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Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
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Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
VAT is regressive - that is it takes a proportionately larger chunk the poorer you are - often considered unfair. For example if I and Warren Buffet buy a car then I have spent a much larger percentage of my overall wealth than he does
Warren Buffet is likely to buy a much more expensive car, or cars. He's spending more on everything than you are. That doesn't even things up, of course, but then neither does the current system. It would arguably be closer to even. The beauty of a universal sales tax (as an alternative to income tax), in addition to the fact that the wealthy consume more of everything, is that a transaction tax is more difficult to…
In the grand scheme of things, Warren Buffet does not spend any money on taxable products. He invests money, but investments cannot be taxed in a VAT scheme, for obvious reasons.
Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's probably a weakness of democracy, sure, but it's not as though "total financial freedom and anonymity" are common properties of non-democratic states. Most of the problems in democracies seem to exist, possibly magnified, in the alternatives.
IIUC, the "problem with democracy" being pointed to is not the outcome in this particular case, but the general tendency for us to make decisions that sound good without thinking too deeply.
In a democracy, we're not the ones who are making the decisions. The decisions are, by and large, out of our control. We decide who makes the decision, but the same decisions tend to get made on the majority of issues.
So is the problem that our decider selection process is flawed and puts up deciders who don't think deeply, or is it (more likely) that whoever you put into that position is likely to come up with the same answers, because they tend to answer important questions, and then to provide a different justification because it sells better?
Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
> forcing foreign financial institutions to tell the US government about any American-owned assets on their books This is another interesting part. How can the US "force" a sophisticated wealthy sovereign nation that culturally and morally values banking privacy (not only for the profits), like Switzerland? It cannot be understated how much power, control and ownership the US has of the world financial system. If Swi…
> This is another interesting part. How can the US "force" a sophisticated wealthy sovereign nation that culturally and morally values banking privacy (not only for the profits), like Switzerland? Two reasons come to mind: 1. Switzerland (like EU countries) depends a 100 % on the US for defense, in the sense it would basically turn into Russia / China overnight if the US wasn't a military power protecting them. This…
> Switzerland (like EU countries) depends a 100 % on the US for defense, in the sense it would basically turn into Russia / China overnight if the US wasn't a military power protecting them.
Neither Switzerland nor the EU depend "100%" on the US for defense, far from it. Some EU countries are among the biggest military spenders in the world. It's also difficult to see how Switzerland would "turn into Russia / China overnight" given that it's completely surrounded by the EU. How do you imagine that the Russians or Chinese will come to dominate Switzerland? Note that Switzerland managed to maintain its independence in WWII even though it was completely surrounded by the Axis.
Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
> forcing foreign financial institutions to tell the US government about any American-owned assets on their books This is another interesting part. How can the US "force" a sophisticated wealthy sovereign nation that culturally and morally values banking privacy (not only for the profits), like Switzerland? It cannot be understated how much power, control and ownership the US has of the world financial system. If Swi…
> This is another interesting part. How can the US "force" a sophisticated wealthy sovereign nation that culturally and morally values banking privacy (not only for the profits), like Switzerland? Two reasons come to mind: 1. Switzerland (like EU countries) depends a 100 % on the US for defense, in the sense it would basically turn into Russia / China overnight if the US wasn't a military power protecting them. This…
>in the sense it would basically turn into Russia / China overnight if the US wasn't a military power protecting them
Russia doesn't have any power beyond posturing to overly sensitive Eastern Europeans and China can't project much beyond their loans (and that's if they're willing to spend the little currency reserves they have).
There's quite a bit of resistance to NATO in parts of Europe these days precisely because the US is both unneeded and overbearing.
Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not so sure how aligned the EU is with the US anymore. A lot of what some EU politicians say is about not being able to trust the US. Verhofstadt gives me such an impression at least.
Switzerland isn’t part of the EU.
It's a part of a lot of European treaties and it's aligned with the rest of Western Europe on most things.
Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#377Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ...the United Kingdom being the leader here. Having lived in the UK, I'm convinced that the real reason for Brexit is to preserve these offshore tax havens from any meddling by EU regulations. It's not an accident that Brexit suddenly became crucially important to the Conservative Party only when the EU developed a new interest in unified financial regulations after all the turmoil of 2008-2011.
The EU has an unbelievable number of tax havens. It is one of the last places in the developed world where you can genuinely clean dirty money with ease. The last Commission President was literally the ringleader for tax theft: he was FM/PM of Luxembourg, and actively lobbied companies to domicile there, funnel revenue through Luxembourg (i.e. structuring for tax avoidance alone), and personally negotiated the 1% cor…
Juncker made for a convenient political foil in many ways, but ultimately EU policy is made by national leaders in the European Council. The shady practices of Luxembourg and Cyprus were previously of no interest to the national leaders who had bigger fish to fry.
This has changed though, as certain European parties' voters have become irate about international tax evasion. For center-left PMs, stomping down on countries like Cyprus isn't going to lose them any votes and increasingly looks like a political win.
For Britain, the conundrum is that there's so much British money in the "nearshore" tax havens of Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. Whereas Luxembourg mostly cut sweetheart deals for corporations and Cyprus mostly dealt with non-EU foreigners who don't get to vote anyway, cleaning up the British tax havens would threaten the hidden wealth of Conservative voters directly.
Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#378Consider this holocaust survivor.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/05/16/holocaust-surviv...
His family is murdered by Nazis but he escapes to the UK. He sets up offshore funds in the event something like the holocaust happens again, but the tax authorities go after him.
This is one of many reasons for people to set up offshore accounts that have nothing to do with illegal activities.
How many people like this has this person hurt?
Where does this belief in the infallibility of the tax man come from?
Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
I still can’t believe it’s legal to move from SF to Texas if you were born and raised in SF. You owe the good people of San Francisco repayment for raising and nurturing you. Leaving after all that education and local services is a corrupt tax-dodge into a state without income tax.
> I still can’t believe it’s legal to move from SF to Texas if you were born and raised in SF. You owe the good people of San Francisco repayment for raising and nurturing you. Leaving after all that education and local services is a corrupt tax-dodge into a state without income tax. Lol you again. How many times must you hear this to understand: Total freedom implies freedom of movement. You do not own people. You n…
Pleased to see the "no borders" argument being made, but the more important one is to the south of California.
Re: Hacker Publishes 2TB of Data from Cayman National Bank
#380Earlier quoted context omitted.
So everyone is assumed to be a criminal until proven otherwise?
How else do you propose taxation is assured? Blind trust?
Tax assets not transactions.
Land ownership is registered for good public purposes which does not unreasonably destroy privacy concerns - it's usually obvious who (person or business) controls the land anyway (who should a tenant pay the rent to? who gets to decide if you can be a tenant?) and it gives people a great deal of confidence that they know that whoever is recorded in the government land registry as having a right to sell the property actually has that right. The common law approach of having to hold a series of documents that identify a continuous line of owners going back to some unconfirmable initial grant by a long dead king is not in the interest of the purchaser of the land.
Moreover, the market distortions taxing land (as the primary source of government income) will have are generally positive. A person can no longer buy a house in the hope that the land it sits on will double in value. They can only buy a house in the hope that they are capable of making a profit out of it; the land purchase merely gives them the right to improve it.
The same advantages may be visible for taxation of share holdings: instead of simply trying to profit from someone else's actions, you would buy shares because you think the dividends will exceed other income sources for the same purchase. It may be legitimate to have anonymous share holdings which require active detective work, so it's possible this would be an unreasonable invasion of privacy.