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Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#181

Post by Dylan16807 »

pjerem wrote: post #168
dmurray wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does a search warrant for your house give the police the right to search your car, if they found your car keys in your house? What about your neighbour's or your employer's car - perhaps on the other side of the world - if you happened to have those keys? To compel you not to tell your employer to change the locks, so the seized keys won't work? These seem like closer real-world analogies for what exactly a warrant t…

Your analogy doesn’t work. Your neighbor is not you. $COMPANY is $COMPANY all around the world and if $COMPANY wants to do business in $COUNTRY (which is not an obligation, they choose to), then yes, they have to entirely cooperate with $COUNTRY. If they don’t want to, they can still do business elsewhere.

I don't think a warrant to search an office should let them use the keys they find there on a company truck five miles away, either. Despite being the same company. (If it's in the parking lot then it's a maybe.)

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#182

Post by grecy »

nicce wrote: post #84
Algent wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basically what happened when they tried (twice I think ?) to raid Uber offices in France, their boss pressed a kill switch and everything went down in seconds. It completely blocked the investigation. Afterward Uber helped Macron campaign who then ordered National Financial Prosecutor's office to "stop bothering them" so I don't think anything new happened since. Edit: Some sources in below replies for infos o…

> Afterward Uber helped Macron campaign who then ordered National Financial Prosecutor's office to "stop bothering them" so I don't think anything new happened since. Isn’t that kinda definiton of corruption?

Woah, slow down there citizen.

It’s been rebranded to “lobbying” and “campaign contributions”. Much cleaner. Better optics.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#183

Post by shermantanktop »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #82
scotty79 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All spending should be taxed instead of income. Income is too easy to move and hide. Spending tax could be unified framework encompassing all financial activity. If you purchase anything, labor, imports, energy, stock, politicians, you should be taxed. Spending is the moment when the money shows its ugly head and does harm.

Correct, and it could be implemented as a power law formula that makes it impossible for the super rich to avoid tax (since they are the only ones that can spend a lot). It also aligns incentives with environmentalism and reducing waste and consumption. And poorer people are automatically exempted from tax since the power law formula parameters be set to slowly ramp up. This is also easily accomplished now that almos…

So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my ability to hide my assets?

Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC which I am the sole owner of. For major purchases, I can hire a low-income person to do the purchase and then sell the item to me, or maybe they lease it to me.

I'm not a tax lawyer but it's pretty easy to see the many loopholes in alternative tax proposals.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#185

Post by sapphire42 »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #170
immibis wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Large multinational companies are accustomed to openly breaking the law and getting away with it in the USA; when they try to do the same in Europe they are very surprised when the law actually comes after them. They also raid anyone else they don't like, such as people who run Tor exit nodes... but random small businesses are not in that group.

Maybe this explains why the US is out ahead in GDP, income, and is doing much better pre and post covid than Europe. It's not so much breaking laws, but unnecessary restrictions and harassment by Europeans states. The US is business friendly. It's industry friendly. We don't needlessly harass the business of sovereign individuals, and the state apparatus isn't being used as an excuse as to exert power or influence ov…

You call a tax fraud investigation "needlessly harassing the business of sovereign individuals?"

You're right, the U.S. is very business and industry friendly, which explains why the American people have been getting poorer and poorer while corporations and their shareholders get richer and richer.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#186

Post by lotsofpulp »

shermantanktop wrote: post #183
lotsofpulp wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct, and it could be implemented as a power law formula that makes it impossible for the super rich to avoid tax (since they are the only ones that can spend a lot). It also aligns incentives with environmentalism and reducing waste and consumption. And poorer people are automatically exempted from tax since the power law formula parameters be set to slowly ramp up. This is also easily accomplished now that almos…

So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my ability to hide my assets? Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC which I am the sole owner of. For major purchases, I can hire a low-income person to do the purchase and then sell the item to me, or maybe they lease it to me. I'm not a ta…

>So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my ability to hide my assets?

Where are you getting this from? Sales tax has nothing to do with one's assets. Also, land value taxes make hiding assets moot, since all real assets have to be stored on land. Of course, copyright protections would need to be reformed to be for far shorter durations of time.

>Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC which I am the sole owner of.

Why should LLC's be exempt from the tax?

>For major purchases, I can hire a low-income person to do the purchase and then sell the item to me,

How does this help? You are still purchasing the item. If you are referring to purchasing it with cash and committing tax evasion, the same is possible with income tax today.

>or maybe they lease it to me.

Renting something is still considered a sale. You get charged sales tax at hotels. Renting apartments is not usually subject to sales tax, but that is a policy choice.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#187

Post by telotortium »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #158
telotortium wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think any of these kill switches involved deleting data, just temporarily removing access of systems in the affected office.

Not a lawyer, but let’s say the cops were searching my house. If I threw the keys to my unbreakable safe out the window, such that they could never be found, I doubt a judge would care for the distinction. That the evidence exists but cannot be accessed is still going to find you in contempt.

The keys still exist and are accessible. What the kill switches does is make a fishing expedition harder. If the police knew of the existence of a specific document, or even all documents pertaining to certain terms, they could issue a targeted subpoena which Uber would have to comply with (at least in the US).

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#188

Post by alexey-salmin »

charlieyu1 wrote: post #180
chollida1 wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the government already has a warrant to obtain this evidence(they can't raid the office otherwise) and you as the company pushing this button are failing to turn over that evidence.

I guess locally encrypted files in my computer is a problem as well then

In many jurisdictions it actually is a problem

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#189

Post by asveikau »

lowkey_ wrote: post #68
asveikau wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you think "the cloud" is? I'm reminded of an old meme, "the cloud is just someone else's computer". They could raid a data center and seize machines. They could also subpoena data they are looking for.

You'd likely be seizing a bunch of other innocent people's data too, then, no? As an American, I'd be really surprised if we let that happen. I looked and found it apparently happened once, in 2009 in Texas: https://www.cio.com/article/278564/data-center-when-the-fbi-... It resulted in another company essentially being shut down, and suing for their data back. Crazy. There has to be a better way of doing that digital…

The idea that running stuff in the cloud will protect you from a criminal investigation is totally absurd.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#190

Post by spwa4 »

HelloNurse wrote: post #93
playingalong wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole point (or at least the main point) of the tax paperwork is to be able to produce them to tax investigators. If you don't want to share anything, then it's easier not to do the accounting. Which I guess is severally illegal globally.

Being unable/unwilling to produce mandatory records is fraud. Technical measures to be unable to produce records (e.g. offshore and encrypted archival) are evidence of criminal intent and possibly separate crimes.

So why did every company in the world start auto-deleting emails ~10 years ago? I don't believe many people were sued for fraud. These days cloud services have auto-delete based on time functionality?

It's called "object lifecycle management", because I guess fraud was too catchy.

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