Massive Data Leak Reveals How the Ultra Rich Hide Their Wealth 893
bshell writes "According to the CBC, there was a massive leak of 'files containing information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries. The leak amounts to 260 gigabytes of data, or 162 times larger than the U.S. State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010...In many cases, the leaked documents expose insider details of how agents would incorporate companies in Caribbean and South Pacific micro-states on behalf of wealthy clients, then assign front people called "nominees" to serve, on paper, as directors and shareholders for the corporations — disguising the companies' true owners.' Makes a good read and there are some good interactive components. Perhaps Slashdot readers can figure out how the source of the leak, the D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists got their hands on this data."
It is as if there is no law (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:It is as if there is no law (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it can! If anything, it will end far, far worse.
You forget, laws don't apply to the upper caste the same way as with us proles. With this many upper caste members looking bad, this will either get swept under a rug and never spoken of again (this is the outcome you WANT to happen), or new laws will be written making what they're doing perfectly legal.
But don't worry, we will MAYBE see one or two people who take the fall, so that all of us peons can think that "the system works", and that justice is being done. Whichever of the 1% is the least in favour with the rest of the 1% will likely be the ones who 'take a bullet for the team'. Those few who go down will naturally live in the cushiest, most opulent of conditions for their "prison", if they even get that. After that's over, we will hear nothing more of this, and the system will not change even slightly.
Safe bet that there WILL be laws written in the future to protect the upper caste against problems occuring again though. So you're right... this cannot end well. For the 99%. Bad things don't happen to the vast, vast, vast majority of the upper caste, unless they need a sacraficial lamb (such as the few who will take the fall above). Bad things are for the peasants.
Re:It is as if there is no law (Score:5, Interesting)
Absolute rubbish, and here is why. People like you are complacent, and believe yourself to be a tool for the people abusing you. Not only do you have that belief, but you are advocating this belief to others. That complacency, and willingness is normal, but sad behavior.
The answer to the dilemma does come in time. Every so often, citizens behead the king and redistribute the wealth. Historically this is true, and the founding of the USA was an extreme example of this happening.
The USA was built to have peaceful mechanisms in place to make this transition. What it could not do however, is make people become active in forcing changes. Fifty years of brain washing has people like you believing that you have no power, no voice, and no choices. We still have the power in the Constitution to make changes peacefully, but people like you have to stop being complacent and advocating complacency.
Fortunately, there are people demanding changes and they will come eventually. I'm sure that you will be riding their coat tails when it happens to try and get a slice of the pie. Until that time you will sit on the coat tails of those currently abusing society happy to get their crumbs.
Study "The Republic" and learn some history and you will realize that I'm correct on all accounts.
Re:It is as if there is no law (Score:4, Interesting)
It's worse than if there were no law. In the state of nature, the strong prey on the weak. In the United States of America, the strong prey on the weak with the help of the government.
Re:It is as if there is no law (Score:5, Insightful)
this. The wealthy have freedom to keep their money and generally do with it as they wish. Same as they have school choice, can avoid the TSA, stay out of prison, etc. Different rules for them.
The middle and lower classes live under an oppressive regime that largely keeps them this way, to the benefit of the wealthy. Both the wealthy and the politcal classes are quite satisfied with this state of affairs.
Translation ... (Score:2, Insightful)
Self entitled wealthy bastards go to great lengths to avoid paying taxes. Nobody at all is surprised.
Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of the strategies outlined in TFS are illegal, so your point is moot. Plus there are plenty of people like me who pay ~$30,000 in federal taxes (on top of other state and local taxes), but could never afford the legal and accounting team necessary to create such elaborate tax-evasion schemes. In short, it's yet again the middle class that gets fucked.
Re:Translation ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
In short, it's yet again the middle class that gets fucked.
Yeah, because the poor have it so good. Face it, there's no middle class. There's the .1% and there's the rest of us.
