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Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

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Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#261

Post by vmception »

IshKebab wrote: post #229
Havoc wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The situation that individuals with these accounts may be committing crimes What happened to innocent until guilty? Hell I've got an account in an offshore jurisdiction. I guess I need to go do some introspection about my "crime of tax evasion"...

"Innocent until proven guilty" is really "innocent until there's sufficient evidence to strongly suspect you are guilty". There aren't very many innocent reasons to have accounts in tax havens.

> There aren't very many innocent reasons to have accounts in tax havens.

Courts disagree.

The primary form of investment firms (PE firms) rely on an "onshore" feeder, for certain countries taxable persons to invest into, and an "offshore" feeder for everyone else as well as those same countries non-taxable persons (charities, retirement plans) to invest into. The offshore feeder typically being an offshore corporation taxed only at the entity level, in a place that does not levy tax on the kinds of transactions conducted, and in many cases also means banking and brokerage accounts offshore. But it also means banking and brokerage accounts onshore under the name of the offshore entity, because it is completely legal and the relevant financial professionals are completely familiar with it.

Status in our society is based on understanding whose opinion matters, and that is the executive and judicial branch, while the legislative branch and head of states pretends to act like they are in an adversarial relationship with people that keep their money.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#263

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

chrisco255 wrote: post #211
rhacker wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you serious? 400K definitely makes you rich. As if you do that for 10 years you have 4M dollars, 20 years? $8M I get that COL lowers that, but if you are making 400K you're not renting.

This is the problem. Income and cost-of-living is a spectrum and varies wildly from place to place. And everyone wants to put some kind of hard line on tax rates, etc. To me, this just underscores that income tax, as a concept, is completely fucked. You can offshore your earning and shelter them if you're savvy enough. If you earn your income from capital gains, you're paying lower rates regardless, from whatever per…

Sales taxes are completely regressive, because the rich do not spend much of their income.

Even with the exemption for basic necessities, a person who earns 100x what you do will probably spend on the order of 5-10x more than you, thus making the tax very regressive.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#264

Post by ClumsyPilot »

fighterpilot wrote: post #77
DSingularity wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on. The ultra-rich don’t pay their fair share. You know this and everyone knows this. Wealth inequality is obscene. Full stop.

The top 1% pay 6x more tax than the bottom 50%! It's obscene how much they pay and how a small group of individuals is forced to carry the entire country. Much, much more should be expected from the bottom 50%.

I am sorry for being rude but this comment is borderline idiotic.

Do the words 'top' and 'bottom' perhaps mean something? Have you ever bothered to look at the distribution on wealth and income?

The top 1% has more more wealth than the bottomn 50%, it is impossible for the bottom to contribute more than the top

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#265

Post by dragonwriter »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #234
Swizec wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I, the middle class engineer get fucked by the taxes Fwiw we feel like middle class but we’re really in the top 5% or higher. We’re the rich people these taxes and politicians talk about. The ultra rich/wealthy are a red herring, there’s only a few 10k of them of them. Only 614 people are billionaires. 7 figure income (salary) puts you in top 0.35% ... that’s 1,120,000 Americans. Not a whole lot. edit: top 10% star…

> Fwiw we feel like middle class but we’re really in the top 5% or higher. I think middle class is about where your money comes from than the amount of your money. If you are primarily deriving your income from from working for a company you don’t control, then I think you are middle class.

> If you are primarily deriving your income from from working for a company you don’t control, then I think you are middle class.

That’s the classic definition of working class.

Having a roughly equal (in terms of importance) split between capital and labor dependence for income (such as by applying your labor to your own capital as an independent small-business owner or yeoman farmer) is the traditional middle class.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#266

Post by CryptoBanker »

bosie wrote: post #212
adflux wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matter of scale. A team of engineers working on building a Dutch marketplace has a potential customer base of 18 million. An American company doing the same can reach 300 million. Assuming equal complexity, the American engineer can deliver far more value because his target audience is much larger. Scale can be like a force multiplier for engineers. Makes them deliver more value and employers are able to pay them mor…

What is value in this context though? Seems for Google the value is actual money and for a startup it is a potential future earning? Yet the startup developer in San Francisco is still (presumably) paid 200k or more? If that startup fails, was the developer overvalued?

