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Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

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Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

51k going to an accountant in your community is probably a more moral way to spend your money than 50k going to fund a war. If one is going to judge a client's morality by his eagerness to spend more money than his tax bill in order to avoid paying that bill, that same moral lens needs to be applied to the accountant knowingly charging his client more than the client would save in taxes.

Sure, part of the taxes goes to crap. But a part is spent for things that your local community will benefit from. Your accountant may spend some of the money locally which is great, (mostly necessities - lots will be spent with global companies/online) but it's unlikely any of it would make it to the larger projects which require gov-level coordination. Giving that money to your accountant on one hand side you avoid…

That $51,000 to the accountant covers payroll for at least a couple accountants and a secretary, the taxes and rent those individuals pay personally, the rent the business pays locally, food spent at local restaurants and grocery stores, and the taxes and rent those businesses pay. Rent and food make up anywhere from 30-50% of most modest income household budgets, so it's reasonable to believe 30-50% of that $51,000 stays in the community.

The impact the NOAA, VA, etc has on a local community of 100,000 is, barring a local employment center, 100,000/330,000,000*$51,000. It's not even close how much more of an impact paying your taxes to your local accountant instead of the government would have on where you live.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#352
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not caring about money doesn't necessarily mean you are willing to pay more taxes than you are legally required to, especially a subjective amount that others deem 'reasonable'.

willing to pay more taxes than you are legally required to There is a material difference between that and actively seeking loopholes that are not available to ordinary people. Ikea is only possible because of the physical and legal infrastructure paid for by those ordinary people after all. Not that they will do anything of course, the Viking spirit is long dead.

Tax laws are designed to encourage certain types of behavior. Funding non-profits is one of those behaviors. IKEA is setup to fund a non-profit that has a mission that tax law is designed to encourage. If you wanted to donate all of your income, you could probably get similar treatment.

Also keep in mind that IKEA still generates significant tax revenues in employment tax, sales tax, property tax, etc. In the US the property tax is what pays for the physical infrastructure you speak of.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please let's get technical here. Apply to the other comments to the parent comment. Tax avoidance is an illegal means of not paying the actual tax required. What you and the others who have replied to your comment mean is "tax minimisation", which is legal and uses the specified tax code to minimise your tax burden. What is often done in discussions about this subject is classifying legal tax minimisation processes a…

> Tax avoidance is an illegal means of not paying the actual tax required It seems curious that you'd start by defining terms and then define those terms incorrectly. tax a·void·ance taks əˈvoidns noun the arrangement of one's financial affairs to minimize tax liability within the law. In short, what you're referring to as minimisation is avoidance. For what it's worth, I've been using them interchangeably up to this…

Tax avoidance is the avoidance of the required tax (an alternative name is tax evasion), tax minimisation is paying one's required tax and no more.

From the perspective of tax collectors, avoidance is evasion and not minimisation. Politicians also use the term "tax avoidance" as a synonym for "tax evasion" when it is useful to them.

Having friends who worked at various stages for various kinds of bureaucracies (including tax collection), they have spoken of the distinct terminology used and why it is used.

It is not a matter of re-interpreting the "tax law" but creating the appropriate internal definitions as to what that "tax law" means. The problem that people face is that legal definitions quite often do not match the general populous understanding of the words used.

We can always argue over whether or not "tax avoidance" is the same as "tax evasion" or "tax minimisation". The reality is that each of these terms has a definitive meaning dependent on who is using the term. Taxation collection organisations will have one set of meanings, politicians will have another, the general population will have another.

The only meanings that are relevant are what the taxation collection organisations assign to those terms in their internal working processes. I am using the definitions of those terms as shared to me by my friends in taxation.

One of the reasons for using tax accountants these days is that many years ago, I was audited by the relevant tax authority. The upshot was that they disallowed the claim in question and in my last conversation with the auditor, he made the comment that the deduction was allowable but he wasn't going to tell me how to claim it. I have used accountants since then. I let them deal with the complexity of the taxation law. A good accountant is worth the cost just to avoid having to deal with the "insanity" of current taxation regimes.

I don't have a problem with taxation per se, only with the insane level of complexity that has built up in modern times. When tax law goes from say 80 pages at the start to 30,000 + pages today, one has to ask why? YMMV.

