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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 acp_sn on Friday November 13 2015, @04:45PM
The retired pensioner should sell the big house and move into a smaller condo. The family should rent a room to a friend or relative. The real issue with "unproductive" property is the farm problem which I addressed in the voat post. tl;dr tax is negotiated and deferred on farms until the land/equipment is sold to a non-family member at which time it becomes due.
Remember the universal property tax REPLACES income taxes including payroll. Someone working 30 hours a week, 50 weeks a year at federal minimum wage is making about 12k. They are paying ~1.2k in federal payroll taxes (social security, medicare) even if they pay 0 on their 1040.
Assuming their rent went up by at least the proposed amount of 1.1% they would still have more money in their pocket. And that is the worst case scenario, a "middle class" family making a total of 50k a year and living in a 300k house would see a huge benefit.
The losers would be IP holders currently paying 0 for government protection of their property. Also the investment class would get a slightly lower rate of return. In exchange the vast majority of working americans would see their tax burden significantly reduced and the complexity of the tax code would almost disappear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 13 2015, @10:41PM
So let me get this straight. You want to tax all property. And your solution is that the retired pensioner should sell the big house and buy a small condo.
Quite aside from personal preferences, on which you're shitting from a great height, what if the pensioner is the nominal owner, but all those kids haven't left the coop yet? Make them all pay because ... they obviously have so much money (probably not or they actually would have left). The logic here is completely out of whack.
The other side of the coin is even worse. Now you're saying your pensioner needs to convert the form of the assets, but unless he/she/it sold at a substantial loss, the net taxes on cash + condo is pretty much the same as before, it's just more convenient to pay tax if you have lots of cash .... dwindling away with your plans.
It's also incredibly hostile to business development. You want to start a business? Prepare for MAXIMUM TAXAGE from day 1, because all that investment money is ... a taxable asset! Doesn't matter it'll take years to actually show a return, hope you got double the investment you needed just to keep your head above water.
It's hard to pick, but possibly the most ridiculous part of all this nonsense is that by deferring the tax value of a farm, you're actually making them desperately unattractive to buy. If the seller pays the taxes, the price has to skyrocket just to pay the tax bill. If the buyer has to pay, the price drops like a rock because otherwise it ain't worth paying. You may think that this is a theoretical problem, but it's practically demonstrated with logging properties today, where they get a tax break for remaining in logging use, but if turned to any other use they suddenly have a fat tax bill due, so vast tracts of logging land (not old growth forest, just plain paper mill trees) are basically trapped away from any other use because it's financially infeasible to make the change.
Making martyrs of anybody who has accumulated capital is completely counterproductive. Want to save for retirement? The tax man will take a bite every year. Want to save up to buy your dream house? The tax man makes it slower to save, and hurts you once you buy. Want to build a business? You'd better be doing crackerjack business from day 1, otherwise the tax man will put you out of business.
It's not even good for poor people. Rents will (have to) rise to make up for property taxes. With suppressed entrepreneurialism, jobs will be scarcer. With assets being taxed, you're discouraging long term planning and inhibiting enlightened policy.
Even if you just declare that you only want to do this for actual physical acreage, you're discouraging the hell out of anything that looks like farming, and suddenly being a landlord is the ninth circle of hell. Never mind that a farmer (or whoever you love so much) can negotiate deferrals, people don't live forever and farm planning happens on more or less a thirty year cycle. If you're not pretty darned convinced that your farm's return will absolutely, for totally sure, cover all your taxes for decades to come? You'd be crazy to get into it.
Fortunately, there is some good news: landlords are filthy subhuman scum who deserve to be hanged from the nearest available lamppost, and farmers are all reactionary redneck shitstained pigfuckers, and the world doesn't need either of them. So that's all right.