291–300 of 333 posts
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> the days of pardons to political donors, political donations to jury members, and firing of whistleblowers and witnesses How long have we been in these "days," would you say?
Since the Senate voted, so about a week?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_Unite...
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Since the Senate voted, so about a week?
If you think this is something new, please read some history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_Unite...
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The media is supposed to be hostile. They are always hostile to the administration. It is their job as one of the checks on power enshrined in the constitution. Why do you think freedom of the press is in Amendment one?
That's not always the case. The mainstream media - both the news media and entertainment media more broadly - was extremely accommodative and deferential to the Obama administration largely because he was on the mainstream media's political "side". Given this, many actions taken by the Obama administration that would have dominated the news cycle as impeachment-worthy if taken by the Trump administration were simply…
The one where he wore a tan suit. Or the one where he asked for fancy mustard?
They were so hostile to him they had to find minor offenses to scream about.
And even his “friendly” press threw him under the bus for drone strikes and border detentions.
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Is there any good reason to treat subsidiaries as separate from the main entity for tax purposes? All these "subsidiary X licenses from subsidiary Y" schemes seem basically fraudulent in terms of common sense--none of it generates any real profits or losses for the parent company.
Mostly that deciding when it's a legitimately different subsidiary and when it's just a shell for a corporate tax dodge seems difficult and with billions of dollars at stake for the largest companies there's a lot of incentive to make or find and exploit loopholes where FB Ireland technically qualifies as a legit division instead of a tax dodge shell.
With fairly commonsense questions like:
- Was the company formed at Megacorp's behest?
- Is there direct coordination between Megacorp and company leadership?
- Do Megacorp and the company share business infrastructure?
- Does the company share information that would normally be private with Megacorp?
- Does the company take actions that advantage Megacorp over the company itself?
You could at least make it a serious pain in the ass with many potential pitfalls to avoid responsibility in this way.
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I'm not sure it's so easy. If you own 51% of a company, which owns a slice of a company, which does business in America, does this grant uncle same the right to collect 5% of your profits? Sounds pretty imperial. Here's another idea though: Arrange things so that the taxes owed depend on the goods sold, not on any ownership structure. Don't sell goods in the US? No problem. Sell mostly in the US? Who cares about your…
It's definitely imperial, but it's kind of fundamentally an imperial problem to have companies taking advantage of your world-leading economy, then moving all the profits elsewhere to avoid contributing to the society that made all their success possible. Extradition is also imperial, but without it you effectively offer impunity to anyone who can get out of the country before they're caught. We don't offer this type…
I think the recent reductions in the US tax are moves in this direction, which is good. And what else to tax, lots of countries administer VAT, it's not so difficult, and seems quite hard to dodge. But there are lots of other taxes, too. Income tax + 401k starts to sound like a consumption tax, too, only paid on what you spend right now, like VAT. We can adjust that however we like. And before the profits in Ireland can be turned into a bigger yacht for any owner, they have to be paid as dividends (or by selling shares) by some real person who lives somewhere, and we can tax that.
Doesn't almost every multinational use this arrangement, commonly known as the Double Irish? Why is Facebook getting called out specifically? Surprised the article doesn't mention this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement#Multi...
The double Irish is no more. Perhaps FB has been slow to restructure, or resistant.
The headline is inaccurate - the IRS did not sue Facebook today. This was the first day of the trial. The lawsuit was originally filed in 2016 and widely discussed at that time. https://www.wsj.com/articles/irs-wants-facebooks-records-on-...
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No, you'd have to show $0 income (ignoring for a moment the low 0% tax bracket). So, very much negative profit, unless you're not paying rent, fuel for your car, food, not to mention taxes like property taxes, sales taxes, etc.
Corporate taxes in the US are based on business profits. $0 profit = $0 net income (gross income minus expenses) => $0 income tax. There's no such thing as a negative profit. That's called a loss.
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I think there's room to argue that intentionally shipping all your IP to a lower tax country then charging the main company (that developed that IP in the first place) high fees to use that IP as a way to shift profits from higher tax areas to lower tax areas could constitute fraud. Either they sold/transferred the IP for way to little or they're charging themselves way too much because it's advantageous for taxes.
Here's the million/billion/trillion dollar question: how much is a brand worth? Clearly it is worth something. Facebook can do the most inane thing, but if they put their brand on it then it will have some value. To me this is the flaw in corporate taxation. I don't think you can ever work around this as long as you allow free trade. It just makes sense to tax them in other ways instead and perhaps simply get rid of…
Is this actually illegal though? Or is it just clever exploitation of the rules? Tax avoidance is not the same as evasion.
> Is this actually illegal though? Or is it just clever exploitation of the rules? Tax avoidance is not the same as evasion. IMO illegality has a human and personal component too. I understand your question is about whether what they did was legal or illegal. But let me give you an example of something that is "clearly wrong" but sometimes legal. Let us assume that you buy something (or are paid cash) and the amount…
A stock can only have a single holder of record, and only one dividend payment should ever be made to whoever the holder of the stock was at the time of the payment.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-09-02/the-germa...
If that article is to be believed, I'd suspect there was a bank who needs some serious auditing; because there is simply no way there should be any ambiguity as to who the stockholder of record is at that time; and the issuance of a multitude of "tax certificates" to multiple individuals implies they fundamentally mishandled that particular taxation event.
Transactions are atomic, and serial in nature as far as finances go. Automated or manual. They must resolve down to chronological order.
This is also part of the reason the Feds hate structuring, and will stamp it out in any form they can get enough information about in order to recognize it. Don't be like these people ever.
There is no moral or fiscal imperative to commit or concoct structures/mechanisms capable of becoming or facilitating tax fraud. Hell, this exact kind of chicanery is why AML/KYC/tax law ends up making normal financial service providing such a slog; because every link in the chain is yet another gear in the machine. If it seems like you're having to go through lot of hoops to do a relatively straightforward transfer of value, odds are, you may be taking part in some form of either structuring or other financial engineering. If you think that's a tenable of affairs, have fun, but when it comes back around, don't be surprised if there isn't much sympathy to be found.