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Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

businessinsider.com.au

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Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#231

Post by michaelmrose »

anonfornoreason wrote: post #184
rapind wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This exactly, and because of the absurd magnitude of wealth some people have they are setting policy with their foundations. Basically governing without ever being elected. The whole philanthropy argument is irrelevant PR. This wealth wasn't created in a vacuum.

I’ll start paying heed to this line of reasoning when a significant portion of tax revenue is spent bombing innocents. There’s very shaky moral grounds for many of our actions overseas, and I don’t blame any rich person for wanting to control policy for significant philanthropic efforts.

We can in theory vote for people that wont bomb innocents we can't vote out the rich people in any meaningful way.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#232

Post by vishnugupta »

paxys wrote: post #19

> Uber transfered its intellectual property through a $16 billion “loan” from one of its subsidiaries in Singapore that in turn owns one of Uber’s Dutch shell companies, a manuever that grants the company a $1 billion tax break every year for the next 20 years, the researchers found. Shit like this makes my head hurt and infuriates me at the same time.

> Shit like this makes my head hurt

If you are feeling masochistic then I highly recommend these two books. 1. Moneyland [1] 2. Treasure Islands [2]

One can set up corporate structures in a way that will make those looking for the real owner stuck in an infinite loop spread across the globe.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/07/moneyland-oliv...

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10197857-treasure-island...

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#233

Post by pjc50 »

0xy wrote: post #147
seaourfreed wrote: post #93

Congress is corrupt (via lobbyists). Congress would make this illegal if congress men/women didn't sell out American Citizens. 88% of the cost of the US Fed gov is paid for by taxes by workers (income taxes). Less than 12% comes from all corp/business taxes combined with capital gains (taxing the rich 1%). Business shifting tax burden to workers is a massive scale problem. $3.5 Trillion = US Tax Revenues (2019) and 8…

It's really hard to evade personal income tax, so why shouldn't the government just give up and tax corporations at 0%, while having high progressive personal income taxes? Or, better yet, proper sliding consumption taxes. If you want a yacht or private jet, pay 150% in taxes. Norway already taxes luxury cars at over 100% of their value.

This provides an even bigger shift to turn "income" into "capital gains".

Or have your own personal shell corporation accumulate wealth and influence for you.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#234

Post by michaelmrose »

sneak wrote: post #226
michaelmrose wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its an inherently good thing if the parties with most of the money aren't ABLE to also opt out of substantially more of the needed burden than the average person but we live in an imperfect world. When deciding if your tax minimization strategy is a good thing simply ask yourself what would happen if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing. The obvious thing in that scenario is that society collapses. This is o…

> Clearly everyone should try to pay a reasonable share. That isn't clear to me, because using the government to collect revenue hasn't been demonstrated to be a benefit. This still presupposes that government revenue is inherently beneficial. I think if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing, the government would collapse. That's not the same thing as society collapsing, society and the government are not cot…

Do you really see a situation where the US government collapses and US society does not?

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#235

Post by kortilla »

ruined wrote: post #166
rattray wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not both? It's hard to be mad at someone once you realize you'd do the same thing if you were in their shoes. Loopholes like this should be illegal, but their existence ~obligates executives to take advantage of them (fiduciary duty). You'd just be bad at business if you didn't. As someone who wants to be good at business, I can't get mad at the players here – just the game.

>It's hard to be mad at someone once you realize you'd do the same thing if you were in their shoes. this is projecting. your comment goes on a bit more like this but i'm not going to quote all of it there has been a cultural failure of some sort that rewards people that think like this, and encourages this kind of behavior. maybe we should expect people, especially people in positions of responsibility, to not loot…

> to not loot our lives out from under us

Then reflect that in the law! Don’t setup a bunch of loopholes and then get mad when corporate tax accountants find them and use them.

In the business world there are mountains and mountains of tax incentives for employing this type of person, that type of person, building here, building there, etc. What you see in front of you is what the law is encouraging and asking companies to ignore “obviously wrong” tax setups is naive.

The line is super blurry, all the way down to a 1 person business expensing anything and everything “related” to their business.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#236

Post by yxhuvud »

sneak wrote: post #206
rhizome wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've taken to calling it anti-American (or anti-whatever country in which they're minimizing their taxes). How better to tell the world that you don't care about the societies that made your success possible than to refuse to help fund them?

This seems to presuppose that it is an inherently good thing to maximize tax revenue.

For any given tax rate, yes. This because it means the tax rate won't need to be as high to pay for the same things as it otherwise would have to, for everyone else.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#237

Post by kortilla »

michaelmrose wrote: post #231
anonfornoreason wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll start paying heed to this line of reasoning when a significant portion of tax revenue is spent bombing innocents. There’s very shaky moral grounds for many of our actions overseas, and I don’t blame any rich person for wanting to control policy for significant philanthropic efforts.

We can in theory vote for people that wont bomb innocents we can't vote out the rich people in any meaningful way.

The laws that allow this philanthropy are controlled by us. We most certainly can vote them out of existence

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#238

Post by aaronchall »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #182
bartart wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also worth noting that the top 1% pay about 40% of all income taxes at the federal level, and they earn about 20% of annual income from all sources ( http://hdr.undp.org/en/indicators/186106 ). So classifying 88% of federal revenue as paid by regular workers might be a bit misleading

99% of the top 1% are "normal workers" like me - engineers at Google - or my cousin - a radiologist - or one of my best friends - an investment banker - or lawyers, or owners of successful small businesses, etc... These "normal workers" pay a lot of that 40% of the tax bill. There aren't that many CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and board members, A+ list celebrities, and aristocrats. You're getting into the .01% - tha…

So using your numbers, the top percent of the top percent pay 1/8 of the taxes that the top percent pay, and the remaining 99% of the top percent pay 7/8 of those taxes.

That is still quite disproportionately more.

I pay a big chunk of my income in taxes too. Everyone needs to contribute. There's not enough money otherwise, and demanding that Bill Gates pay more, as much as I dislike him, isn't going to do it (and doesn't seem fair as he's already paying his fair share).

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#239

Post by Roark66 »

Bookmarked. For the time when Dutch politicians start lecturing other countries in EU about "solidarity" again.

The most interesting part of the article for me is not that Uber dodged $6bln of taxes, but in which countries it decided not to dodge. USA and China. USA, probably because that's where this money goes, but China?

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes on $6B in revenue

#240

Post by onion2k »

Aunche wrote: post #210
seaourfreed wrote: post #93

Congress is corrupt (via lobbyists). Congress would make this illegal if congress men/women didn't sell out American Citizens. 88% of the cost of the US Fed gov is paid for by taxes by workers (income taxes). Less than 12% comes from all corp/business taxes combined with capital gains (taxing the rich 1%). Business shifting tax burden to workers is a massive scale problem. $3.5 Trillion = US Tax Revenues (2019) and 8…

>Congress is corrupt (via lobbyists) The most a single company spent on lobbying last year was Facebook at $19.7 million, which is a whopping .17% of their marketing expenses. At the same time, they shelled out $130 million, forming a irrevocable trust to fund a supreme court of moderation decisions. If lobbying were really effective, Facebook would have given money to any Congressperson willing to make any decisions…

The most a single company spent on lobbying last year was Facebook at $19.7 million, which is a whopping .17% of their marketing expenses.

In a thread about how a company used 50 shell companies to avoid millions in taxes it seems a little naive to suggest companies don't use similar tactics to fund lobbyists as well.

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