Live data from Hacker News

Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

businessinsider.com

11–20 of 163 posts

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

#11
post #2

Who is to blame Uber or inferior lawmakers?

It’s easy to hate the player instead of the game.

I hate this retort - usually players don’t get to decide the game’s rules.

Tax law is full of loopholes intentionally created for the elite, politicians, and corporations.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

#12
post #4

I'm getting more and more frustrated by my own country's willingness to facilitate this. It just doesn't make any sense. From what I can tell it's all based on old-fashioned debunked economic theories in the same vain as "trickle-down-economy". There's a growing resistance to the Netherlands as a "Doorsluisland", and our current administration's political turmoil will hopefully provide the momentum for actual change…

Why doesn't it make a lot of sense? It requires for companies to have some representation here, probably the have a board of directors and a board of directors is where a retired politician usually goes to after their political career. You wouldn't want to scare the people away that will give you a really well paid job for hardly any work at all, would you?

We're still looking at the same people forming a new government after 10 years so the majority of Dutch people must absolutely love their achievements like the worst housing crisis since the Second World War or capitalism-presented-as-religion shit like this.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

#14

Any details on why 50 instead of 1? Even if it was to segregate liability for individual pieces of IP, it still seems excessive Many jurisdictions offer a single entity with segregated limited liability. Specifically “Segregated Portfolio Companies” or Series LLCs offering the same concept in other jurisdictions. Would seem out of character for the Netherlands not to have this in their catalogue of entities, since th…

Some tax havens banned IP holding companies. Why is this not written in international law and closed once and for all?

Or at least just eu regulations.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

#15
post #2

Who is to blame Uber or inferior lawmakers?

It’s easy to hate the player instead of the game.

The death of morale... It's OK to commit fraud, kill, and rape as long as you can do it within a loophole in the law.

Of cause it is a societal destructive way to see the world as a game.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

#16
post #4

I'm getting more and more frustrated by my own country's willingness to facilitate this. It just doesn't make any sense. From what I can tell it's all based on old-fashioned debunked economic theories in the same vain as "trickle-down-economy". There's a growing resistance to the Netherlands as a "Doorsluisland", and our current administration's political turmoil will hopefully provide the momentum for actual change…

[deleted]

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

#17
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s easy to hate the player instead of the game.

I hate this retort - usually players don’t get to decide the game’s rules. Tax law is full of loopholes intentionally created for the elite, politicians, and corporations.

Yeah, I too hate it. Just because something is legal does not make it moral. We could use the same argument for the bankers who caused the subrime mortgage crash or for dictators who rob their own countries blind.

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

#18
post #4

I'm getting more and more frustrated by my own country's willingness to facilitate this. It just doesn't make any sense. From what I can tell it's all based on old-fashioned debunked economic theories in the same vain as "trickle-down-economy". There's a growing resistance to the Netherlands as a "Doorsluisland", and our current administration's political turmoil will hopefully provide the momentum for actual change…

> There's a growing resistance to the Netherlands as a "Doorsluisland", and our current administration's political turmoil will hopefully provide the momentum for actual change - so hopefully things will change.

I am really not holding my breath for this.

I am glad to see the awareness of tax avoidance (through postbusfirmas, 'double Irish with a Dutch sandwich', etc.) growing, yet until we do something about the root cause, all 'systemic solutions' proposed by the bourgeois political system will still be like proposing to cure a heart attack with a band aid (the heart attack here being mass exploitation by global capitalism [1]: exacerbated by climate change and impending civilizational collapse).

[1] Zak Cope, https://anti-imperialism.org/2012/09/18/understanding-and-ch...

Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes

#19
post #13

Shell (the oil company) is actually named Royal Dutch Shell. For a moment I was confused by the title. According to wikipedia it is really named after sea shells.

One would think that the logo of the company would be enough to make sure everyone knows where the name comes from :)

At first I though it was kind of macabre, but then I got reminded that it's basically standard practice, exterminators frequently have bugs as their logo, bacon packages have happy pigs and so on.

Post reply on HN