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Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

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Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#341

Post by vkou »

ptaipale wrote: post #337
vkou wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but collapse the steps together and it's the same as the government saying "give us X shares of the company," Great, you've just described taxation. > which is nationalization -- the government taking control (even fractional control) of a company by force. How is buying shares on the public market with government money taking control of a company by force? No current shareholder is obligated to sell their shares.…

No, here the idea was not taxation, but eventual total confiscation.

Buying something that is voluntarily sold at fair market value is not confiscating it.

1. Government has money. This money is collected through tax revenue, resource royalties, etc.

2. Shareholders of company voluntarily put sell orders on a stock exchange.

3. Government places buy orders on a stock exchange.

4. Repeat #2 and #3 enough times, and the government becomes a majority shareholder.

No part of this involves confiscation, any more then Berkshire-Hathaway buying, and taking a public company private is 'confiscating' it.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#342

Post by vkou »

ptaipale wrote: post #336
vkou wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't want to lose control of your company, don't issue public stock. Once you do, and it is bought by someone else, it's not your company anymore. Why does it matter if it was bought by Berkshire-Hathaway, Vanguard, or by the government of Sweeden?

I think you are missing the point. That nationalization was not going to buy control from stock exchange. The point was effectively confiscating it from the owners. But the social democrat government in Sweden couldn't perform it quickly enough to prevent flight of capital and people, nor quickly enough to consolidate political power to a dictatorship of the proletariat. So they lost the election and the development…

> I think you are missing the point. That nationalization was not going to buy control from stock exchange.

Citation needed. From what I am gathering from this thread, wikipedia, and translated wikipedia, these shares were to be bought from stock exchanges.

If this is incorrect, then yes, I agree that it is nationalisation.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#343

Post by ptaipale »

vkou wrote: post #341
ptaipale wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, here the idea was not taxation, but eventual total confiscation.

Buying something that is voluntarily sold at fair market value is not confiscating it. 1. Government has money. This money is collected through tax revenue, resource royalties, etc. 2. Shareholders of company voluntarily put sell orders on a stock exchange. 3. Government places buy orders on a stock exchange. 4. Repeat #2 and #3 enough times, and the government becomes a majority shareholder. No part of this involves…

That breaks already at step 1. Government does not have the money; instead it passes a new law to pass control of companies to governing party's proxies (in this case, LO) and expropriate the wealth from shareholders.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#344

Post by rectang »

literallycancer wrote: post #319
rectang wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What, you were serious when you demanded that I personally fix the world? I'm still doing quite a bit and making the best use of my talents: way more than enough effort to call the facile critique of "start a political party".

Yes, I'm serious. All too many people just claim the system is broken and nothing can be done to fix it. Understanding how it works and fixing it can and does work. Can't speak for the US, but in Europe, it certainly can work.

Taking you at your word, then perhaps meditate on whether "Start a political party and fix it" is the kind of statement which would motivate an activist. In my experience (and I've donated literally years of my life to supporting and nurturing creative people), asking questions and listening, truly expressing interest in people's ambitions, is more effective than shaming people for not having taken on ridiculously unrealistic goals.

And by the way, I feel plenty satisfied that contributing to open source software in just about any capacity helps to ameliorate the problem of economic inequality, by empowering individual creators without harming capital -- and inequality is what's at the root of this tax issue.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#345

Post by manigandham »

pikzel wrote: post #128
dagw wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't really care about money personally, or at least not the material things money can buy. At least that's the image he worked very hard to portray by driving an old Volvo, living in a modest house and wearing clothes bought in a second hand store etc. He obviously cared a lot about his companies making as much money as possible. Although if you asked him he'd probably say that all that tax avoidance was just h…

That was part of his public appearance because it has been extremely valuable, and it has been debated wether it was authentic or not.

When you are worth billions, those are unnecessary games.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#346

Post by goty2 »

vkou wrote: post #342
ptaipale wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are missing the point. That nationalization was not going to buy control from stock exchange. The point was effectively confiscating it from the owners. But the social democrat government in Sweden couldn't perform it quickly enough to prevent flight of capital and people, nor quickly enough to consolidate political power to a dictatorship of the proletariat. So they lost the election and the development…

> I think you are missing the point. That nationalization was not going to buy control from stock exchange. Citation needed. From what I am gathering from this thread, wikipedia, and translated wikipedia, these shares were to be bought from stock exchanges. If this is incorrect, then yes, I agree that it is nationalisation.