Re: (Score:3)
IIRC, it costs about $1k/yr to operate an offshore shell company, and only took about 30min on the phone to setup. My memory sucks though, so listen to the actual podcast where they report the details of their experience of setting up 2 shell companies for their report: http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/27/157421340/how-to-set-up-an-offshore-company [npr.org]
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In short, it's yet again the middle class that gets fucked.
2500 years ago, Aristotle wrote that
"The most perfect political community is one in which the middle class is in control, and outnumbers both of the other classes.
I sometimes wonder if many of our current political difficulties are due in part to the fact that our political and academic elites have stopped reading the classics. Those who designed our current political and economic systems were steeped in classical Greek literature (ie. Locke, Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Voltaire, Rousseau et al.). The ancient Greeks invented money as a medium of universal exchange, private property, constitutional law and democracy. I wond
Re:Translation ... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Translation ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Intelligent people go to great lengths to avoid having to pay more tax than they are legally obliged to. But if you're poor you don't pay much tax at all, so what the hell are you complaining about? You're using the same roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. All for a few hundred bucks a year.
I guess what you don't understand, Dunbal, is the difference between legal/illegal and right/wrong.
Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Translation ... (Score:4, Funny)
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It's been my experience that stupid, moderately well-off assholes tend to think that way.
Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Explain to me how hiding your money in offshore accounts so it can't be seen by the govt, for the express purpose of dodging the legally required taxation of that money, is legal?
Well, the way you describe it, there's just no defense against that. But consider the following:
Many companies and individuals legitimately use tax havens as a way of keeping money offshore until they need it. The moment it enters their domestic bank account, of course, it can become capital gains/earnings and therefore subject to tax. But because they do a lot of business overseas, they leave a chunk parked in order to avoid unnecessary fees. So they use this as a floating pot they can dip into to conduct
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It's almost as if there's an enormous amount of the population between the super rich and the poor. It might even be an important group. Maybe the middle class or something?
Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Funny)
It's almost as if there's an enormous amount of the population between the super rich and the poor. It might even be an important group. Maybe the middle class or something?
I hear they're working on that problem, and it should be taken care of in the next few years.
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For myself, it’s not about intelligent people using legitimate loopholes – the loopholes are there for a reason – if you don’t like them close them down – which I am all for.
It is about international taxes. If you have a business that spans more than one tax jurisdictions things and get complex and stupid fast. The U.S. country of residence rules is just plain incomparable with the rest of the world, which is why our tax code is one complex kludge. Most of these shell accounts
Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
You're using the same roads, bridges, schools and hospitals.
No, I'm not:
- A lot of the very rich people don't use roads and bridges very much. For example, Paul Krugman relates driving in for a meeting in New York with some banker types, and making small talk commented on how bad the traffic was. The bankers were confused, because they'd gotten to the meeting by helicopter. If they do use the road, it's a good guess that they have a chauffeur doing the driving.
- They absolutely don't use the public school system. Their kids are likely to attend exclusive and expensive boarding schools.
- They may be in the same hospital building, but they get very different treatment from what you or I get. That's because your average Joe is as valuable to a hospital as his insurance policy, but a rich guy is worth far more.
Re:Translation ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Do their employees also take a helicopter to work? Do businessmen have to train their employees from scratch in basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills? Does each company have to have its own set of on-staff doctors to avoid having the entire company out sick with the Plague?
Even if the owners don't personally use the services, they benefit immensely from having them available to the general public, who ultimately become their employees and customers.
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Intelligent people go to great lengths to avoid having to pay more tax than they are legally obliged to. But if you're poor you don't pay much tax at all, so what the hell are you complaining about? You're using the same roads, bridges, schools and hospitals. All for a few hundred bucks a year.
Intelligent doesn't always equal rich. Some people are just born that way.
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Re:'give back to the system' works so well (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait, where do you live where rule by the intelligent has actually been tried? From where I'm standing, it looks like your average high school student knows more about science and technology than half of Congress, and it looks like most of them don't even have enough intelligence to learn about these subjects before legislating on them. Intelligent, indeed.
