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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

#61

Post by tenacious_tuna »

_ink_ wrote: post #54
seiferteric wrote: post #5

I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first companies that don't have much of an office presence and with little or no physical documents and everything being stored in the cloud somewhere.

There was an interview with Anne Brorhilker, who used to be state's attorney and was investigating in CumEx cases. She stated that it is a huge pain, because you always need to ask the foreign agencies for assistance, which you sometimes simply won't get. It was a good listen. At first she needed to go empty handed, but then teamed up with competent tech guys. After that the smug faces stating, that the amount of dat…

That sounds fascinating, do you happen to have a link? (I'm getting a lot of German results, which unfortunately I don't have the fluency to parse to find the 'right' one.)

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#62

Post by asveikau »

seiferteric wrote: post #5

I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first companies that don't have much of an office presence and with little or no physical documents and everything being stored in the cloud somewhere.

What do you think "the cloud" is? I'm reminded of an old meme, "the cloud is just someone else's computer". They could raid a data center and seize machines. They could also subpoena data they are looking for.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#63

Post by seanhunter »

tiahura wrote: post #38
seanhunter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah there's the so called "Dutch Sandwich"[1] which is a well-known tax "planning" methodology that corporates use with the so called "Double Irish" being another one. There's also a slightly less-well known one involving Mauritius and India. They're all ways of moving profits between companies in order to exploit tax treaties that countries put in place. In the case of the Dutch sandwich I think the Netherlands has…

What’s the rationale for double taxing corporate profits vs other types?

No rationale for that, but likewise no rational reason that corporates sholud be able to use multinational structures to completely avoid tax, which is what these planning structures are all about. Typically there are inter-company transfer pricing arrangements that mean that the companies in the taxed jurisdictions pay fees to each other so their profits are minimised and as much profit as possible is expatriated to low- or no-tax jurisdictions.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#64

Post by oceanplexian »

seiferteric wrote: post #5

I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first companies that don't have much of an office presence and with little or no physical documents and everything being stored in the cloud somewhere.

It doesn’t. Especially with multinationals, and doubly so as crypto gains adoption. Hence why the governments of the world are in a panic. Decentralization is a huge threat to bureaucracy since their tools of intimidation and control are less effective.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#66

Post by playingalong »

spwa4 wrote: post #12
crest wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If everything is synchronised to third party could storage an "office raid" can be as easy as getting a court order telling the cloud provider to make a snapshot of everything stored available to the police.

Is there a product allowing for client-side encrypted mounts? Or just use a SAAS outside of the country that doesn't allow for exporting any data under any circumstances?

The whole point (or at least the main point) of the tax paperwork is to be able to produce them to tax investigators. If you don't want to share anything, then it's easier not to do the accounting. Which I guess is severally illegal globally.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#67

Post by oceanplexian »

diggan wrote: post #15
seiferteric wrote: post #5

I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first companies that don't have much of an office presence and with little or no physical documents and everything being stored in the cloud somewhere.

> everything being stored in the cloud somewhere Sounds like it would make it easier for law enforcement. They no longer need a warrant against/for the company they're investigating, just the place where their data is stored. Get the warrant, raid the place and grab the drives, then continue the investigation. Done the right way, the company under investigation wouldn't even notice it.

The data is stored on a server in another country where the warrant isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Now what?

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#68

Post by lowkey_ »

asveikau wrote: post #62
seiferteric wrote: post #5

I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first companies that don't have much of an office presence and with little or no physical documents and everything being stored in the cloud somewhere.

What do you think "the cloud" is? I'm reminded of an old meme, "the cloud is just someone else's computer". They could raid a data center and seize machines. They could also subpoena data they are looking for.

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 digitally (I assume there is, these days, and we won't see something like this again).

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#69

Post by Algent »

seiferteric wrote: post #5

I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first companies that don't have much of an office presence and with little or no physical documents and everything being stored in the cloud somewhere.

That's basically what happened when they tried (twice I think ?) to raid Uber offices in France, their boss pressed a kill switch and everything went down in seconds. It completely blocked the investigation.

Afterward Uber helped Macron campaign who then ordered National Financial Prosecutor's office to "stop bothering them" so I don't think anything new happened since.

Edit: Some sources in below replies for infos on both. Turn out I'm wrong for 2nd part it started earlier than his campaign.

Re: Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

#70

Post by scarface_74 »

diggan wrote: post #15
seiferteric wrote: post #5

I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first companies that don't have much of an office presence and with little or no physical documents and everything being stored in the cloud somewhere.

> everything being stored in the cloud somewhere Sounds like it would make it easier for law enforcement. They no longer need a warrant against/for the company they're investigating, just the place where their data is stored. Get the warrant, raid the place and grab the drives, then continue the investigation. Done the right way, the company under investigation wouldn't even notice it.

First the data is stored in another country. Second are they really going to raid and take the drives at an AWS data center that has other customer’s information? How will they know which drive to take?
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