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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

#221

Post by michaelmrose »

Aunche wrote: post #210
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…

>Congress is corrupt (via lobbyists) The most a single company spent on lobbying last year was Facebook at $19.7 million, which is a whopping .17% of their marketing expenses. At the same time, they shelled out $130 million, forming a irrevocable trust to fund a supreme court of moderation decisions. If lobbying were really effective, Facebook would have given money to any Congressperson willing to make any decisions…

Almost 10 billion dollars was donated in the 2020 election cycle. The money overwhelmingly comes from a very small and well off portion of the population. This is why the positions taken by congress so consistently serve the interests of the few over the many.

https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/donor-demogra...

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

#222

Post by smokelegend »

anonfornoreason wrote: post #184
rapind wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’ll start paying heed to this line of reasoning when a significant portion of tax revenue is spent bombing innocents. There’s very shaky moral grounds for many of our actions overseas, and I don’t blame any rich person for wanting to control policy for significant philanthropic efforts.

Does Oil & Gas fall under offshore efforts?

Gold & uranium?

There's always something some where worth taking, smoke and mirrors of democracy pave the way.

One country's terrorist is another country's freedom fighter.

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

#224

Post by bitterblotter »

sneak wrote: post #206
rhizome wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This seems to presuppose that it is an inherently good thing to maximize tax revenue.

not avoiding taxes = communism

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

#225

Post by michaelmrose »

sneak wrote: post #206
rhizome wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

This seems to presuppose that it is an inherently good thing to maximize tax revenue.

Its an inherently good thing if the parties with most of the money aren't ABLE to also opt out of substantially more of the needed burden than the average person but we live in an imperfect world.

When deciding if your tax minimization strategy is a good thing simply ask yourself what would happen if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing. The obvious thing in that scenario is that society collapses. This is obviously not a good thing.

Clearly everyone should try to pay a reasonable share. When your strategy is clearly a contrived misuse of an overly complicated tax code that goes against the spirit if not the letter of the law you should be able to figure out what side of the moral line you are on.

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

#226

Post by sneak »

michaelmrose wrote: post #225
sneak wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to presuppose that it is an inherently good thing to maximize tax revenue.

Its an inherently good thing if the parties with most of the money aren't ABLE to also opt out of substantially more of the needed burden than the average person but we live in an imperfect world. When deciding if your tax minimization strategy is a good thing simply ask yourself what would happen if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing. The obvious thing in that scenario is that society collapses. This is o…

> Clearly everyone should try to pay a reasonable share.

That isn't clear to me, because using the government to collect revenue hasn't been demonstrated to be a benefit. This still presupposes that government revenue is inherently beneficial.

I think if everyone found a way to pay virtually nothing, the government would collapse. That's not the same thing as society collapsing, society and the government are not coterminous.

Tax revenues don't go to "society", they go to the government. It is a logical leap to assume a collapse of society when the government loses funding.

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

#227

Post by michaelmrose »

rattray wrote: post #149
happytoexplain wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? Dissatisfaction drives change. Yes, companies are expected to take advantage of legal means of increasing value, but there is a spectrum of behavior between "shrewd" and "immoral" that still falls entirely within "legal", and the individual human beings in the affected society reasonably have opinions about where the line is. When the numbers are too disgusting, it's OK for people to express dissatisfac…

> Why not both? It's hard to be mad at someone once you realize you'd do the same thing if you were in their shoes. Loopholes like this should be illegal, but their existence ~obligates executives to take advantage of them (fiduciary duty). You'd just be bad at business if you didn't. As someone who wants to be good at business, I can't get mad at the players here – just the game.

I wouldn't do the same in their shoes and this statement

>obligates executives to take advantage of them (fiduciary duty)

Is a piece of wisdom that exists entirely on the internet unconnected with objective reality. You are obligated to in the general case to serve the shareholders interests but you are absolutely legally entirely able to take a broader and deeper view than this quarters profits and use your own judgement.

Take this situation. Do you really believe that had they NOT done this someone could have gone to court to legally compel the CEO to set up shell corps and tax havens? That isn't have fiduciary duty works. Fiduciary duty means you don't screw the shareholders to help yourself it doesn't mean you are obliged to substitute their judgement for yours or toss out vital but nebulous goals like long term profitability, reputation, and ethics. If they have enough control they have the privilege of firing you not substituting their judgement for yours.

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

#228

Post by tiernano »

> Uber’s sophisticated efforts to achieve little or no tax burden on multibillion-dollar global revenues highlights a long-standing challenge governments face in enforcing tax compliance among wealthy corporations and individuals across borders.

But... It's legal... None of it is illegal... They are compliant with the law... It's the law and the government's that need to change... Or am I missing something here?

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

#229

Post by Aunche »

michaelmrose wrote: post #221
Aunche wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Congress is corrupt (via lobbyists) The most a single company spent on lobbying last year was Facebook at $19.7 million, which is a whopping .17% of their marketing expenses. At the same time, they shelled out $130 million, forming a irrevocable trust to fund a supreme court of moderation decisions. If lobbying were really effective, Facebook would have given money to any Congressperson willing to make any decisions…

Almost 10 billion dollars was donated in the 2020 election cycle. The money overwhelmingly comes from a very small and well off portion of the population. This is why the positions taken by congress so consistently serve the interests of the few over the many. https://www.opensecrets.org/elections-overview/donor-demogra...

Campaign finance is certainly broken, but it's not the same as lobbying. Also, most evidence points towards money having little if any impact on elections. Most recently, Bloomberg spent $570 million on primaries and only received 31 delegates.

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-c...

https://www.vox.com/2016/2/9/10941690/campaign-finance-left

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bloomberg-delegate-18-million/

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

#230

Post by michaelmrose »

rattray wrote: post #170
ruined wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It's hard to be mad at someone once you realize you'd do the same thing if you were in their shoes. this is projecting. your comment goes on a bit more like this but i'm not going to quote all of it there has been a cultural failure of some sort that rewards people that think like this, and encourages this kind of behavior. maybe we should expect people, especially people in positions of responsibility, to not loot…

I expect (well, I don't expect, but I WANT) my government to stop it from happening. It's foolish to expect people who are in a position of responsibility _to their shareholders_ to act like they're responsible _to you_. They're not. Close the loopholes, raise the taxes (wealth, cap gains, high-earner income, corporate, etc) and stop vilifying people for making money.

They are part of the same minority of society that donates almost all the billions of dollars that ultimately goes to politicians who make the same rules. They are buying the rules and then exploiting them. There is no way to deal with the matter without dealing with them.
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