I'm pretty sure we live on a planet that is largely ruled by the lawyers. This is why we have complex bodies of law designed to be utterly impenetrable for the average person. Lawyers create laws designed so that everyone will have need of their services in the future. The result is that the laws are written not by people who actually understand anything about the real world, but rather by people who mostly only understand the law.
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your average high school student knows more about science and technology than half of Congress
Come on, our high schools can't be that bad.
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Part of it is also that you're helping pay for all those red states with your federal income taxes. NY gets less back than they pay in federal income taxes so they have to make up the rest.
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If you're poor, a much higher percentage of income is spent buying things in order to live. A rich person instead invests most of their money which is only taxed on the gains, and even then at a fairly low rate. On top of that, most of us pay tax for Social Security and Medicare but the wealthy only pay that tax on a small percentage of their income due to the caps.
Re:Translation ... (Score:5, Insightful)
People who took risks generally prefer to be rewarded when those risks pay off.
And if they are a bank circa 2008, they prefer to push the losses on the taxpayer when the risks don't pay off.
Hypocrisy (Score:5, Insightful)
We have no problem asking service men and women to sacrifice time with their families, their personal well being and their lives...all under the banner of patriotism. Yet when we ask the wealthy to sacrifice for their country in the form of simply paying their taxes they hide it in off shore accounts and attack those who question this as "redistributors".
Blow the whistle and blow it loud on these cringing cowards.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html
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Whoa bub, hold up with the WE. I was against every single action that has sent a single pair of boots overseas. I have never asked them for anything, and generally..... don't see how murdering people around the world is serving this country at all.
I may live here, I may have been born here, and I grudgingly pay taxes here, but I have not asked them to do anything. in fact, I wish they would wise up and stop volunteering to go help these rich people make more money.
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I have massive respect for those who serve their country. I don't think most people would disagree with that either. Its not the service people that are at blame at all here.
What I have a problem with is the people who send those service people overseas to fight in wars not to benefit the country but to benefit the bottom line of the people who are hiding their money mentioned in this article. A lot of the wars the US has been involved in have been for the benefit of US corporate interests in large part, no
More succinctly (Score:5, Insightful)
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Every item in your hands was built and delivered to you by somebody with more money than you.
Bullshit. Every item in my hands was built and delivered by people who make about as much as I do. The rich just take a cut and add no value.
Re:More succinctly (Score:4, Insightful)
Ownership is not a productive act. Labor is productive. What you are describing is rent seeking.
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Every item in your hands was built and delivered to you by somebody with more money than you.
I must tell you how silly it sounds to hear you say that. I just turned over my keyboard, and it was made in China. Probably by lots of folks making far less than me and working far harder. It was hauled by truck drivers, boat operators who make less than me. Delivered to me by a delivery man, paid less than me. It's the working class that makes the world go round.
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Every item in your hands was built and delivered to you by somebody with more money than you.
My mouse and keyboard were made by wage-slave labor in China. One was delivered to me by a wage-slave retail kid and the other was from some guy in a delivery truck I never saw.
Jesus fucking Christ, what kind of mouse do you use?
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Blow the whistle and blow it loud on these cringing cowards.
Better yet, bring in the freakin' gavel and make these douchebags pay, like everyone else, for breaking the law.
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extorting taxes from citizens .... If the wealth was obtained illeagally by ... coercion then hold people accountable for that ... leave them alone to enjoy the labor of their hands
First, the taxes are legal and some of that money may be subject to taxes which are being illegally evaded. So since you're concerned with legality, you should have no problem with illegal tax shelters being dismantled and the taxes collected.
Second, levying and collecting taxes isn't easy. In fact, it involves a lot of labor on the part of the government. Who are you to deny them the fruits of their labor?
But ultimately, third, all property rights boil down to what you can defend from others. If you try to be an island unto yourself, you'll swiftly find that either someone bigger than you will take it all, or you'll have to cooperate with other people for mutual self defense, and you'll have to pay for it. Either way, you don't get to keep it all; that's just the way of things. A stable government with laws, democratic voting, and other nice things is probably a better choice than a war of everyone against everyone else.
