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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

#311

Post by scotty79 »

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…

Ownership can be tracked. You're tax rate can be proportional to all of your assets along the ownership tree (tax already paid by the branches on what they own can be deducted).

You can of course "own" things informally but then you don't get any support from courts when the paper owner decides you really own nothing.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#312

Post by scotty79 »

betaby wrote: post #246
scotty79 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. Rich people buy vastly more. Not just food, shelter and entertainment but also real estate, entire companies and financial instruments. They'd end up paying vastly more tax.

> Rich people buy vastly more Not enough, especially since everything is business expense for them.

That's the point. With purchase tax business expenses would be taxed similarly to private expenses. At least in the same framework.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#313

Post by scotty79 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #249
scotty79 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think so. Rich people buy vastly more. Not just food, shelter and entertainment but also real estate, entire companies and financial instruments. They'd end up paying vastly more tax.

If you add financial instruments into the tax (what is a tax on investing, not spending), it will become proportional. What is still not very good. This blind kind of tax also has horrible impact on the production of goods with high added value.

> what is a tax on investing, not spending

Money changes hands so it's taxed with a purchase tax as a general rule.

> it will become proportional. What is still not very good.

Progressive tax currently is just a theory. Rich actually pay regressive tax. I'd take proprtional tax over ostensibly progressive tax but in reality regressive tax any day.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#314

Post by vlovich123 »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #279
vlovich123 wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because poor people can't spend money (since they don't have it), hence they pay much less (or even no tax) Poor people can buy a car. Middle class families can buy 2 cars. Neither can buy 100 exotic cars. Is the purchase of each additional car going to increase the tax paid? Are exotic cars taxed more? You keep stating to use a power law formula but you're critically omitting what the inputs are to determine your…

> Is the purchase of each additional car going to increase the tax paid? Yes, tax liability = total spending during the year plugged into the power law tax formula. >Are exotic cars taxed more? Depends how much the taxpayer spends in a year. There is no tax rate for each specific item. The tax rate is for a total level of spending, which eliminates all loopholes. > You keep stating to use a power law formula but you'…

> Sales tax can also be at the moment the money changes hands

Are services included in this sales tax? e.g. if I hire a cleaning company to clean my apartment? I'm assuming they would be right? Now what distinguishes that scenario from an employee being hired?

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#315

Post by dr_kretyn »

greyw wrote: post #275
scotty79 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's rich coming from French. Long time ago France Telecom bought Polish top phone network. Immediately rebranded it to Orange (despite the fact that the company had one of the strongest brands on market where it operated). Unsurprisingly the licensing fees for using Orange brand that the Polish company had to pay to France Telecom amounted to large percentage of taxable profits that the Polish company had. Overt t…

Is that related to the privatization wave after 1989? If so, the culprit here is the corrupt political caste that sold companies below their true value for kickbacks. Corruption has been an endemic problem in the east.

It isn't. That happened some time around 2000. Unless your theory is that ~11 years isn't enough to change generations in which case there's more than that, right? Then give other examples.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#316

Post by scotty79 »

thrw42A8N wrote: post #308
scotty79 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VAT with 100% deduction places entire tax burden on the end consumer. Income tax aims to extract additional tax from entities that extract money from consumers for investors. VAT could do a lot of the same things that I'm proposing (if the deductions weren't 100%) but is limited in scope. And because of that it has a lot of interfaces to other domains like real estate, import, labor, financial intruments. Interfaces…

Income taxes make everything less straight forward, more risky, more costly, just harder. Small companies are incredibly disadvantaged. If most/all income taxation could be avoided, it potentially translates to incredible productivity gains. What are the reasons to tax corporate income? The usual reason is so that it doesn't spend the money on executive wages, parties, and so on. The less public reason is so that it…

> The less public reason is so that it doesn't extract all money to a foreign corporation through license/patent fees (dividends are taxed more).

Purchase tax would fix it by taxing money "on exit" on foreign purchases of anything. This also works as a tariff without singling out any foreign country as a target for tariff.

> VAT with progressive rate based on item class and price.

Here's your bureaucracy. VAT classification is huge catalog that many businesses are trying to gamble to jump to lower tax rate. Creating it, updating it, adhering to it is a huge pile of decentralized and distributed bureaucracy.

What you are proposing is a spaghetti of solutions. Every interface between the parts and every solution itself is an attack surface for tax dodgers.

Genral purchase tax is unified framework on all transactions that can consistently extract money from the rich through taxing all their spending that intrudes on the markets only when you specifically wish to and gives you clear tool for intrusion in the form of tax credits for specific market actors for whatever reason you wish.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#317

Post by boq »

lacy_tinpot wrote: post #299
pezezin wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you know how we won World War 2? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_a_Flag_over_the_Reichs... I don't see any American flag here.

[flagged]

> Lend-Lease. Who do you think they leased from and what do you think they leased?

Did the US won the war alone ? who used the weapons ?

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#318

Post by shiroiushi »

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.

>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.

What if the safe was never in your house at all, but it was in a foreign country across an ocean? And when the cops showed up, you simply threw the keys across the ocean too?

If the cops know of something particular in the safe, then maybe the judge could find you in contempt for not producing that thing when ordered by the court, but otherwise, I don't see how they have any legal leg to stand on.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#319

Post by thrw42A8N »

scotty79 wrote: post #316
thrw42A8N wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Income taxes make everything less straight forward, more risky, more costly, just harder. Small companies are incredibly disadvantaged. If most/all income taxation could be avoided, it potentially translates to incredible productivity gains. What are the reasons to tax corporate income? The usual reason is so that it doesn't spend the money on executive wages, parties, and so on. The less public reason is so that it…

> The less public reason is so that it doesn't extract all money to a foreign corporation through license/patent fees (dividends are taxed more). Purchase tax would fix it by taxing money "on exit" on foreign purchases of anything. This also works as a tariff without singling out any foreign country as a target for tariff. > VAT with progressive rate based on item class and price. Here's your bureaucracy. VAT classif…

Yeah your solution indeed is simpler. But I'd rather move somewhere else.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#320

Post by lotsofpulp »

vlovich123 wrote: post #314
lotsofpulp wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is the purchase of each additional car going to increase the tax paid? Yes, tax liability = total spending during the year plugged into the power law tax formula. >Are exotic cars taxed more? Depends how much the taxpayer spends in a year. There is no tax rate for each specific item. The tax rate is for a total level of spending, which eliminates all loopholes. > You keep stating to use a power law formula but you'…

> Sales tax can also be at the moment the money changes hands Are services included in this sales tax? e.g. if I hire a cleaning company to clean my apartment? I'm assuming they would be right? Now what distinguishes that scenario from an employee being hired?

Yes, I don’t think I have come across a US state where sales tax doesn’t also get applied to most services.

> Now what distinguishes that scenario from an employee being hired?

Not sure why this is relevant to this discussion, but the cleaning service’s employees do not become your employees because you don’t get to manage the cleaning service’s employees and it’s usually a limited time work engagement. There’s quite a bit more that goes into creating an employer / employee relationship.

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