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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

#151

Post by practicalpants »

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…

Many in congress literally use shell companies to obtain payments discretely so yeah, shell company laws aren't getting passed anytime soon.

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

#152

Post by ABCLAW »

IdontRememberIt wrote: post #105
thrwn_frthr_awy wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How would someone at that level of wealth give in a more empathetic way? What should Bill and Buffett be doing instead?

Buffett always complains that he did not pay enough tax. He could simply wire 50% of his fortune to the IRS. His secretary had no choice. (End of sarcasm) They should donate to a foundation. They should not have link with it (direct or indirect ). Their family (direct or indirect) should not have link with it (direct or indirect ). The problem with these structures is that they allow someone to control and directly b…

>Buffett always complains that he did not pay enough tax. He could simply wire 50% of his fortune to the IRS. His secretary had no choice. (End of sarcasm)

Wealth is competitive. Over time, having a higher rate of return than someone else results in substantial differences in overall wealth. Everyone in his position being on the same playing field and chipping in equally is not the same as him martyring himself and letting more selfish peers acquire more resources and sway.

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

#153

Post by granzymes »

yojo wrote: post #144
Rebelgecko wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it unusual that 88% of the US federal revenue is from individual income taxes? IIRC US corporate income tax rates are fairly high compared to the rest of the world (although maybe there's more deductions and other shenanigans)

The economist has a nice chart on this. The US has a lower share of taxes paid by corporations relative to other sources than our peers. https://archive.is/ND3cQ

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

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

#154

Post by rhizome »

bartart wrote: post #145
fnord77 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in the 1950s and later, the highest tax bracket was somewhere in the 90%s

Yes, but unfortunately no rich person actually paid those rates: "despite these high marginal rates, the top 1 percent of taxpayers in the 1950s only paid about 42 percent of their income in taxes. As a result, the tax burden on high-income households today is only slightly lower than what these households faced in the 1950s." https://taxfoundation.org/taxes-on-the-rich-1950s-not-high/

Your 42% is overall, right? The 90% was a marginal rate, the first bullet point at your URL.

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

#155

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

Fern_Blossom wrote: post #143
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…

Hot take: Stop thinking of lobbying as a corporate only tool and understand the system was devised as a way for specialized interested (technocratic) to influence congress in an efficient and informed way. The lobbyist system is open to all by purpose. The real problem: the general public doesn't actually give a shit about wiping its own ass when it comes to dealing with their own government. Whose fault is it when y…

We can't afford lobbyists because we are paying those 88% of taxes and ever increasing costs for products from those companies and organizations paying 12%.

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

#156

Post by rhizome »

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.

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?

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

#157

Post by vxNsr »

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…

Honest question:

When you have an agenda that wants to spend an additional $6tillion do you really care that much about tax revenues? (On top of the $5 trillion from the past year) At that point does it really matter how much you collect? You’ve clearly given up all semblance of trying to balance a budget.

At this point we’re pretty deep in the new-age progressive economic policy ideology, where taxes aren’t about building up gov coffers but rather taking money out of the economy, so does it really matter how the money is taken out? Why are you so concerned with taxing corporations when it’s much easier to tax people?

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

#158

Post by shostack »

lumost wrote: post #132
lifeformed wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could reframe it as: The tax benefits are there to incentivize philanthropic giving. Society benefits from their giving and they receive a tax benefit and PR boost in return. It's not like they're saving more money total by giving it away. And sure, it'd be nice if philanthropists were super humble and anonymous, but the money helps either way, and I don't think those who are helped by the giving care if the give…

The core claim above is that ultimately the foundation is a lip service activity to preserve wealth. If a hundred billionaire pays out 1 billion dollars in philanthropy via the foundation, but earns 10 billion tax free then they are doing quite well. It's a trivial matter to write the terms of the foundation such that yourself/successors can draw permanent income via "board" positions, advisory roles, or other means.

How would that work exactly? Genuine question, I've never understood how donating saves on taxes, you have to pay at some point to access the money, no?

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

#159

Post by rhizome »

nceqs3 wrote: post #57
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.

Be mad at politicians for writing tax codes that work like this rather than companies for taking advantage of them.

Whether you take advantage of those codes in these ways is a question of ethics. Nobody's forcing them to do this, "do it all for the shareholders" isn't a law and shareholder suits for fiduciary mismanagement against executives are basically nonexistent in the US. It's a choice, and it's the choice of assholes.

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

#160

Post by rapind »

Zenst wrote: post #142
lifeformed wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could reframe it as: The tax benefits are there to incentivize philanthropic giving. Society benefits from their giving and they receive a tax benefit and PR boost in return. It's not like they're saving more money total by giving it away. And sure, it'd be nice if philanthropists were super humble and anonymous, but the money helps either way, and I don't think those who are helped by the giving care if the give…

In some aspects it is controlling how your TAXES are spent by cutting out the middle man.

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.

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