Re:Hypocrisy (Score:4, Insightful)
Since these folks enjoy the same public roads, military, police and fire protection, etc as everyone else, then they can help pay for them. Otherwise, they're just mooching off the public good. If it's too much to ask, they can move to some godforsaken island and fend for themselves. Libertarianism cuts both ways --- if you don't want to pay for the FDA, fine, but don't complain when your family members die from tainted medicine.
Who cares how they got their hands on it? (Score:5, Insightful)
In this case I'd have to say, "who care how they got their hands on this data" and hope they do more work like this.
Eat the rich.
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
That meal turns out to be brief and ultimately self-defeating.
Re:Who cares how they got their hands on it? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd even take it a step farther : I hope that we never find out how they got their hands on this data, whoever they are.
Just so long as they keep doing good works, I for one hope they stay anonym- ... *ahem* under the radar
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Mail Server (Score:3)
Given that there are interoffice emails in the stream, that implies that someone was able to access:
1. the mail server archive/backup
2. the mail server's scrubber (whatever they call the thing that scans email for sensitive info).
Do they all share a mailhost or something like that?
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gmail ? ;-)
Ever watch CNBC hosts talk about this? (Score:4, Insightful)
You'd think a guy moving his accounts offshore for the tax break had just been awarded the Medal of Honor! It's a badge of honor to a lot of people that you avoid paying taxes by any means necessary.
Re:Ever watch CNBC hosts talk about this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it is. They are avoiding theft of their property.
Oh, please. You do realize that without the "theft" of taxes, the only property you could own is that which could personally defend, which in the case of civilization's truly wealthy means virtually all of it. I don't like taxation any more than the next guy, but the idea that the uber-wealthy are "avoiding theft" by evading the taxes that ultimately enable and protect their ability to accumulate disproportionate wealth is pure nonsense.
Oh, No, Don't Look Behind that Curtain! (Score:5, Interesting)
The files contain information on over 120,000 offshore entities — including shell corporations and legal structures known as trusts — involving people in over 170 countries.
Oh, no no no, tax evasion for the ultra rich that can play international games isn't the reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. No! From Forbes' response to the viral video "Wealth Inequality in America" [forbes.com] they say:
Look — we’re moving into the opening years of an economic revolution. The floods of Big Data pouring from the Internet and related technologies are washing away the foundational reasons for the existence of several of our most critical – and comforting – societal structures, potentially changing forever the very notion of what a company is, what a job is, what a brand is, what an educational degree means, and how we’ll work and govern and care for ourselves while attempting to live long and prosper. Almost every part of our existence is being restructured, and quickly, by the stunning power of nearly infinite information.
Don't you see? It's not tax evasion or unfair taxation, it's just the magical power of the internet. Stop asking questions and demanding an equal opportunity to skirt income laws! It's "Big Data" that's changing things rapidly and excitingly. Stop fighting the Economic Revolution!
What an absolute crock of shit.
Take it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Take it (Score:5, Interesting)
I saw a blurb somewhere that summed it up for me:
"Which is more likely: that 150 million Americans are lazy or that 400 Americans are greedy?"
The context being that the top 400 have wealth equivalent to the bottom 50%.
Income and wealth inequality is not some abstract concept.
It is real and it is not about how whether the bottom 50% own TVs or a microwave.
Nice to know but... (Score:5, Insightful)
How the ICIJ got the data (Score:5, Informative)
Perhaps Slashdot readers can figure out how the source of the leak, the D.C.-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists got their hands on this data.
The story on the CBC national news last night suggested that it was snail-mailed anonymously on a portable hard drive to a DC based journalist. This doesn't explain where the data ultimately came from, but does explain how the ICIJ came to have it.
Re: (Score:2)
I heard on the CBC just now that it was a journalist in Australia who had a few years ago reported on this kind of corruption. He started getting emails, and eventually the package with the hard drive.
