Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

projekte.sueddeutsche.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 817 posts

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#361

Post by ptaipale »

vixen99 wrote: post #306
yAnonymous wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm really waiting for someone who makes the tax evasion system scale for small companies and regular people.

Tax evasion is and always will be, illegal. Tax avoidance is legal and undertaken by every single sane tax-payer who pays the minimum tax but computes that amount in accordance with the tax rules. The courts are available for redress if the tax authorities think the rules are being bent. Judgement is a legal matter and not one for debate by armchair moralists. Those who don't like the way some tax laws operate in the…

Yes. People who disapprove "tax avoidance" or "tax optimization" should reflect on the idea a few years back:

High-earning professionals like medical doctors in a North European country had a very high marginal tax rate (well over 50 %). They also had long working hours. Thus, many opted to reduce their work amount; it's better to take unpaid leave and mend your house, rather than to work in a responsible job, get close to zero net compensation, and have a leaking roof in your house.

This is called tax optimization or tax avoidance.

Now, the government notices this and proposes a "tax on work that was not done with the purpose of avoiding tax". Will you approve?

This kind of mechanisms are what we talk about in tax avoidance and tax optimization.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#362

Post by qaq »

OK could someone explain to me why people in US would be complaining about evil Apple or any other major US company ? It's not owned by some evil rich dude largest Apple shareholder is Vanguard second Blackrock and so on. It's owned by you it creates value for your pension I'd rather trust Tim Cook than Donald Trump with my pension $.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#363

Post by improbable22 »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #315
m12k wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, the only sane solution to this is a massive overhaul of international tax law. Shaming companies just isn't a scalable solution in any way. There's a massive opposition against this both from multinationals and tax haven countries though - this article is a good way to start making it obvious to normal citizens that this issue should be on the ballot.

That simply won't work if there's even one country (like the known tax haven islands) that don't abide by it. Unless international tax laws start charging taxes for every penny that crosses a border, things like that will keep happening. There's a huge financial incentive for small countries to become tax havens, they take a relatively tiny amount of money, which for them multiplies their GDP.

But will people travel to this tax haven to buy their computers? Will Apple's employees all move there to write software? Nope.

What we mean by Apple operating in (say) Germany is these things: they make sales there, and they have employees there.

Where the letterhead says they're incorporated... isn't this just an implementation detail? It's like asking where their datacenter is located. It's in the cloud, who cares? It seems to me that making the tax laws care about this is crazy... why do we this?

Why not simply tax the things which cannot move, transactions involving real people who live in particular places?

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#364

Post by ehllo »

nickpp wrote: post #292
loceng wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These companies evading taxes are responsible for increased hardship and suffering of a society as well, leeching off of the nations they exist in, and being able to outcompete the honest organizations and people in them. The damages are far greater than the tax avoided. "They are doing it too" isn't a valid excuse either.

How exactly are they inflicting all that harm, hardship and suffering? In my eyes, they are creating tremendous value every day while following every single law nations impose on them. They would risk everything otherwise. You're throwing demagogic, populist accusations without a single shred of support. Is emotional discourse an acceptable replacement for the rational one?

Maybe this video from the HMRC.gov.uk helps you to understand why evading tax is bad and it is better for all to pay the full tax ;)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3_VwZ-Cmac

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#365

Post by dontreact »

chris_t wrote: post #280
tyingq wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They aren't, for the most part, doing anything illegal though. They are using the existing laws to their best advantage. The fix for this can't be trying to appeal to their morals. It would have to be something else that just limits the legal choices. Edit: If you disagree, are you saying that shaming them into not doing this solely on some moral compass is the right fix? Does that scale?

This is the key point that is so often missed. Getting angry at Apple et al for following their incentives rationally is silly. I'd love to see journalists doing a better job of explaining the failures of the tax system rather than peddling pointless outrage, but I suppose that they too are following their incentives rationally; outrage gets more clicks.

It's not silly. It's the first step in a long chain of events that hopefully will end up with a better tax code. Giving companies that do this bad PR incentivizes companies towards reporting loopholes instead of exploiting them.

Journalists already do try and explain the failures of the tax system. For example, check out this graphic: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2012/04/28/business/Doubl...

