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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

#341

Post by lowkey_ »

asveikau wrote: post #189
lowkey_ wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd likely be seizing a bunch of other innocent people's data too, then, no? As an American, I'd be really surprised if we let that happen. I looked and found it apparently happened once, in 2009 in Texas: https://www.cio.com/article/278564/data-center-when-the-fbi-... It resulted in another company essentially being shut down, and suing for their data back. Crazy. There has to be a better way of doing that digital…

The idea that running stuff in the cloud will protect you from a criminal investigation is totally absurd.

I wasn’t thinking about that at all and don’t think it would -

I was mentioning how things have moved to the cloud these days, and what the implications are for innocent unrelated parties’ data, given that the cloud involves this overlap of data on one device.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#342

Post by gruez »

account42 wrote: post #336
gruez wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they can get arrested and charged for for it. Except in this case it's not the executive that has the data. The data is sitting on some cloud server somewhere, and the executive no longer has access because the CISO got wind of the raid and locked his account. If you're holding the executive, you're not holdi…

So? If executives don't want to sit in jail due to their company's shady tactics they can just not approve those tactics. Alternative would be to shut the business down completely until they cooperate.

>they can just not approve those tactics.

You think the VP of Uber France was involved in the approval of global IT policies regarding locking accounts when there's a raid?

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#343

Post by croes »

gruez wrote: post #327
croes wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why should the IT guy lock you out if you want to access your data?

Because you hit a kill switch hours earlier, or (more innocently) sent a slack message to your CISO that some "scary men" showed up at your doors.

And how do you explain the police why the IT guy does that?

It’s pretty obvious to them and would be counted as obstruction of evidence

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#344

Post by marcosdumay »

scotty79 wrote: post #313
marcosdumay wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

That's called a "transaction tax". It has lots of well known issues that are incredibly hard to remedy.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#345

Post by scotty79 »

marcosdumay wrote: post #344
scotty79 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> Money changes hands so it's taxed with a purchase tax as a general rule. That's called a "transaction tax". It has lots of well known issues that are incredibly hard to remedy.

Can you point me to some reading about its drawbacks?

I know it is used widely for larger transactions of private individuals like buying a car or a house albeit with a small rate of about 2%

Since ownership of houses and cars is carefully tracked it's pretty impossible to dodge.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#346

Post by scotty79 »

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?

In my opinion it shouldn't be different. You should pay the same tax whether you purchase service from a company or labor from an individual.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#347

Post by mort96 »

scotty79 wrote: post #235
mort96 wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the problem honestly. I'd understand it if Poland stepped in and didn't let the company be bought out, but this just seems like bog standard normal globalized free market stuff? It would be extremely weird for France to step in and prevent a French company from buying a Polish company due to fears of stoking Euroscepticism among the polish population wouldn't it? And I don't even know what this has…

I also don't expect nothing other from thief then continuing to steal. I also expect thieves to be protective of their own assets. I'm just saying they are still thieves and any outrage in their name is misplaced. Screw the French when they are robbed for the benefit of other countries, because they steal from other countries using their public companies as well.

If you are criticising markets in general and capitalism's tendency of bigger companies buying up smaller companies then I understand and agree with you. If you are criticising France in particular then I don't understand what you think the problem is.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#348

Post by thrw42A8N »

lm28469 wrote: post #339
thrw42A8N wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accusations like this have to be founded on serious grounds, otherwise you make the whole argument appear foolish.

My dude... they literally are in court right now over these things... it's a known thing for years now, apple just got fined by the EU for the same shenanigans. It really isn't a conspiracy or a secret, everybody knows it, they just use the very convoluted EU laws and systems to get away with it but the door is slowly closing

Ok, great - then we can wait for the result of the court case instead of throwing around random meaningless but outrageous numbers.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#349

Post by aaronax »

gruez wrote: post #211
aaronax wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinking the systems that a company has are so sensitive that the company is basically above the law is the insane thing. It is just a company--a group of people granted certain rights. They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal processes are used and not abused).

> They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal processes are used and not abused). That analogy doesn't work, because the "filing cabinets" are actually sitting somewhere else, possibly in another country/continent. It's not obvious that authorities in one country has authority over documents stored in ano…

I think it is not crazy to think that if the contents are used from some country then intentional obstruction of justice stuff like kill switches or dropping VPN connections should be treated as intentional obstruction of justice. AKA reality of use matters more than "location" of data.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#350

Post by sealeck »

gruez wrote: post #329
sealeck wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand access to data? This is a very emotional way of saying "you're in favour of enforcing contempt of court rulings against people who try to obstruct the judicial process".

See my other reply: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42057072 it's not clear whether the executive has the ability to turn over the documents.

The executive has the power to instruct other employees to do things.
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