All the way to the top (Score:4, Informative)
The husband of a Senator has been named in the leak thus far (who is a high profile class action lawyer), and his Senator wife was named as the beneficiary of the accounts. This is the same Senate that had a member (Patrick Brazeau) charged with both sexual and vanilla assault while also under investigation for expenses claimed. While we Canadians sat around scratching our heads about how to get rid of the lifetime appointed Senators, he then had the audacity to April Fools tweet his resignation, only to thumb his nose at us the next day. I'm thinking about sharpening the tines on my pitchfork right now...this adds fuel to the fire.
we need more of this (Score:3)
That's a lot of records but not a lot of shells (Score:4, Interesting)
100,000 shell companies over thirty years is significant but not, I think, a large share of the overall market. I gather that these sorts of businesses process millions of new shell companies a year.
It'll be interesting to see who gets caught as a result.
Re:That's a lot of records but not a lot of shells (Score:5, Interesting)
The data seen by the Guardian shows that their secret companies are based mainly in the British Virgin Islands.
But this might be a quirk of how the data was released (apparently, news organizations have access to the data from their country, meaning that the British Virgin Islands may be the preferred destination for UK money).
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Yay! (Score:3)
I've been looking for a walkthrough for hiding my wealth in low-tax countries. The eHow article wasn't cutting it. I'm thinking of sending my gazillion dollars to the Bahamas.
Political aftermath (Score:4, Interesting)
What are the politicians going to do to address these loopholes?
Re:Political aftermath (Score:5, Funny)
The biggest question I have, now that the general public is also aware of how the ultra rich "hide" their money (and oftentimes to avoid taxation):
What are the politicians going to do to address these loopholes?
Move their money elsewhere.
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What are the politicians going to do to address these loopholes?
Close them up and then create some new ones, obviously.
Re:Political aftermath (Score:5, Insightful)
The biggest question I have, now that the general public is also aware of how the ultra rich "hide" their money (and oftentimes to avoid taxation):
What are the politicians going to do to address these loopholes?
Oh you mean the politicians who are likely using said loopholes? What the fuck do you think will happen?
We'll be reading about this in much the same way we read about justice and change after the financial meltdown of 2008. Not a fucking thing will change, and not a single greedy corrupt bastard will be punished.
Not. One.
Non-Story (Score:4, Informative)
Want to know how the super wealthy "hide" their money in off shore accounts? Call an off shore bank and ask? They'll be happy to tell you. For a couple hundred bucks they'll even set up the company for you and open an account.
Problem is, you'll need to get money into your account somehow. To do so will take a wire transfer that the IRS will be notified about. Going the other direction would also take a wire transfer, that the IRS will be notified about.
Here's a radio show about it:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/27/157499893/episode-390-we-set-up-an-offshore-company-in-a-tax-haven [npr.org]
Also, it doesn't let you magically hide money from the IRS like most people think:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/09/18/161358307/episode-403-what-can-we-do-with-our-shell-companies [npr.org]
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Problem is, you'll need to get money into your account somehow. To do so will take a wire transfer that the IRS will be notified about.
Wire transfer assumes that the money is presently 'in the system'. That means properly tracked, taxed and accounted for. So your trick is to make it 'dissapear'. Easy.
Wire your money to Monaco. After tax money, of course, since this will be a visible transfer.
Or, yo
Total Story with More to Come! (Score:5, Insightful)
Problem is, you'll need to get money into your account somehow. To do so will take a wire transfer that the IRS will be notified about. Going the other direction would also take a wire transfer, that the IRS will be notified about.
Your "non-story" assertion is a bit short sighted from what I know ... if you divert all your income to Ireland or the Netherlands you can get it there nearly tax free. What you perceive as a hard time getting your money to the states is trivial if you find someone who will accept those accounts as collateral for you to borrow against. Oftentimes, the rate of the loan is lower than what you would lose getting hit with capital gains taxes in the US. On top of that, you can put that money in Ireland into a highly rated international fund to cut that loan rate down. Just because you had enough money, you get to skirt tax law enacted by our democratically elected politicians. Congratulations, you're a dick and I'm sure you can blame the socialists and "the system" for forcing you to do this and I'm sure you'll ask me if I donate extra money when I'm doing my taxes -- I don't. But I sure the hell don't tell my employer that I actually have accounts in Grand Cayman and they'll be moving 75% of my paycheck there for me and I'll take 25% of it here so I get a huge rebate for living below the poverty line while building bigger assets in the Caribbean.