The tax code is complicated and boring and people would much rather read articles with outrage directed specifically at companies.

Should I say that you're silly for getting angry at journalists for following their incentives rationally?

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#366

Post by nickpp »

adamlett wrote: post #313
nickpp wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Monopolies are granted by governments. The free market has a natural solution to monopolies, it's called competition - startups. Big Cos will always lobby governments to add rules and regulation to raise the barrier of entry on their market and thus reduce competition. They, in fact, buy their monopoly from the government. Solution? Take away the government's ability to grant monopolies.

Monopolies are granted by governments Sometimes, sure. But far from exclusively. Monopolies arise naturally in unregulated markets. The free market has a natural solution to monopolies, it's called competition - startups. That’s like saying that natural selection is the solution to hereditary diseases. Not so comforting for those suffering now.

You're right there, free markets take while to break monopolies. Time is a price we have to pay.

Because the alternative, govt intervention, in the long term is much more expensive: it corrupts the market and impedes the natural mechanisms from working. Interventions beget interventions.

This leads to heavily regulated markets, where the biggest players buy themselves monopolies. Exactly what we were running away from. :)

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#367

Post by ttyphns »

BoiledCabbage wrote: post #248
repomies691 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... Basically Apple is increasing the suffering by creating all those laptops and iphones? That is very difficult for me to grasp. Apple creates computers and phones which make peoples lives a lot better, and people are willing to pay for those. Why is the suffering increasing? I guess world would be a better place if apple would pay more taxes, but I'm pretty sure that world would be worse place without Apple, whe…

Hmm, Apple should probably stop paying any wages to any factory workers and force them to sleep in the factory and work 18hrs a day. As long as they keep making those nice phones and laptops... I mean I guess it would be better if they didn't do that, but then again have you seen the next competetors laptop? The world would be a worse place if we had to use that.

I use normal computers and they work just fine. I see some colleagues using Apple computers and it doesn't always work for them. The world would be as normal as it is without apple products please.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#368

Post by valuearb »

styx31 wrote: post #80

What annoys me the most is that, as a small company, I can't evade from my country tax system. I pay the taxes. All of them, at full rate. But there are these big companies which can afford to create offshore companies/holding just to evade some tax system, and lower their tax rate. So, what? The tax rate of a country is now "artificial", because it will never be applied to all revenues from all companies, because th…

What taxes does Apple, an American company, owe Germany? Are you paying taxes half way across the world from your place of business?

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#369

Post by dTal »

nickpp wrote: post #266
schalab wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There used to be a lot of natural factors which worked against monopolies. Every new market you introduced your product in brought along with it a layer of bureaucracy and middle management, which left you more bloated and unwieldy. This allowed smaller,local companies to have an agility and responsiveness advantage even if they offered the same service at a higher fee. Computers and the internet have made the proces…

You raise some good points. But I strongly believe in the innovative solutions brought forth by the free markets. It's not called "the invisible hand" for nothing. I am old enough to remember when whole IT industry used to be in the shadow of Microsoft (and IBM before that). Nobody could see a solution out of it! The government even tried to fix the problem and failed. Ten years later, Microsoft is becoming a nice pl…

So now we're in the shadow of Google/Apple instead of Microsoft. Whoop-de-fricken-doo. The larger problem of corporate feudalism remains unaddressed by the "invisible hand". Lords come and go but in the end we all remain serfs.

Re: Paradise Papers: Dear Tim Cook

#370

Post by yathern »

jason_slack wrote: post #252
hop wrote: post #178

In Mexico, people don’t finish their houses and leave rebar coming out the roof to pay less tax. In Vietnam, the houses are really thin because property taxes are based on width. For an American company selling things overseas, they’re going to setup in Ireland or wherever else because the laws make it advantageous. All these decisions are functions of the laws written, so if they want to complain and write open lett…

> In Vietnam, the houses are really thin because property taxes are based on width. Really? Interesting. Can anyone explain how taxing the width of the house was established?

It's similar in many places in Europe, where you see houses laid out like this:

http://c8.alamy.com/comp/F56ABW/old-and-narrow-houses-in-str...

Your property size, and subsequent taxes were decided based on how much of the road you took up, ie the width of the house. This practice dates back surprisingly far (1500s?)

Post reply on HN