Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf] • Hacker News Board

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#71

Post by lttlrck » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

Trias11 wrote: post #28

airstrike wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll throw a range out there for the sake of argument, and I'm really low-balling it: 25-30%

So what would be a single reason for person with $100MM of wealth to give $25MM away to wasteful, corruptive government? What kind of benefits the person is gaining by buying $25MM worth of taxes? I thought so too. Give that person a chance to reinvest these money into local economy, growing productive businesses instead of slapping the "filthy rich" label and suddenly there is a lots of capital are used for everyone…

They are contributing to the long term stability and prosperity of the society that provided the very environment that enabled them establish their wealth in the first place. Pay it forward as it were.

Unfortunately many people don't appear to think like that. Or are willfully blind/ ignorant. Take your pick.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#72

Post by alasdair_ » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:11 PM UTC

wiz21c wrote: post #25

Trias11 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you define "fair share" please in a way that everyone is agree with?

Tax avoidance should be punished, that's all. Oh, and in my country, it is punished, it's just that the team which must find about the culprit are totally under staffed, what-a-surprise.

> Tax avoidance should be punished, that's all.

Tax avoidance and tax evasion are distinct things. Tax avoidance is (deliberately) legal. Why do you think it should be punished?

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#73

Post by mattnewton » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

gzer0 wrote: post #58

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #38

That's why i'm against high taxes. We get a bunch of random political parties, promising to "tax the rich" and stuff, we get new laws... and what happens? - The poor already pay very little tax - no change there - The rich avoid the tax by doing shady stuff (who remembers the panama papers.. or this.. or many other stories like these) - I, the middle class engineer get fucked by the taxes, and I get fucked hard, and…

Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you. What is your definition of "middle class"? Someone making $400k is most certainly in the top 1%. What tax changes have occurred so far in the past few decades that are significantly affecting you? I would genuinely like to know

Not OP, but the removal of the SALT deduction hurt.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#74

Post by throwaway77388 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #38

That's why i'm against high taxes. We get a bunch of random political parties, promising to "tax the rich" and stuff, we get new laws... and what happens? - The poor already pay very little tax - no change there - The rich avoid the tax by doing shady stuff (who remembers the panama papers.. or this.. or many other stories like these) - I, the middle class engineer get fucked by the taxes, and I get fucked hard, and…

IMO the high taxes should be only for people worth tens of millions of dollars or more.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#75

Post by lend000 » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

gzer0 wrote: post #58

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #38

That's why i'm against high taxes. We get a bunch of random political parties, promising to "tax the rich" and stuff, we get new laws... and what happens? - The poor already pay very little tax - no change there - The rich avoid the tax by doing shady stuff (who remembers the panama papers.. or this.. or many other stories like these) - I, the middle class engineer get fucked by the taxes, and I get fucked hard, and…

Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you. What is your definition of "middle class"? Someone making $400k is most certainly in the top 1%. What tax changes have occurred so far in the past few decades that are significantly affecting you? I would genuinely like to know

The fact that there are people making 10,000 times as much as the highest bracket in a single year suggests whoever is proposing these tax laws does not actually want to solve the problem. There should be brackets going up to a billion dollars, adjusted every time someone makes an order of magnitude more than the highest bracket.

Also, making 400K does not make you rich. In California, you are actually bringing home around 200K with high cost of living in areas where an engineer might make that much, whereas the top 1% (measured by household wealth instead of income) still has a net worth of ~$10M.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#76

Post by turbinerneiter » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

Trias11 wrote: post #61

turbinerneiter wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you pay for schools, police, firefighters in your tax-free world?

Make tax rate 5% to keep ALL capital in local economy. And that better than losing 90% of capital away for good. Significantly reduce or offset personal and capital gain taxes for people who are investing into public projects. There are many more better ways that tax abusive policies that never work.

What?

Reinvested money already isn't taxed. Companies pay taxes on profits. If they invest more, they reduce their taxable profit and therefore their taxes.

Taxes are not deferring investments, investments are the prime way to pay less taxes. The government wants you to reinvest rather than pay taxes.

Off-shore tax havens broke that system. These companies have billions of dollars sitting unproductively in the Bahamas because they neither want to invest not pay taxes.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#77

Post by fighterpilot » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

DSingularity wrote: post #12

Trias11 wrote: post #3

>> the customers of offshore banks are likely to be from the wealthiest segment of whichever society they come from. What a surprising discovery. Governments with the most abusive tax policies still cannot realize that they cannot tax their way to prosperity. Most creative and productive people, entities and businessed did, do and will use any tools at their disposal to escape barbaric tax racket and turn their atten…

Come on. The ultra-rich don’t pay their fair share. You know this and everyone knows this. Wealth inequality is obscene. Full stop.

The top 1% pay 6x more tax than the bottom 50%! It's obscene how much they pay and how a small group of individuals is forced to carry the entire country. Much, much more should be expected from the bottom 50%.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#78

Post by dkarras » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:12 PM UTC

techbio wrote: post #18

AlexandrB wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think there's any level of taxation where a wealthy individual wouldn't want to do some "tax avoidance" in another jurisdiction? I suspect there is not.

I suspect the more hands-on tools by which law and order is enforced such as asset seizure, 24/7 monitoring, discreditation, and prison time could be the motivation for otherwise tax averse entities to transparently contribute their exact tax proportion.

It still won't work unless the whole world agrees to do it simultaneously. A classic game theory problem, the more some countries agree on it, the more benefit to those countries that don't do it.

Because worst case, the rich entity can flee, or renounce citizenship and buy citizenship where the tax climate is more favorable. With the amount of money we are speaking about, you can buy anything. Each and every country has a very fast track to citizenship in exchange for money (and an instant path to pretty much all rights except for voting). So you threaten the wealthy with torture? Unless you do all this by surprise one day all of a sudden, they can and will escape.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#79

Post by vmception » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

WaxProlix wrote: post #21

vmception wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Momentum trading is all you have. So last week that was Dogecoin and a few years ago it was value investing. The answer is “make money” and let it be taxed . The governments dont care about after-tax money which can then go anywhere unaccounted for. Thats when it can go in a tax deferred account in perpetuity.

It'd be nice if there were some sort of 70+% reliable rule of thumb for this. I say this as someone who's made money on both value investing and dogecoin, but who's still anxious when taking on risk in new momentum-y ventures.

There isn't. The only 70+% reliable rule is general personal finance advice: "Dollar cost average" "Diversify" "The broad index of equities goes up by 7% on average annually over your whole life span, do this and you can afford an extra tennis ball on your walker in a few decades when your body fails you"

If some aspect of that sounded less appealing, then you are back to momentum trading and looking for opportunities that distort the market and reality and bet the farm when you make the trade at all. Try to have fun, usually it comes with dopamine.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#80

Post by maxerickson » Sat, May 08, 2021, 9:13 PM UTC

trappist wrote: post #57

estaseuropano wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not a result of high taxes but of either badly designed/balanced taxes or of lack of enforcement.

I understood parent's point to be that we obviously can't trust them to do better than this. In any case it seems clear that this is exactly why high tax rates hurt the middle class more than the rich. And everyone know it, and yet it persists.

Typically it's because taxing the super rich wouldn't be enough, so you tax a broad swath of the population.

Billionaires (put together) in the US hold something similar to 1 year of federal tax receipts, for example. Tax them into the ground and you get 1 year of revenue.