Live data from Hacker News

Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

vox.com

201–210 of 401 posts

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no way to dodge taxes as a US citizen by moving abroad Well, no way to "legally avoid"; "dodge" is broader, and there are probably many ways of dodging taxes that are easier if the institutions you deal with in your daily life aren't subject to US jurisdiction and regulations designed to expose tax evasion to US authorities. Also, typically you want to have at least one national citizenship, so if you are…

you still have to pay exit taxes on renouncing, so not clear this is a good way of avoiding tax.

Also... if the renunciation is motivated by avoiding taxes, the person is banned from re-entering the USA.

excerpt[1]: If the Department of Homeland Security determines that the renunciation is motivated by tax avoidance purposes, the individual will be found inadmissible to the United States under Section 212(a)(10)(E) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1182(a)(10)(E)), as amended.

EDIT REPLY to : "Would they have to prove intent?"

Probably not because granting admission into the USA of a non-citizen (ex-citizen) is at the discretion of the Executive Branch of government and doesn't go through "due process" of any court system. So no "burden of proof" required.

[1] https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega...

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#202
post #173
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to the same high school as Sergey Brin, a little over a decade after he had and well after Google had become the de facto search standard. Didn't know until I was already in college. AFAIK he's never made an effort to reach out to them, grant resources, give a talk, anything. It's a majority-minority public school in a solidly middle class (like, actually middle class) suburb, so it's not like they're flush wi…

Well he might just not have fond memories of that school.

That's entirely possible.

But one could argue that would be even more reason for him to step in and try and make it better.

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#203
post #92
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Buying a car is not necessarily parasitic behavior. Bailing on your taxes is.

It is not possible for Eric Schmidt to bail on his taxes by doing this.

If he renounced his American citizenship, he could. Just like Saverin.

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His step 2 could then be to renounce his US citizenship.

In which case you pay an "exit tax" equivalent to the tax hit from liquidating all your assets, e.g. capgains on all held stock. Renouncing citizenship never works as a tax dodge, unless you have some reason to expect large future gains in your assets that aren't reflected in their current market prices.

Like what Facebook's cofounder did right before the IPO.

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#205
post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not moral behavior. Getting a second citizenship?

Bailing on your taxes. Or what else do you think he's doing it for?

Are there US citizens here who wouldn’t take dual EU citizenship if it was offered to them? Taxes and social stability aside, Europe is full of nice places to visit, do business, and live. The value of being able to do these things without restrictions seems self-evident. I don’t see why you’d presume a nefarious motivation.

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#207
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans are currently blocked from travel to many countries, European included, due to the bungling of their Covid 19 response.

I’m sorry, but this is missing the point. You’re forbidden from traveling FROM a country on whatever list (some are outright lists, some are based on the infection rate, etc.). Traveling FROM the US is the problem, regardless of where your passport is from. Getting a passport (or even a residence card) from an EU country would only allow you to get back to THAT country, it doesn’t just suddenly open up the world to y…

> Traveling FROM the US is the problem, regardless of where your passport is from.

Which is why he would be traveling from Cyprus

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#208

If this is indeed for a tax dodge, what's funny is that the US Government helped fund Google. Or, more accurately, they funded the research into the seemingly esoteric problem that became Google; > In 1995, one of the first and most promising MDDS grants went to a computer-science research team at Stanford University with a decade-long history of working with NSF and DARPA grants. The primary objective of this grant…

This is not a tax dodge. There is no way to dodge taxes as a US citizen by moving abroad, the US is the only country in the world with a real global taxation system. EDIT further information I posted below: The US has the unique position of being able to actually enforce this due to the fact the USD is the reserve currency of the world and every country needs to stay on the good side of the US Treasury to transact in…

> This is not a tax dodge

I bet he is well into only paying capital gains territory. Like Warren Buffet who said he pays less than his secretary [1]

[1] https://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secret...

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should be forced to abide by the laws while he lives or does business here. But if he wants to live in a new place by a new set of laws in the future, I'm not sure what's wrong with that. It seems more like you regret the laws in the US during the decades he was here, and you are hoping future changes in the law will retroactively address your concerns. But I see no moral basis for that stance. If we want to chang…

> “I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate,” Schmidt told one interviewer in 2012. “It’s called capitalism.” As much as I enjoy watching people dissemble while describing their true actions, there’s not really anyone naive enough to believe Schmidt didn’t actively create the rules google currently operates under, is there? Maybe he…

That's a different line of reasoning, and it falls under the category of "regret the previous laws".

The solution for the future is to try to harder to make good laws in the present rather than somehow retroactively change the past.

Re: Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus

#210

If this is indeed for a tax dodge, what's funny is that the US Government helped fund Google. Or, more accurately, they funded the research into the seemingly esoteric problem that became Google; > In 1995, one of the first and most promising MDDS grants went to a computer-science research team at Stanford University with a decade-long history of working with NSF and DARPA grants. The primary objective of this grant…

This is not a tax dodge. There is no way to dodge taxes as a US citizen by moving abroad, the US is the only country in the world with a real global taxation system. EDIT further information I posted below: The US has the unique position of being able to actually enforce this due to the fact the USD is the reserve currency of the world and every country needs to stay on the good side of the US Treasury to transact in…

This is not a tax dodge. There is no way to dodge taxes as a US citizen by moving abroad, the US is the only country in the world with a global taxation system.

It’s not to avoid criminal justice either as Cyprus is a lapdog to the US for extradition, same as the UK is.

Post reply on HN