... I can't wait for the bean counters to poor over all this data and find some of the other pieces [businessweek.com]. Either give me and every other equal citizen the same rights to avoid taxes or shut this crap down.
These offshore accounts? This is just one piece of a very large puzzle
Sounds great! (Score:3)
Re:Sounds great! (Score:5, Informative)
32 Trillion Dollars (Score:5, Informative)
According to the report I just heard on the BBC World News, estimates place the total value of these hidden assets around $32 trillion.
Was this the Wikileaks leak we heard about? (Score:5, Interesting)
Recall long ago when the US State Department cables thing was going on that Wikileaks said they had something MUCH MUCH bigger. I wonder if this is what they had to offer. They said it would embarass and damage a lot of people and it kind of sounds like this. It would seem like enough to keep honest law enforcement and tax offices business for a decade. (Note that I said "honest" because we generally know how it will play out in the U.S. We'll hear things like "too big to prosecute" and massive offers like 10 cents to the dollar or less.)
Sounds interesting (Score:3)
Sounds interesting... but there's very little information here. They list about 20 names of people I haven't heard of mostly in 3rd world countries. Where are all the US citizens? The Euro zone? Name names, give us account balances... Put the data on the pirate bay and I'll start believing this.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Remember (Score:5, Insightful)
Some people just don't want to pay taxes.
Most people want to pay only the minimum amount of taxes that they are legally required to pay. Jackson/Hewitt and HR Block base their entire businesses on this.
Most people talk a good talk about how taxes do so much for everyone and are such a wonderful thing, but they are usually referring to taxes paid by other people and not themselves. Very few of these people add a few hundred dollars to their tax payments just to help promote the general welfare, etc.
Re:Remember (Score:5, Insightful)
And many would like to pay next to nothing and still enjoy all the benefits of a functioning democracy.
We call those people freeloaders.
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If you are taking in 40% of the income of the entire nation, you should expect to pay 40% of the tax of that entire nation.
And since the very poor already can't eat much less pay taxes, you should probably expect to pay 41% of the taxes.
Re:Remember (Score:4, Insightful)
If you are taking in 40% of the income of the entire nation, you should expect to pay 40% of the tax of that entire nation.
From here [ntu.org], for 2009 the top 1% by percentile paid 36.73% of the income taxes. The top 50% paid 97.75%.
That's not exactly what you said, so let's look here [taxfoundation.org] for 2010. From table 1, we see that the top 10% of filers earned 45% of the total income collectively and paid 71% of the income taxes. That's much more than your 40%/40% ratio.
The top 1% paid an average rate of 23.39%. Not 0%, not 15%. They had 18.9% of the total income but paid 37.4% of the income tax revenues. Almost double what a flat tax would have cost them. And even though they didn't make 40% of the wealth, they paid almost 40% of the taxes.
Ah but (Score:5, Insightful)
When I report my income, do I really report all my income or is much of the real income available to me hidden in deferrals, tax free municipals, etc? I'm not rich, but I can assure you even my reported income is very different from the real income with the difference mostly in the ability to defer income on investments (iBonds, IRA, 401K, etc.)
Every businessman I know writes off things which personally benefit him be it the yacht (qualifies as a second home), the vacation place, the golf club, the charity deduction (designed to provide positive exposure for his business), the gas for his truck, the company car he commutes in, etc.
The poor have no such investments or write-offs. So their reported matches the real.
I filed my taxes the other day, I was shocked at the low % amount of tax relative to even reported income.
So I question the stats of tax paid versus income percentages because if one of those figures isn't the same (real) for all the strata being compared, you get a very false picture.
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As I make more, I find that less and less of it counts as income when I do my taxes.