No, it just means the startup's investors made a bad bet

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#267

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

codeecan wrote: post #94
gzer0 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you are making more than $400,000, the new tax proposals would not affect you. What is your definition of "middle class"? Someone making $400k is most certainly in the top 1%. What tax changes have occurred so far in the past few decades that are significantly affecting you? I would genuinely like to know

This is the best lie ever told, "don't worry, these taxes wont affect YOU!". Every new tax inevitably falls onto the middle class, because they can't hire people to restructure their wealth and the poor pay no taxes. Lower taxes makes it less expensive for the rich to pay the government. Look at housing and food costs to see how the middle class are affected, they don't get welfare, social housing, or food stamps.

>Every new tax inevitably falls onto the middle class, because they can't hire people to restructure their wealth and the poor pay no taxes.

That might be true of new taxes/tax increases created by those doing the bidding of the truly wealthy. In fact, it is true.

But that's true of all possible new taxes, and increasing taxes on those with earned income over $400k will have ZERO impact on those who earn less (in terms of their own taxation).

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#268

Post by chrisco255 »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #263
chrisco255 wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the problem. Income and cost-of-living is a spectrum and varies wildly from place to place. And everyone wants to put some kind of hard line on tax rates, etc. To me, this just underscores that income tax, as a concept, is completely fucked. You can offshore your earning and shelter them if you're savvy enough. If you earn your income from capital gains, you're paying lower rates regardless, from whatever per…

Sales taxes are completely regressive, because the rich do not spend much of their income. Even with the exemption for basic necessities, a person who earns 100x what you do will probably spend on the order of 5-10x more than you, thus making the tax very regressive.

Not at all, especially if you exempt basic necessities. Poor would still pay low to zero tax because those costs are a greater percentage of their income. And you could even subsidize the taxes with a universal monthly payout.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#269

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

cortesoft wrote: post #162
gautamcgoel wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on that please?

SALT is “state and local tax”... you can deduct state and local taxes from your federal taxes, but a few years ago they put a cap on it so you can only deduct $10,000. This really hurt tax payers in higher tax states.

Let's be precise here. It only hurt tax payers whose itemized deductions exceeded the (new) standard deduction of $12k. There were more them in higher tax states because SALT was part of their itemized deduction. It had no impact on tax payers whose itemized deductions were below $12k, or who did not itemize.

Re: Evidence from leaked account data on how elites use offshore banking [pdf]

#270

Post by dragonwriter »

Swizec wrote: post #255
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fwiw we feel like middle class but we’re really in the top 5% or higher. I think middle class is about where your money comes from than the amount of your money. If you are primarily deriving your income from from working for a company you don’t control, then I think you are middle class.

What if you're one of those AI research folks making, say, $500,000/year in salary. Are you middle class? What if you invest 70% of those 500,000 because your CoL is only 150,000. Still middle class? Cold hard cash is an asset if you use it like an asset. Well okay, your cold hard lucrative skills are the asset in this case.

> What if you're one of those AI research folks making, say, $500,000/year in salary. Are you middle class?

Assuming you are completely dependent on the salary for support, you are high income working-class intelligentsia.

> What if you invest 70% of those 500,000 because your CoL is only 150,000. Still middle class?

Assuming the returns from those investments are as important to your ability to get by (even if you aren’t touching them currently, but they ade backstopping your labor income), then you’ve achieved middle-class (petit bourgeios) status, instead of merely working class.

> Cold hard cash is an asset if you use it like an asset. Well okay, your cold hard lucrative skills are the asset in this case.

“Skills to do labor that is valued by capitalists” are assets, sure, but they are the assets determining success within (and perhaps at the extremes the potential to move out of) the working class. Ownership of transferrable capital assets defines the difference between the working class and the higher classes in a capitalist economy.

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