Earlier quoted context omitted.
Or at least just eu regulations.
EU doesn't touch taxation, as far as I know. That's up to the individual member states.
They do, for example there are limits on how low VAT can be.
Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
151–160 of 163 posts
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#152Any 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…
Maybe some companies are used just for one specific kind of transaction to take advantage of some loophole in the law.
Yeah I do that, I call them parallel tax regimes or elections
Still other companies doing dutch sandwiches are reported as having one
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Well considering they are usually used by corporations/capitalist firms to avoid all kinds of responsibilities to society, I seriously question your lack of critique here. No they're usually used by basically all companies that aren't tiny. > institutional terrorism that is going on on a daily basis Ummm... > They are gaslit with propaganda Eh take a hard look in the mirror. The marxist hate machine has never helpe…
> No they're usually used by basically all companies that aren't tiny. Ummm... that's what I said. That's my point. It's become normalized for corporations to not take responsibility. The working class always ends up paying the price here. Collectively we in the working class now expect corporations to treat us badly and that we have to accept this abusive behavior. In the context of more and more of the working clas…
> Ummm... that's what I said. That's my point. It's become normalized for corporations to not take responsibility.
This is something completely different and unrelated...
1) All bank robbers wear clothes.
2) beckman466 wears clothes.
3) Therefore beckman466 is a bank robber.
But everyone wears clothes (i.e., not specifically bank robbers).
See! It's normalized to rob banks.
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm also Dutch, but I'm mainly frustrated that the press does a very poor job of explaining what is going on. Uber has its corporate head quarters for the EU in Amsterdam. For a company the size of Uber to have 50 different entities is not particularly special, you will find several other multinationals there with the same number. It makes sense to have one for each jurisdiction they operate in, for example. The term…
> they do not choose The Netherlands for low corporate tax rates, they are not the lowest in the EU by far, but because of "tax rulings". Those are agreements they can make with the tax authorities that ascertain them how much tax they will pay this year as long as revenue, costs, etc, stay within a certain bandwidth. "They don't come to the Netherlands because the tax rate is low, but because they can negotiate an e…
"They don't come to the Netherlands because the tax rate is low, but because they can negotiate an extremely low secret tax rate just for themselves"
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
American banking and tax system is archaic and really inefficient when compared to some places in Europe (especially the nordics). Here cash heavy businesses are rare and meaning the money is going through the banks. And as the money is moving through the banks it is pretty much impossible to have income that the local tax office would not see. And the banks are by law required to ask for proof of any irregular money…
> This means you have to input the sales into the register and now it is in the books and thus really hard to not end up paying all the taxes. These are typically cash heavy businesses ( as long as it is allowed ) and keeping revenue out of the books is as old as the Romans. > Also companies get a part of the VAT back so they really really want to register the sale into their system or they are out of that (VAT is 24…
> These are typically cash heavy businesses ( as long as it is allowed ) and keeping revenue out of the books is as old as the Romans.
Cash is used in less then 5% of transactions here in Finland (and it is roughly the same in the rest of Nordics last time I checked). Basically I have not carried any cash with me for the last 10 years or so. I am a bit of an extreme case but none of my friends carry any cash with them either these days. Having a cash only business here would just mean that people would not do business with you. If you go to a bar/restaurant/whatever and say "I want to pay" at the end the default is that they bring you the payment terminal.
> I think you are pretty naive here.
I am not that is just how it is here.
Illegal tax evasion still happens but it is not done in the "lets just not put this transaction into our system" way. Most of it is just lying about deductible expenses after that is employing someone without an actual employment contract (and thus nobody is paying any taxes for anything on that). Small scale construction is the one field where the "I'll just take the money and write a fake receipt" is done in any meaningful amount here.
For the record the Finnish tax office collects somewhere between 92 to 96% of the tax revenue it should be receiving according to studies by them and the government. They believe they could get more but in their infinite wisdom every even slightly right leaning government in power has slashed their budgets (and thus less tax auditors) for the last couple decades even though every euro spent on the tax office budged brings in multiple times of that in tax revenue back (there is some limit where that is no longer the case but we are nowhere close to that)
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
The laws come from EC and they can keep pushing it until it passes as with many things. There must be a conflict of interest in the EC if they don't do it. Such changes should be a no brainer - the famous levelling of the playing field.
Its pretty much pointless though, if you can't move all your revenue to an ip holding company, you just have to make it slightly more realistic. In case of Starbucks: they move a ton of their profit to a coffee bean exporter from Switzerland which they own themselves. And how should a government say how expensive those beans can be? Any company can outsource part of their revenue to a subsidiary in a different countr…
I think for companies that big, they should be required to launch a tender just like public sector e.g. for a supply of beans. This means their own beans company would be excluded because of conflict of interest. It won't stop them from delivering beans to other companies though, but it will make a tax fiddle much more difficult.
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
> This means you have to input the sales into the register and now it is in the books and thus really hard to not end up paying all the taxes. These are typically cash heavy businesses ( as long as it is allowed ) and keeping revenue out of the books is as old as the Romans. > Also companies get a part of the VAT back so they really really want to register the sale into their system or they are out of that (VAT is 24…
> These are typically cash heavy businesses ( as long as it is allowed ) and keeping revenue out of the books is as old as the Romans. Cash is used in less then 5% of transactions here in Finland (and it is roughly the same in the rest of Nordics last time I checked). Basically I have not carried any cash with me for the last 10 years or so. I am a bit of an extreme case but none of my friends carry any cash with the…
> Cash is used in less then 5% of transactions here in Finland
How does one compile statistics on unregistered transactions?
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#158The double-dutch isn’t cool. You know what’s cool? The 500,000-dutch with 50 layers of Irish and a few Caymens on top.
I mean, why not? What Uber and the other companies who are doing this is entirely legal -- but, probably pretty costly at 500k dutch.
If I were playing the game at that level, I’d do it too. The best I can do to evade my taxes is to get customers to pay me via cryptocurrency which I then sell to people locally in person in cash for a 10% discount.
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
right if you're a small company and you pay 0% tax you're probably getting shut down and owner is having some legal problems when they investigate you, if you're big enough you might get a small fine or maybe just have investigation dropped.
Not really. The main problem is that if you are small, you most likely don’t have expensive accountants who will find every possible way to find legal loop holes to reduce our tax burden plus you don’t have the political connections to lobbying for certain exclusions or deals by the politicians. This is why small businesses are the ones which get hurt the most by things like raising taxes, minimum wage etc. There’s a…
Framing this as an excercise in acquiring expensive accountants is missing the forest for the trees. Large corporations have such immense power that they can bend the legislation and receive special treatment from governments that smaller shops just can't. See all the tax breaks apple will be getting now, all the incentives programs that Amazon was shopping for when building HQ2.
Re: Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
it's not fraud as in "tax evasion" it's 100% legal albeit morally bankrupt "tax avoidance". the problem is that if you grow a company to a certain size the only way to compete is to be part of this rigged system. not a single fortune-500 company that is in the top 500 because they don't use thick layers of shell companies. the strategy is always to squeeze the supply end and the demand end while scooping the profits…
I do have to ask...why is it morally bankrupt? Do you go out of your way to pay more tax than is legally required? If not, are you morally bankrupt? Of course not. Tax laws are the rules of the game. If you don't like the rules, change them (democracy and all) and enjoy the positive and negative consequences as they unfold.
I think it's morally bankrupt because a direct analogy would be that it's not OK to bully someone unless you're strong enough that there won't be any repercussions.