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This is a classic case of the tragedy of the commons, and is precisely the reason why taxes are mandatory. Unless, of course, if you are rich, in which case you get to do Hollywood accounting to avoid paying yo
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Some people refuse to change the tax code and get rid of the 4,825,025 loopholes that exist today.
Most people don't want a change to the tax code to remove the dozen or so "loopholes" that they use. Enough people's set of a dozen will create a union of 4,000,000.
I question the fairness of such modifications anyway. Many tax "loopholes" are created as a means of social engineering. For example, the mortgage interest deduction. It was created to promote home ownership. Many people (myself included) considered this deduction when I decided to buy a house. Doesn't it seem a bit unfair to tell people "buy
time for an American Spring (Score:2, Funny)
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Relationship is a net loss?
I guess you don't walk on sidewalks, drive on roads, use public infrastructure or enjoy clean water.
electricity? phones?
mmm hmmmm....
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Don't forget the part about not getting murdered for your wallet by the local thugs.
Re:Tax evasion is good for some of us (Score:5, Interesting)
More importantly, who keeps the tens of thousands of employees from stealing from your companies. Who keeps all those employees safely returning to work each day??
That was the KEY vision Henry Ford had... That you couldn't run a company off the least cost labor and have everybody AROUND your employees live in shit. His high wages were to keep more productive employees... And force them to pull up the other people around them... Very Victorian values.
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If you make less than $40k your relationship with the government is a big gain for you.
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The Republicans have not yet abolished basic government services.
Re:SHOCKING (Score:5, Insightful)
Well yes, we've always known that they do, but now we have some of their names, along with where the money is and how it got there, and in some cases, at least, it's pretty clear that some nations' domestic taxation and monetary laws were violated in the process of moving money to offshore accounts. With that information, the taxation authorities of a number of sovereign states can either a. swoop in and seize the money from offshore accounts or b. simply seize domestic assets to make up for the taxes owed.
Of course, few if any taxation authorities will do that, because, at the end of the day, most of them probably already had the information, but are either complicit or too cowed to move in.
Re: (Score:3)
They may just realise that if they tried that, they'd be going up against an army of the highest-paid lawyers in the world. The case could drag on for a decade.
Re:SHOCKING (Score:5, Insightful)
Shakespeare had a solution for that.
Re:SHOCKING (Score:5, Insightful)
As I said, they are cowed. If they accepted the cases could drag on for years, and pursued them against a substantial fraction of super-rich tax evaders, the ultimate effect would to chill the desire to evade taxes. It would cost significant amounts of money to begin with, but we're talking about hundreds of billions of dollars apparently nestled in offshore accounts here, so I think the prize is worth the effort. That some crimes are tough to prosecute doesn't mean they shouldn't be prosecuted.
Re: (Score:3)
That only works until somebody like Castro (or Chavez) comes along and locks the doors to all the island banks.... And TAKES all their stashed money! Hence the REAL reason the USA dislikes him so much.
Re:Note this is not the "top 1%" (Score:5, Interesting)
Imagined class warfare?
As Warren Buffet stated âoeThereâ(TM)s class warfare, all right, but itâ(TM)s my class, the rich class, thatâ(TM)s making war, and weâ(TM)re winning.â
You know who pits Americans against each other? The richest few. They want you feeling superior to those who make a little less than you, lest you both realize you should fight together to improve your station in life.
Re: (Score:3)
Get their hands on this data to then make a boycott app for the smartphones so we know who to not do business with.
If you spent your time working productively, instead of wasting it boycotting productive people, maybe you'd make some money yourself.
Re:Classification? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm sure that the US Government will find grounds to classify private banking documents.
Probably under the "embarrassing to someone important" clause.
Re: (Score:3)
Whoever leaked this is a lot smarter than Assange and the Wikileak's lot, who seem to be in it as much out of arrogant displays of "gotcha!" as anything else. This one was done a lot more quietly, so that those effected by the revelations can't try to turn this around and go after those that did the leaking.
Re:Flat tax (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Not Illegal in Canada (Unless) (Score:5, Funny)
I put all my money in an offshore account in Cyprus. I am pretty sure it is all tucked away and safe there.