Lastly, if in America, the IRS is bound by those same laws as the citizenry, why are the so many documented cases of the IRS "draining" the bank accounts of so many little people when nothing illegal has been done? The IRS has interpreted the law by their own internal definitions.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#354
post #42
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The testing center had their own car? Is this standard in Spain/Europe? I had to pay an instructor with a car to drive me to the testing center and let me use his car for the test while he waited around.

This is the standard in Spain. It is so because the learning car has a double set of pedals so the instructor can operate them if the student messes up: https://img.milanuncios.com/fg/2560/05/256005093_7.jpg In Spain you usually enroll in a driving school where you have theoretical lessons (there's a theoretical exam that you must pass) and then they give you driving lessons with their adapted car. When you're ready…

In the US, teenagers need to log tens/hundreds of hours driving under their parents’s supervision (on a learner’s permit) between the instructor driving sessions and the official road test. Do you really go straight from driving school to road test with no learner’s permit phase?

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#355

The development of no small part of English common law was the result of a multi-century cat and mouse game between wealthy landowners that wanted to keep their property in the family "forever" and everyone else that didn't want to have the dead hand of the past control substantial portions of the country's productive assets. Two groups in particular that didn't like to see assets locked away were dissolute heirs and…

See: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities

RAP has been abolished in a number of US states I believe, where dynastic trusts can now persist "forever".

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#356
post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but also far from the most expensive house in Lausanne.

Is it on the lake?

Couple of km up the hill, outside of Lausanne. Apparently had a nice view of the lake though.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#357
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously. My point is that if you just saw a picture of that house your first thought wouldn't be "Wow, I bet one of the richest people in world lives there". Compare to for example this house: http://luxurylaunches.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Le-Belv... which would be expensive basically no matter where in the world you where. And even with it's perfect location it's apparently still 'only' a ~4 million eur. hou…

Well depending on the body of water it's on my first thought would probably be "which billionaire owns that"

It has a view of the lake, but isn't actually close to the lake.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#358
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the standard in Spain. It is so because the learning car has a double set of pedals so the instructor can operate them if the student messes up: https://img.milanuncios.com/fg/2560/05/256005093_7.jpg In Spain you usually enroll in a driving school where you have theoretical lessons (there's a theoretical exam that you must pass) and then they give you driving lessons with their adapted car. When you're ready…

In the US, teenagers need to log tens/hundreds of hours driving under their parents’s supervision (on a learner’s permit) between the instructor driving sessions and the official road test. Do you really go straight from driving school to road test with no learner’s permit phase?

You need to log the hours in the US, really?

In Canada I just did 4 hours with an instructor and then went for the test and bought a car. Most people drive around with their parents for 8 months on a permit but you don't have to log anything or prove that you did it, you're just not allowed to drive by yourself.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#359
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the standard in Spain. It is so because the learning car has a double set of pedals so the instructor can operate them if the student messes up: https://img.milanuncios.com/fg/2560/05/256005093_7.jpg In Spain you usually enroll in a driving school where you have theoretical lessons (there's a theoretical exam that you must pass) and then they give you driving lessons with their adapted car. When you're ready…

In the US, teenagers need to log tens/hundreds of hours driving under their parents’s supervision (on a learner’s permit) between the instructor driving sessions and the official road test. Do you really go straight from driving school to road test with no learner’s permit phase?

> In the US, teenagers need to log tens/hundreds of hours driving under their parents’s supervision (on a learner’s permit) between the instructor driving sessions and the official road test.

There is no US rule and the state rules vary considerably, many states have no logged practice hours requirement, and it doesn't doesn't seem like any are in hundreds of hours; I think 65 is the maximum and most with a requirement are 50 or less.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#360
post #116
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Injecting legal definitions into an informal conversation is a cheap debater's trick, annoying, and and hijacks the conversation.

You find the introduction of definitional precision to be an annoying, cheap trick? What exactly are you achieving if you don’t rigorously define your terms and agree upon them? You make it sound like insisting on that is just a method of sophistry, but it’s the foundation of human communication. We cannot possibly talk about anything in a productive way if we’re not being precise in our terminology. Nuance and conte…

Your view of rigorous language is debatable. In wittgenstienian sense Language is its use. So one might argue you are playing different language game (aka legal language) in a informal conversation game in a internet forum.
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