument rests on the premise that you're a free thinker and everyone else is brainwashed. This conceit seems to be very common among libertarians.
Governments are bound by the international market of other governments. They have to balance their taxation morality claims with incentivizing investment to have anything to tax at all.
They’ve missed that balance by a long shot. Oops.
Some places have attractive laws that attract investment. Some people lobbied for those specific laws and wrote them themselves. Think about how that happens. I would do the same as soon as some area breaks away into a new sovereign territory, separatists are too emotional to think about corporate income tax rates, ask for 0% and you’ll get it.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#88Let'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.
Just answer the question:
"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?"
C'mon, we're hackers... we can do better than relying on violence and aggression. What happened to the idea that we could apply our intellects, reason, logic, and rational thinking, and improve on the old way of doing things?
I mean, if you want to abdicate and just accept things the way they are, that's fine. But some of us still believe in progress.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#89My parents always taught me to be honest and care about those around you. The older I got the more I realized that was mal-adaptive behavior in capitalistic society.
The real goal of capitalism is exploit or be exploited.
Re: Paradise Papers: New leak from offshore finance firm
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I knew I'd see a comment such like this when I clicked on the comments: "Nothing to see here, move along..."
It's fun to go through this to see how people are structuring their business, but most people respect the tax laws of the country they're living in. And if they're not breaking any laws, this honestly shouldn't be publicized. In the same way I don't think your personal income should be made public for the whole world to see.
Didn't read any of that stuff (as you said, probably lots of personal information that is none of my business).
However elsewhere it has been suggested that there could a systematic tax evasion going on, weakening the assumtions of macroeconomics about consumption, taxation and investment and how it all plays together nicely, concepts of fairness, a hope for some "trickle down"...
Sounds like a topic worth discussing, now that it has been voted to the front page?