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posted by n1 on Thursday November 12 2015, @01:24PM   Printer-friendly
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).


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:15PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 12 2015, @08:15PM (#262331)

    And your desire to cast it as a currency default does not make it one. Touche.

    Cute. I broke down precisely why it is a currency default. Feel free to use a different set of terminology for monetary economics, but at least do the rest of the world the courtesy of telling us what your words mean.

    So, since further down you challenge me to give a better solution (though to what isn't clearly specified), here's my challenge to you: describe, precisely and in detail, what your plan is, precisely why it does not constitute a currency default (including furnishing explanation of what you understand by terms such as `currency default' since apparently what you mean isn't what the rest of the world means) and to cap it all, precisely how your plan will ruin the wicked one percenters without screwing everybody else pitilessly?

    There would have to be provisions to classify debt held by state actors differently from that held by private banks or individuals. That's part of the simple gloss I was referring to. But it's targeted to affect those who have squirrelled away ill-gotten gains in offshore banks, not those who have invested in good faith. It is targeted at those who have gamed the system, who represent a fraction of the world.

    What you stated was a simple, straightforward, clearly stated deliberate repudiation of validly held money. If that is not what you meant, please supply the details which make it something else.

    Yes, it is ruinous, for the 1%. But, then, they have quite ruined the mass of humanity for far too long using usury and other number games. They have not amassed wealth through providing value to the human race, such as by curing cancer or inventing teleportation, but by theft. They must be corrected, or everyone will fail.

    Aaaaah, now we come to the real point. You want to ruin a bunch of people based on a moralistic judgement of their activities, presuming that they haven't delivered any value. Darned shame about guys like, say, Elon Musk, who's trying to push forward ecological responsibility as well as space exploration at the same time. But, the omniscient Phoenix666 declares that he's a useless parasite on humanity - off with his head! Or at least, his money.

    Turns out that in the real world, that is precisely the sort of plan that ruins lots of little guys because the 1% (however you measure that nebulous category) have complex interdependencies with the rest of us poor schlubs.

    "Hey, boss, when you paying our wages?"

    "Sorry, can't, the government took the payroll money."

    "Can you pay us in something else?"

    "No, because the bottom dropped out of the market. We're liquidating, and someone from some other country that isn't run by kleptocrats will be your new boss. Bye, now!"

    Devise a better plan. Use your time and effort to describe it and market it. But don't defend the status quo from a place of abject apathy. That is inexcusable and worthy of a special place in Dante's Hell.

    A better plan for what, precisely? Breaking an economy? Good times!

    Maybe you just want to be able to tax big, evil, mean, nasty, wicked corporate fatcats who are part of the big, evil, mean, nasty, wicked 1%?

    Most straightforward solution is to tax economic activity rather than assets. You do business here? We tax the business activity as such.

    Maybe you want to disown big, evil, mean, nasty, wicked corporate fatcats who are part of the big, evil, mean, nasty, wicked 1%?

    You're still going to ruin the economy on an epic scale because subverting the notion of held property absent some kind of compensation, or justification in criminal law, is the kind of thing that breaks businesses - just ask the big successful businesses of sub-saharan Africa, where that kind of experiment has been tried.