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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

#421

Post by CryptoPunk »

CRConrad wrote: post #399
CryptoPunk wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Just as our common sense, which favors functional societies, sees taxation as just. Our commen sense has nothing to do with support for income taxation. The system of taxation is too complex, and has too many intermediaries, for the typical person to fully assess it in all of its moral dimensions. If it were laid bare, without layers of intermediaries obfuscating its nature, and a multitude of ideological and polit…

Oh, funny how your common sense just suddenly stopped being able to process stuff once the discussion got to a conclusion you didn't happen to like.

Once the issue at hand got to moral perceptions of governments that operate on codes of law hundreds of thousands of pages in size that are administered by 100,000+ people.

I don't think it's unreasonable for me to suggest that not everything that public opinion supports is a result of a common sense assessment of all of its aspects. If that were actually the case, we wouldn't need to have courts of law decide on cases. We would just let opinion polls do it. But we do need courts of law, because for complex issues, we need a jury of our peers to deliberate on the issue before reaching a judgment on it.

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

#422

Post by granzymes »

oblio wrote: post #296
granzymes wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 24.6%, the US had an effective average corporate tax rate somewhat in the middle of the pack in 2019. In 2017, at 37.5%, it was the second highest in the world, so which year you look at is very important. It's also important to realize that a large portion (~10%) of individual income taxes are actually from pass-through business income. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=CTS_ETR

Isn't 2017 an outlier? Didn't Trump pass a one time law allowing for repatriation of profits at a lower tax rate? That's not sustainable.

TCJA took effect in 2018.

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

#423

Post by Frost1x »

refurb wrote: post #405
Frost1x wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is the ACLU corrupting Congress through its lobbying? Yes. Just because what something has as a goal may seem like a net positive doesn't mean the means it uses to get to that goal are. The ACLU, like any lobbying, is using financial resources to influence democratic government policy disproportionately based on the financial resources it can acquire. The ACLU shouldn't need to exist but it's an interesting example…

Huh? You’re saying that voters or organizations that represent voters shouldn’t petition their politicians in issues they think are important? Because that’s what lobbying is.

I didn't say voters shouldn't petition their representatives, I said organizations funded by a biased subset of voters shouldn't petition politicians for voters.

That defeats the entire purpose of the current reprentative system if you have a mechanism to skew and pressure representation based on your financial resources as opposed to voters.

I already question the current representation system. It doesn't help when I know I can pump tens of millions or more into professional lobbyists to get unequal representation in government.

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

#424

Post by [deleted] »

GFischer wrote: post #416
throwaway2037 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I assume when you write "normal workers" that you mean non-executives and non-passive income earners. (Executives can get a lot of equity or dividends that accrue taxes at lower rates; passive income earners use asset depreciation to lessen tax burden.) The top 1% in the US is ~400K USD. Real question for OP (and others): What do you think is a reasonable effective income tax rate? (Please do not confuse effec…

I pay more than 55% in effective tax rate, and my income is about 60k USD a year. I live in Uruguay, South America - my taxes include healthcare and retirement. It's definitely not ideal and it's crippling my chance of ever owning a home, but it does pay for a lot of social services way beyond what the U.S. provides - key differences being state provided healthcare and education up to and including the university lev…

[deleted]

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

#425

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

GFischer wrote: post #416
throwaway2037 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I assume when you write "normal workers" that you mean non-executives and non-passive income earners. (Executives can get a lot of equity or dividends that accrue taxes at lower rates; passive income earners use asset depreciation to lessen tax burden.) The top 1% in the US is ~400K USD. Real question for OP (and others): What do you think is a reasonable effective income tax rate? (Please do not confuse effec…

I pay more than 55% in effective tax rate, and my income is about 60k USD a year. I live in Uruguay, South America - my taxes include healthcare and retirement. It's definitely not ideal and it's crippling my chance of ever owning a home, but it does pay for a lot of social services way beyond what the U.S. provides - key differences being state provided healthcare and education up to and including the university lev…

This sounds like a terrible deal.

In the US - your effective income tax rate could be as low as ~24% on $60k. There is nowhere it would be higher than ~33%.

So your tax rate is AT LEAST 22% higher - and all you're getting is "free" education and healthcare.

=FV(0.075, 40, -13200, 0).

