121–130 of 143 posts
Did the dataset get released as well? EDIT: Is the raw dataset out as well? It will be interesting to see all the names.
You can find a dataset of a previous banking leak if that kind of stuff interests you. Just google Cayman banking leak.
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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.
Now this is not true in all cases, of course. People who lead international lifestyles often find a Swiss account useful because everyone has heard of Swiss banks, and their association with international transfers long predates the SWIFT system. So it makes sense people King Abdullah of Jordan (who has zero tax liability as a monarch, but who is heavily engaged in diplomacy and power-brokerage), or the late Helmut Newton, a famous fashion photographer (who never had very much in his Swiss bank account - a few tens of thousands - but who worked all over the world).
So I don't think that having a Swiss bank account is dispositive of anything by itself, but at the same time it would be disingenuous to ignore the fact that they have often been used to obscure taxable income.
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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.
> You get certain things in exchange, like laws that protect your property. With the important difference that the price is non-negotiable, and set by the service provider alone. The people highlighted on the website chose to park their property elsewhere, so the government had zero cost in protecting that. The price is not in proportion to the quality of service at all, it's proportional to the income of the citizen…
Considering that selling in the US is so profitable and the market for buying stuff in the US is so competitive, that's very unlikely to happen. Most US companies would experience a catastrophic fall in income if they stopped doing business in the US.
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> the price is non-negotiable, and set by the service provider alone. Luckily, there are lots of different service providers. If you want to live in the low-tax heaven of Somalia, you're entirely free to do so.
Or Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, Cayman Islands, Dubai, Monaco, Bahamas... just to name a few.
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People do pay taxes. Very few don't. This kind of diatribe just gives governments mindshare to promote even more aggressive and punitive taxes.
You mean that the people who got the most out of the system shouldn't be expected to contribute back the most?
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…
The problem is one i can sympathise with to some degree. For standard wage levels taxation (whilst still to much in UK) makes sense. Scale that up to millions and it really is out of wack. There is no moral reason why a government deserves 50% of everything you have made. Its like when you order a more expensive bottle of wine, and the restaurant's service charge is a percentage of it... its ridiculous to charge $100…
Chances are you would be perfectly happy if there were no service charges or tipping, but the prices were all increased by 18% (or whatever the service charge is), and the receipts distributed in identical fashion. When I'm in a restaurant I don't look at the service charge as something additional I pay, it's just information about the split between the restaurant owners and the employees. Admittedly this makes pre-calculating the bill more difficult, but if you're ordering $500 bottles of wine then chances are you're making enough money that that you don't care very much about the actual total amount.
I find it curious that you resent the wait staff getting a chunk of the cash you've decided to spend on a fancy meal/wine selection, even though you presumably have no problem with the restaurant owner making a similar profit.
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People do pay taxes. Very few don't. This kind of diatribe just gives governments mindshare to promote even more aggressive and punitive taxes.
You mean that the people who got the most out of the system shouldn't be expected to contribute back the most?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can find a dataset of a previous banking leak if that kind of stuff interests you. Just google Cayman banking leak.
Tried to find it but the top google matches are just links to your comment =/
The leak was from bank julius baer.
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You mean that the people who got the most out of the system shouldn't be expected to contribute back the most?
Most out of the system? In what way could this possibly be true? 100 billion is 1/6th of UK government expenditure in a year. Moreover that money was generated by these people not money creamed off the UK taxpayers. Simple arithmetic tells us that the people who get the most out of the system are the ordinary UK citizens who use government services .