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

brookings.edu

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

#141

Post by SvenMarquardt »

rhacker wrote: post #125
lend000 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you serious? 400K definitely makes you rich. As if you do that for 10 years you have 4M dollars, 20 years? $8M I get that COL lowers that, but if you are making 400K you're not renting.

For most, newfound income does not materialise itself as wealth but rather an increase in living standards.

$400k can buy you an entry-level home in cash, or a 10% deposit on that $4M mansion across town. Most choose the latter.

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

#142

Post by mazteraz9 »

maxerickson wrote: post #80
trappist wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is one of the more interesting points that gets lost in the "tax the rich" talk. I believe this is because people's general political point of reference is their individual situation and not the overall system - but from the system point of view it truly is just a drop in the bucket.

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

#143

Post by foresterh »

rhacker wrote: post #125
lend000 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you serious? 400K definitely makes you rich. As if you do that for 10 years you have 4M dollars, 20 years? $8M I get that COL lowers that, but if you are making 400K you're not renting.

If you make 400K after taxes and don't spend any of it, you'd have 4M after 10 years...

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

#144

Post by vmception »

walrus01 wrote: post #103
vmception wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, that's a good assumption because there is nothing secret about it. I'm telling you, and everyone, that the entire phrasing of "leaks" and "secret" and "loopholes" is either complete clickbait or the musing of the completely ignorant, and both of those outcomes means you should go to the actual source of truth instead of bothering with this wealth-porn. And yet you want to argue that. Plato-esque.

The massive pile of internal client correspondence, documents and information that escaped from Mossack Fonseca, from their internal file servers, wasn't "secret"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossack_Fonseca https://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/

there were no "secret" uses of combinations of entities or laws that was new or surprising from this leak and Mossack Fonseca, big 4 accounting firms, and many other providers - as well as anybody with decent reading comprehension skills - can do it as well.

that has nothing to do with client data, which is "secret" even in the "I overpaid my percentage of taxes onshore by not deducting anything" world

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

#145

Post by odiroot »

Swizec wrote: post #51
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…

> I, the middle class engineer get fucked by the taxes Fwiw we feel like middle class but we’re really in the top 5% or higher. We’re the rich people these taxes and politicians talk about. The ultra rich/wealthy are a red herring, there’s only a few 10k of them of them. Only 614 people are billionaires. 7 figure income (salary) puts you in top 0.35% ... that’s 1,120,000 Americans. Not a whole lot. edit: top 10% star…

Being a software engineer in a EU country, you're definitely not a classically rich person. In USA, maybe? In EU not so much. There's so many professions (quite common at that) that earn more, or even much more than us.

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

#146

Post by walrus01 »

vmception wrote: post #144
walrus01 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The massive pile of internal client correspondence, documents and information that escaped from Mossack Fonseca, from their internal file servers, wasn't "secret"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mossack_Fonseca https://panamapapers.sueddeutsche.de/en/

there were no "secret" uses of combinations of entities or laws that was new or surprising from this leak and Mossack Fonseca, big 4 accounting firms, and many other providers - as well as anybody with decent reading comprehension skills - can do it as well. that has nothing to do with client data, which is "secret" even in the "I overpaid my percentage of taxes onshore by not deducting anything" world

You seem to be operating from the position that there is nothing morally wrong with the one percent using every available loophole to pay as little taxes as possible. I'm sure all the laws and corporate structures Mossack Fonsecka made use of for their clients were perfectly 'legal' in the jurisdictions in which the paperwork and shell entities exist(ed).

Where I think we have a significant difference of opinion is whether something should be done to rectify the question of hiding assets offshore.

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

#147

Post by wishinghand »

Trias11 wrote: post #40
celticninja wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does one person need $1bn? If we can ensure that no single individual has to live below the poverty line then I'm less worried about individuals who attain huge stores of wealth.

Instead of chasing the person with $1Bn, wouldn't it be more productive to learn from that person and educate others how to earn good money and live a good, productive lifestyle? Otherwise many are under the impression that looting and robbing is a way to go.

> wouldn't it be more productive to learn from that person and educate others how to earn good money and live a good, productive lifestyle?

It might be, or at least a step in the right direction, if those billionaires were teaching free wealth acquisition classes as a full time job after they attain three commas.

Many of the wealthy are born into wealth and have family and institutions that help them maintain it. The poor won't have a start like that, so we might have to setup pools of money donated from these billionaires for the poor to start out with. It could even have a catchy slogan too. Something like, "No exploitation without education."

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

#148

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

rhacker wrote: post #125
lend000 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you serious? 400K definitely makes you rich. As if you do that for 10 years you have 4M dollars, 20 years? $8M I get that COL lowers that, but if you are making 400K you're not renting.

Moreover you can slum it by scraping by on $100k and bank the remainder every year. Most Americans don't have that luxury.

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

#149

Post by jollybean »

vmception wrote: post #48
joe_the_user wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations for any of this? I have noticed nothing "pejorative" in the language used in the document. I'd be more pejorative myself. The individuals with accounts are described clinically - "high net worth individuals". The ethics of using the leaked data is examined. The situation that individuals with these accounts may be committing crimes is also described dispassionately. It is a fact that these accounts are ofte…

> I have noticed nothing "pejorative" in the language used in the document. First page after the abstract "It is this information asymmetry that gives rise to a host of problems" as opposed to benefits? This study is fairly balanced but chooses to only focus on illegal tax evasion by the wealthy and corrupt behavior of public officials. Instead of legal tax deferment or avoidance.

So what exactly are the 'benefits' of this information asymmetry?

What 'benefit' is derived from Congolese President's ability to have 'hidden' accounts on the Isle of Man, instead of accounts that are available to be scrutinized by Congolese authorities?

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

#150

Post by throwaway77388 »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #83
throwaway77388 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Those high taxes were never about revenue, they were all about keeping corporate managers from looting the companies that employed them.

I think I should have said 'very high taxes'.
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