That's $3M by the time you would retire if you invested the difference in taxes in a total market index fund and got average returns. Adjusted for inflation - that's $822k. You could reliably drawdown the equivalent of ~$3.5k per month forever. That's 50% more than you make after taxes now...

And in the US - you would already be getting $3k+ from social security... Plus you'd have free healthcare via Medicare...

Individually, you are unquestionably better off with the lower tax rate in the US. Unless you went to Princeton to study underwater basketweaving without a scholarship. Even if you had ridiculously expensive chronic conditions - there's plans you can get cheaper than $13k per year.

And as a whole you are also worse off.

The cost of "free" education is estimated at $47Bn in the US. That would increase taxes by about 1.1%.

The cost of "free" healthcare is estimated at an additional $1.6Tn. If evenly distributed - that would increase everyone's taxes by about 43%.

That means your tax rate would be as low as ~31% or as high as ~41% -- depending on which state you lived in.

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

#426

Post by lenkite »

GFischer wrote: post #416
throwaway2037 wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First, I assume when you write "normal workers" that you mean non-executives and non-passive income earners. (Executives can get a lot of equity or dividends that accrue taxes at lower rates; passive income earners use asset depreciation to lessen tax burden.) The top 1% in the US is ~400K USD. Real question for OP (and others): What do you think is a reasonable effective income tax rate? (Please do not confuse effec…

I pay more than 55% in effective tax rate, and my income is about 60k USD a year. I live in Uruguay, South America - my taxes include healthcare and retirement. It's definitely not ideal and it's crippling my chance of ever owning a home, but it does pay for a lot of social services way beyond what the U.S. provides - key differences being state provided healthcare and education up to and including the university lev…

The important question is: How good is the "free" health care ? And is it fully free or is one charged beyond a point ?

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

#427

Post by de6u99er »

tiernano wrote: post #228

> Uber’s sophisticated efforts to achieve little or no tax burden on multibillion-dollar global revenues highlights a long-standing challenge governments face in enforcing tax compliance among wealthy corporations and individuals across borders. But... It's legal... None of it is illegal... They are compliant with the law... It's the law and the government's that need to change... Or am I missing something here?

You are absolutely correct. The Netherlands is a tax avoidance haven since many years. There seems to be a global consensus to keep it this way.

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

#428

Post by whiskyant »

danuker wrote: post #301
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?

Then again, what does the US government do with said revenue? Its citizens are certainly not helped when it comes to medical issues, for instance. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...

It goes into the pockets of other companies who lobbied for it, that's one reason why our military spending is so high.

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

#429

Post by dontreact »

slver wrote: post #337
dontreact wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Laws get written with a lot of help and influence from lobbyists who do sit at the companies.

Let's get couple of things straight: 1. Politicians are responsible for the laws. 2. Companies are responsible for following the laws. If you have a beef with any of the above, address the right parties. How they interact and depend on each other is a fact, but also it's not relevant to the above two points. Everyone has a clear responsibility. Furthermore the phrase "dodged taxes" means "they structured their revenu…

This is a theoretical framework you are presenting but it does not reflect reality. The text of many bills is written by people working for corporations. A politician needs to get funding in order to be re-elected and have any meaningful ability to make a difference.

In theory all the power for determining laws is supposed to lie in the hands of the politicians, but in practice a significant fraction of the power lies in the hands of corporations. So it doesn’t make sense to only look at part of the power structure that has set the system up this way.

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

#430

Post by bryanlarsen »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #425
GFischer wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I pay more than 55% in effective tax rate, and my income is about 60k USD a year. I live in Uruguay, South America - my taxes include healthcare and retirement. It's definitely not ideal and it's crippling my chance of ever owning a home, but it does pay for a lot of social services way beyond what the U.S. provides - key differences being state provided healthcare and education up to and including the university lev…

This sounds like a terrible deal. In the US - your effective income tax rate could be as low as ~24% on $60k. There is nowhere it would be higher than ~33%. So your tax rate is AT LEAST 22% higher - and all you're getting is "free" education and healthcare. =FV(0.075, 40, -13200, 0). That's $3M by the time you would retire if you invested the difference in taxes in a total market index fund and got average returns. A…

With a USD60K salary, I assume that the Uruguayan you are responding to is in the 1%. So he's not just paying for his own health care and education, he's probably covering health care and education for ~10 people.
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