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Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

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Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#31

Post by vidarh »

tormeh wrote: post #20
swombat wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I recall, to get prosecuted for tax evasion in the UK, you need to not only commit the tax evasion, but also to lie to the HMRC investigation of the tax evasion, at the point where they ask you to sign a form that explicitly says that if you lie now and they find out, they will put you in jail. So unless you lie at that point, you will not be prosecuted, only investigated. This may let some tax dodgers off the hoo…

Protecting people from their own mistakes is fine, but they lost that defence once they put the money in secret swiss bank accounts. Secret. Swiss. Bank. Accounts. Might as well accidentally ask the local mafia to white wash some money while they twirl their mustaches.

The problem is that there's nothing illegal about putting your money in secret swiss bank accounts per se.

It first becomes tax evasion (in the UK anyway; details may vary) the moment you fail to report income or capital gains that are taxable, since the UK does not tax wealth.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#32

Post by fijal »

saiya-jin wrote: post #28
jakobegger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying taxes is not "donating money". You are required by law to pay them. You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property. If you think that you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes, why do you think that other laws should be enforced? If rich people steal from the state, why shouldn't poor people just take what they want from the rich? If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

Nice textbook phrases, now let's get back to the real world out there for a while. Do you even understand the simple truth, that most of the times no law is broken in tax optimalizations? Only when it does, it gets highly publitized. Usually, tax systems are full of loopholes and accountants just need to be creative enough (and yes, they are...). Without breaking any specific law, by logic "what is not explicitly for…

Swiss tourism is about 1% of the GDP (less than say watches), you're making a big dent in your logic with such a lack of fact checking :-)

The reason why there is no tax evasion in Switzerland is multi-layered and very complicated, but in short they cut down on loopholes and tax actually rich people too with tax on wealth or or capital gains. In most places you have 50% or so of tax that is paid by medium-rich people, with actually rich getting away with lot less because of capital gain taxes being lower or controls being more lax or stuff like that. The "50% for rich" is mostly cannon fodder for voters, noone is really expecting anyone to pay that much.

That said, you can't explain the swiss system in simple words, without looking into their long and complicated history etc. I suggest you do more research and get your own conclusions :-)

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#34

Post by j42 »

jakobegger wrote: post #26
saiya-jin wrote: post #22

The pattern is apparent - once you become rich, you don't want to donate millions to governments in taxes. Anyway you do, but trying to minimize it. Be it for their lack of any transparency how cash will be used (mostly wasted in very ineffective way). It doesn't matter if it's famous or unknown rich. Now what to do with this situation... There are too many tax havens out there (Suisse, Monaco, Channel islands, Luxem…

Paying taxes is not "donating money". You are required by law to pay them. You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property. If you think that you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes, why do you think that other laws should be enforced? If rich people steal from the state, why shouldn't poor people just take what they want from the rich? If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

Perhaps the issue isn't so much in "forcing" people, as it is in recognizing that the perceived unfairness of the tax system itself is causing systemic dysfunction.

Because taxes are perceived to be so unfairly high in certain economies, many devote significant time and effort into "innovating" around policy which is completely legal. Transfer pricing, long-term capital gains distinctions and LLC/Trust configurations, to name a few.

It makes sense to do this, because the disincentives of NOT pursuing legal tax minimization strategies are severe. You'll lose almost half your income. The more money you have, the more strategies you get--meaning they are formed in the ranks of industry leaders like Apple or Google, and eventually trickle down throughout private industry (though in the interim this only serves to widen the disparity & narrow the concentration of wealth).

This won't change unless the common psychology changes. If the tax system were more balanced and fair (a more moderate/halfway implementation of a "flat tax?") then less energy would be devoted into the legal arms race that is out-maneuvering the tax code.

... but obviously that's a pipe dream.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#35

Post by cpursley »

Zarkonnen wrote: post #30
saiya-jin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice textbook phrases, now let's get back to the real world out there for a while. Do you even understand the simple truth, that most of the times no law is broken in tax optimalizations? Only when it does, it gets highly publitized. Usually, tax systems are full of loopholes and accountants just need to be creative enough (and yes, they are...). Without breaking any specific law, by logic "what is not explicitly for…

Nice textbook phrases. What does it matter whether laws are broken or not if the result is still people not paying their taxes while benefiting massively from society. If the best you can say about someone's behavior is that it's "not technically illegal", that's quite telling. And don't get me started on Switzerland. I live there. I'm Swiss. We have massive tax evasion. We have special tax deals for foreign national…

