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from the luxembourg-shuffle-fulfilled-by-amazon dept.
In 2012, something like US$80 billion worth of multinationals' profits worked on their suntans in Bermuda, according to an international report into profit-shuffling and tax avoidance.
Oxfam, the Tax Justice Network, the Global Alliance for Tax Justice, and Public Services International have put their heads and wallets together to fund a report into how multinationals are picking the pockets of G20 nations.
In one way, it's no surprise: the world's top economies are, pretty much by definition, the places where multinationals will make the most money. However, they also have the best resources to try and get companies to pay their taxes, and if the Oxfam et al report is accurate, they're getting gamed hand-over-fist.
The report says just twelve countries (the USA, Germany, Canada, China, Brazil, France, Mexico, India, the UK, Spain and Australia) account for 90 per cent of US multinationals' “missing” profits.
Those profits get processed through various implementations of the “Irish-Dutch sandwich” to be booked in low-tax countries like the Netherlands, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Bermuda.
If the numbers are accurate (the report's authors put a number of caveats on the data), then between $500 and $700 billion gets shuffled around in this way, which is how Bermuda found itself home to $80 billion worth of profits in 2012 (its GDP in the same year was a paltry $5.47 billion).
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Thursday November 12 2015, @04:46PM
Poor people who own property, especially the elderly on limited fixed income or those who inherited after their family died, now suddenly have a property tax albatross that prevents them from saving up to fix their financial situation
Can they not sell this property?
We have it in the UK, called council tax. The grey-hair brigade tend to dislike it as they own the million-pound houses despite contributing nothing to society.
Personally I'd be in favour of a charge being put on the property which would be paid when the property is sold or passed down. Own a million pound house? Have a £3k a year tax to pay on it? That's fine, just have an option for anyone over the age of 65 to add it as a charge on the property - 0.3% of the value. 20 years later, when you die, and it gets sold, 6% of the sale price goes to the council. You don't have to pay the tax upfront.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @05:12PM
Good questions!
Unfortunately, it's founded in a problem: the taxes they can't pay don't go away - they end up being attached to the property. The state won't throw them out, but when the property changes hands, the tax has to be paid (or the government just won't issue a new deed).
So yes, grandpa can sell that property he can't pay taxes on - and after paying the taxes, he ends up with the price of lunch, and nowhere to live.
And even if grandpa doesn't sell it, but remains in it for however long, your $150,000 run-down rural property with twenty years of accumulated taxes (and penalties, and interest) on it now either needs an heir to come up with fat wads of cash they almost certainly don't have, or can't get, to keep paying for the albatross, or just dump it at auction - and the next generation gets screwed anyhow. Very, very regressive.
I take your point about old people sitting on million pound properties, but that's not the problem here in Washington.