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

40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

missingprofits.world

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 167 posts

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#81

Post by nicoburns »

moosey wrote: post #53
cs702 wrote: post #9

Wow. Power , in all its forms -- economic, cultural, social, political -- is highly concentrated among impersonal giant corporations today. For this kind of legal tax avoidance would be impossible without mutual understanding, collaboration, and coordination across national boundaries among many disparate groups of people, all serving their corporate masters in one way or another (as their employers, as their custome…

I consider libertarianism to be contemporary monarchic support, due to exactly these issues. Corporations are run as monarchic or dictatorial structures, with some controls. Ultimately, we have a choice: work hard to build the government that we want, or allow it to falter to the energies of the billionaire class. Or, even worse, allow the billionaire class choose the government that they want.

_left libertarianism_ that applies the same logic that right-wing libertarians apply to governments to any large organisation is pretty interesting (and a lot more internally consistent).

Under that worldview you end with strongly progressive taxation funding something like a Universal Basic Income, which allows you reduce corporations' economic power without just moving it to the government.

That said, government is definitely the appropriate place for a lot of decisions to be made.

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#82

Post by mcv »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #52
koolba wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's even worse, US citizens (US "persons" even, you don't have to be a citizen for this) that live and work abroad and have nothing to do with the US, still have to pay their taxes there. That’s the price you pay to have the most powerful country in the world as a destination to which you can always retreat.

It is also worth noting that expats can exclude something like $100k from taxes with the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion. My understanding is that relatively few US expats actually pay anything.

From what I understand, they usually don't have to pay anything as long as they do pay some reasonable amount of taxes in the country where they live, but they still have to file taxes in the US, which, from what I understand, is quite a horrific process.

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#83

Post by buboard »

moosey wrote: post #53
cs702 wrote: post #9

Wow. Power , in all its forms -- economic, cultural, social, political -- is highly concentrated among impersonal giant corporations today. For this kind of legal tax avoidance would be impossible without mutual understanding, collaboration, and coordination across national boundaries among many disparate groups of people, all serving their corporate masters in one way or another (as their employers, as their custome…

I consider libertarianism to be contemporary monarchic support, due to exactly these issues. Corporations are run as monarchic or dictatorial structures, with some controls. Ultimately, we have a choice: work hard to build the government that we want, or allow it to falter to the energies of the billionaire class. Or, even worse, allow the billionaire class choose the government that they want.

> Corporations

What you say is self-contradictory. Corporations are literally a creation of the state. Libertarians do not support the State's protection of corporations and do not support corporatism.

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#84

Post by authoritarian »

WilliamEdward wrote: post #35
exabrial wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly how I feel about it. I don't think "paying" taxes are something that is honorable. The money is removed from you forcefully.

You are benefiting from the fruits of society and in some way should give back. Taxes are maybe not the best system, but not paying them is not 'honorable'

I don't necessarily disagree with your statement, but I also don't feel particularly honorable funding invasions of foreign countries, killing civilians with drone strikes, developing and producing massive amounts of weaponry, spying on American citizens, and other unsavory business the US is involved with

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#85

Post by ccvannorman »

arethuza wrote: post #5
ccvannorman wrote: post #2

Remember when the Panama Papers came out and absolutely nothing happened? On the plus side, exploitation of the system by the richest has been going on for millennia, the only difference is that today more people are aware of it.

That's not quite true - a lot of stuff happened see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers Also, Mossack Fonseca was shut down. Mind you - nothing happened to the basic approach of offshore shell companies - which is the real problem.

Oh my gosh, this is AMAZING! I was wrong, and thank you for this correction.

Hope in humanity restored, a little bit.

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#86

Post by 131012 »

aww_dang wrote: post #69
Frost1x wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on that premise: Should we, as a society, permit a select few to shift their wealth to tax havens or should those folks also join in with everyone else? Are those sheltering their taxes more privileged that they deserve being able skirt the rules others can't, even if others would do so given the same circumstances?

Yes. We should allow free competition between tax jurisdictions. If another state is willing to provide better services in any regard, people should be free to decide what suits them best. What is the meaning of private property if individuals can not move it abroad as they wish? A more productive line of inquiry might be an examination of what tax authorities can do to make their schemes more palatable. Perhaps the…

I think this theory has been discredited as Reaganism propaganda. The fact that its wikipedia page does not account for criticism makes it even more dubious.

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#87

Post by jmcqk6 »

appleiigs wrote: post #66
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I'm down for paying taxes. It pays for my lifestyle and is propostional to my lifestyle. If I own land, that land is only valuable due to the society that land exists in. It's protected, and safe, due to public services like roads, which law enforcement, fire control folks, postal service, and ambulances drive upon. I've earned my income from a lifetime of education, starting from my public school kindergar…

A consumption tax (a tax on sales) is proportional to your lifestyle. If someone chooses to buy a gas guzzler v8, they should pay taxes on the gallons they burn to pay for roads and emissions. Consumption tax is also easier to be set to a geographic location, and harder to shift to different tax jurisdiction. Harder to play games in comparison to an income tax. But nobody wants it. Very unpopular in a vote because, p…

Consumption taxes are also regressive in that in the lower your income, the harder those taxes become to pay. I would prefer a tax scheme in which you're ability to pay the tax is proportional to the taxes you owe.

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#88

Post by rayiner »

> This shifting reduces corporate income tax revenue by nearly $200 billion, or 10% of global corporate tax receipts.

To put that into perspective, the OECD has $50 trillion in GDP, and raises over $17 trillion in tax revenue. So we are talking about 1.2% of total tax revenue. Even taxing all multinational corporate profits at 50% with no tax havens would only add up to less than 5% of all tax revenue.

I wonder what the agenda is when we spend so much time and political bandwidth talking about rounding errors.

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#89

Post by Redoubts »

disintegore wrote: post #62
systemtest wrote: post #3

I am fairly certain 40% of all citizens would shift their income to a tax haven if possible.

This is a good point, actually. Attributing the blame to an extreme minority of people (billionaires) is counter-productive. The problem is not their individual moral failings (however numerous) but the system that permits them to exist and incentivizes their parasitic and exploitative practices.

That extreme minority of people have a lot more power to influence the system than the common man. It makes one wonder how the system got to be the way it is in the first place.

Re: 40% of multinational profits are shifted to tax havens each year

#90

Post by mcv »

throwawaysea wrote: post #23

FYI this isn’t new info; this research was published approximately 1.5 years ago. Personally I’m not certain that a government would put this extra money to good use. Gabriel Zucman (advisor behind Warren’s wealth tax, whose doctoral advisor was Thomas Piketty) is one of the people behind this website, and seemingly has an ideological problem with personal and corporate wealth accumulation. But I haven’t seen cogent…

> "Everyone would avoid taxes if they could, and governments aren’t exactly known for putting capital to efficient use."

Those are different issues, though. Firstly, of course governments should put their tax revenue to good use. When they don't, it's a failure of democracy to hold the government accountable. Of course in a non-democratic country or a severely compromised democracy, it's hard to impossible to hold the government accountable. Either way, the thing to complain about is the way taxes are used or misused, not their existence at all, as governments won't be able to function without them. If you don't want governments or countries at all, then argue for that directly, and I will sympathise. But you don't get any sympathy from me if you want to live in a nice country but don't want to pay any taxes for it.

And secondly, just that everybody would avoid to pay taxes if they could, doesn't mean it's okay for corporations to be able to do so. It merely underscores the inequality between people and corporations.

Post reply on HN