This is a perfect example of why taxing income is not the correct way. Things like progressive sales tax and taxing usage is. For example, those commuters should be taxed enough to support their burden each time they come in to the city. And for those companies within the city limits enjoying the infrastructure, protection of law, etc, a sales tax on their products sold should cover that. The point of tax extraction should be consumption, not production. It's more efficient, more market (reality) based and a whole lot less political.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#36

Post by ttty »

j42 wrote: post #34
jakobegger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying taxes is not "donating money". You are required by law to pay them. You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property. If you think that you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes, why do you think that other laws should be enforced? If rich people steal from the state, why shouldn't poor people just take what they want from the rich? If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

Perhaps the issue isn't so much in "forcing" people, as it is in recognizing that the perceived unfairness of the tax system itself is causing systemic dysfunction. Because taxes are perceived to be so unfairly high in certain economies, many devote significant time and effort into "innovating" around policy which is completely legal. Transfer pricing, long-term capital gains distinctions and LLC/Trust configurations…

the taxes are for the poor, not rich.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#37

Post by sambe »

jakobegger wrote: post #26
saiya-jin wrote: post #22

The pattern is apparent - once you become rich, you don't want to donate millions to governments in taxes. Anyway you do, but trying to minimize it. Be it for their lack of any transparency how cash will be used (mostly wasted in very ineffective way). It doesn't matter if it's famous or unknown rich. Now what to do with this situation... There are too many tax havens out there (Suisse, Monaco, Channel islands, Luxem…

Paying taxes is not "donating money". You are required by law to pay them. You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property. If you think that you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes, why do you think that other laws should be enforced? If rich people steal from the state, why shouldn't poor people just take what they want from the rich? If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

Paying more than you are legally obliged to could be considered donating though. I'm not commenting on the specific cases linked to but as I'm sure you're aware there is a massive grey area around tax law. You can't simply claim that not paying is stealing any more than the parent can claim not paying is ok (it didn't). The details are all about the amounts, which methods are legal and which methods are of untested legality. I think parent's claim is that money is both more willingly and better spent elsewhere (perhaps regardless of legality).

Significant numbers of rich people/corporations use methods that are legal to reduce their taxes. Most people consider this wrong despite its legality (probably they also mistakenly believe it to be illegal - because journalism).

There's certainly an argument that this is - in part - a of problem for the creator of a complex tax system, who should respond by reducing complexity (increasing enforcement tends not to go well - complexity also hinders that). It also seems likely that the people who consider it morally wrong would do likewise if their tax bill were 100x larger (in Switzerland, it is not a criminal offence to make an incorrect tax declaration. Many non-rich Swiss compete with the tax office to lower their bill).

It also seems that you are saying laws are by definition correct. Many laws are not uniformly enforced and many laws are changed as a result of disobedience. Perhaps such people are indeed paying proportionally way too little now but perhaps their actions also affect positive change in future (more efficient system overall, but resource allocation, fewer unintended loopholes). This may not even be their intention, but it doesn't matter.

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#38

Post by [deleted] »

saiya-jin wrote: post #28
jakobegger wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying taxes is not "donating money". You are required by law to pay them. You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property. If you think that you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes, why do you think that other laws should be enforced? If rich people steal from the state, why shouldn't poor people just take what they want from the rich? If you avoid taxes, you are stealing from everybody.

Nice textbook phrases, now let's get back to the real world out there for a while. Do you even understand the simple truth, that most of the times no law is broken in tax optimalizations? Only when it does, it gets highly publitized. Usually, tax systems are full of loopholes and accountants just need to be creative enough (and yes, they are...). Without breaking any specific law, by logic "what is not explicitly for…

[deleted]

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#39

Post by chrisbennet »

mercurial wrote: post #25
easytiger wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or how about you let the authorities deal with it in a reasonable, case by case basis and get off your polemic high horse

Is it "polemic" now to expect that people pay taxes, and get punished when they try to cheat their way out of it?

Apparently "Only the little people pay taxes." or go to jail.

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leona_Helmsley

Re: Explore the Swiss Leaks Data

#40

Post by mercurial »

hessenwolf wrote: post #17
tormeh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so few prosecuted in Britain? Wouldn't this be a good opportunity to get some assholes who thought they could shift the tax burden to others? Six month prison sentences sounds reasonable. British prisons suck, but given that this is partly the dodgers fault that's just poetic.

What would be the value in it? Justice? What does that mean? Punishment? Or to send a warning? Would that really be effective? What would be the cost? Was there anybody in the pot that was expendable, economically?

> Was there anybody in the pot that was expendable, economically?

What do you mean by "economically expendable"?

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