I think the idea from the beginning was to issue equity that diluted the current owners, but that was later revised to taxes on profit and payroll. The concept isn't radically different from a pension fund. But of course the purpose was still that workers could take part in the increased profits of companies. The funds weren't allowed to own more than 50% of the voting rights in any company.

There isn't that much in English written about them, but that is actually a good thing since most of it is of good quality.

http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?ar... https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/08/sweden-social-democracy-m...

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#347

Post by oldandtired »

bmelton wrote: post #104
gaius wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

willing to pay more taxes than you are legally required to There is a material difference between that and actively seeking loopholes that are not available to ordinary people. Ikea is only possible because of the physical and legal infrastructure paid for by those ordinary people after all. Not that they will do anything of course, the Viking spirit is long dead.

If you aren't seeking out the loopholes that apply to you, then you are paying more in taxes than you are legally required to. "legally required to" does not incur a balancing test between what is practicable vs the time it takes. If you're a regular, mid-income citizen, then there isn't likely to be a good ROI on hiring a dedicated accountant to find you loopholes. If you're making $200k a year, and you save 10%, ho…

Please let's get technical here. Apply to the other comments to the parent comment.

Tax avoidance is an illegal means of not paying the actual tax required.

What you and the others who have replied to your comment mean is "tax minimisation", which is legal and uses the specified tax code to minimise your tax burden.

What is often done in discussions about this subject is classifying legal tax minimisation processes as tax avoidance.

Tax minimisation is perfectly fine and quite moral. Tax avoidance is not fine and is often immoral, though not necessarily.

There is a second thing at play here though. As I have friends who have worked in one national taxation organisation, they have explained that the way the system works is that the taxing organisation has internal descriptions of what they will allow as legitimate deductions which are different to what the legislation might read. If you use the correct descriptions and terminology, they will allow your claim through with no challenge. But, if you do not use the correct description or terminology then they will challenge said deduction. Such descriptions are not publicly available.

That is why good tax accountants get those obtuse deductions for their clients.

The tax law is written so that every citizen (including corporate) is only required to pay the minimum amount required and not anything above that.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#349

Post by bmelton »

oldandtired wrote: post #347
bmelton wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you aren't seeking out the loopholes that apply to you, then you are paying more in taxes than you are legally required to. "legally required to" does not incur a balancing test between what is practicable vs the time it takes. If you're a regular, mid-income citizen, then there isn't likely to be a good ROI on hiring a dedicated accountant to find you loopholes. If you're making $200k a year, and you save 10%, ho…

Please let's get technical here. Apply to the other comments to the parent comment. Tax avoidance is an illegal means of not paying the actual tax required. What you and the others who have replied to your comment mean is "tax minimisation", which is legal and uses the specified tax code to minimise your tax burden. What is often done in discussions about this subject is classifying legal tax minimisation processes a…

> Tax avoidance is an illegal means of not paying the actual tax required

It seems curious that you'd start by defining terms and then define those terms incorrectly.

    tax a·void·ance
    taks əˈvoidns
    noun
    the arrangement of one's financial affairs to minimize tax 
    liability within the law.
In short, what you're referring to as minimisation is avoidance. For what it's worth, I've been using them interchangeably up to this point, and I agree that it's innocuous, harmless, etc.

The illegal act you're referring to is tax evasion.

> the taxing organisation has internal descriptions of what they will allow as legitimate deductions which are different to what the legislation might read

In America, the IRS is bound to the same laws as the citizenry, and while there may be some allowed discretion in interpretation, re-interpreting the law on their own is in fact illegal.

Re: Ikea founder leaves fortune to no one, structures it to ensure it lasts forever

#350

Post by bmelton »

gaius wrote: post #240
bmelton wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that the laws are the rules, the rules are publicly published, and everyone has access to them. If McDonald's is selling a 10 piece McNuggets for $1.49, and a 20 piece for $4.99, then buying 2 x 10 piece McNuggets for $2.98 is a loophole around paying $4.99. If you find it immoral, so be it, but it doesn't change that you're paying more for McNuggets than McDonald's requires you to pay.

and everyone has access to them The ordinary taxpayer isn’t in a position to exploit interactions between n jurisdictions tax codes, are they?

It's a thing I've seen people do. Visiting a neighboring city to take advantage of their tax holiday for back to school shopping, for example, or buying a car from a neighboring state to avoid in-state registration.

People avoid taxes all the time, it's just that 5% savings on an average income doesn't save millions of dollars and cause Twitter to hate them.

Personally, I take the mortgage interest deduction, claim my real dependents, and put as much into my 401K as is legally allowed. Those are all tax avoidance strategies that people routinely engage in.

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