Meanwhile in tax haven

[Falka]

Taxation is working as intended.

Maybe as intended - by some politicians and tax advisors, but not as it's supposed to work.

[Leshma]

If you pay taxes and bills regularly, you must feel like a fool when you see something like this. It is natural response. If everybody was behaving like these criminals, dear Xant, your Finland would be a lot more like Russia. That means you have to pay for shit you're used to being free (paid by state aka tax money) and you would be robbed in the process.

Edit: What I want to come out of this story?

This basically, for every single person who tried to play the system:

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[Yeldur]

Don't understand why anyone cares about this shit

Because they're avoiding tax payment which means that the money has to come from somewhere. And that somewhere is US. If you're seriously that ignorant that you have to ask "WHY DOES ANYONE CARE ABOUT THE FACT THAT MANY RICH PEOPLE ARE BREAKING THE LAW AND EVADING TAX, COSTING THE PEOPLE MORE THAN THEY SHOULD BE PAYING" then I honestly don't even know how to respond.

Also, ever wonder why taxes are higher than they should be? Do you want taxes to be lower? Here's why. This shit is the CAUSE.
It's like in England with South West Trains, people avoid paying the ticket because they want to get off, then they raise the price due to them needing to make profit and cover their costs at the same time, the more people avoid paying, the more the company increases, by these people avoiding taxes, the taxes are being RAISED as a DIRECT RESULT of THIS. The fact that people are doing this doesn't bother me at all emotionally because I, currently, do not pay taxes. But I know damn well that if I was the one paying raised taxes, I'd be bloody well pissed off that these already well off people are forcing me to pay more money because they want to save some dough instead of behaving like a rational person and paying the fucking taxes in the first place. We do it, why shouldn't they? Just because they have a different set of rules to us doesn't mean they should be able to abuse them.

[Rhekimos]

What does it matter if the rich and admired and powerful people are proven to be engaged in illegal tax schemes? Outside of their part missing from the tax total;
It lowers tax compliance. Voter confidence. Faith in law and order.
And all of those are in the recipe for a functional state.

These papers and any discussion thereof are quickly censored in China. The time before a topic or social media chat mentioning this is taken down is measured in minutes. It's only too bad it was a western leak so they can't officially investigate. Just too bad.

The Kremlin was fast say it was western propaganda and the 40 billion fortune in Putin's inner circle is in no way his to use upon whim. He's poor, really.

Where politicians could be cleared, their innocence was quickly announced in relevant media.

The Iceland prime minister resigned over this.

This is stuff that matters, but the full scale will come into view with later investigations of corruption and tax evasion. Just the size of this leak means it will take time. It's about ten times bigger than the Snowden documents that we're still getting revelations from.

And if you think this is in no way different from rumor, suspicion and the possibility of it being there, perhaps an example could illustrate this: The difference is like that of knowing that some people have a weird fetish of coming onto food and that of seeing video evidence of Herman coming into the pizza you eat.

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[The_Bloody_Nine]

The really surprising thing about this is that all this stuff was going through one single firm, incredibly sloppy. They must have felt completely confident that there is no evidence for crime and that was the mistake. Because in the leak there is really no direct evidence for crime, but the sheer amount of data and networks it shows which you can check upon existing evidence is the real deal here.

Xant, wtf?

[Vibe]

The really surprising thing about this is that all this stuff was going through one single firm, incredibly sloppy. They must have felt completely confident that there is no evidence for crime and that was the mistake. Because in the leak there is really no direct evidence for crime, but the sheer amount of data and networks it shows which you can check upon existing evidence is the real deal here.

Xant, wtf?

Also no/few US people named (yet)? Just seems kinda weird. Either they do it another way or through another company, or they're not being exposed yet for some reason.

[Grytviken]

Also no/few US people named (yet)? Just seems kinda weird. Either they do it another way or through another company, or they're not being exposed yet for some reason.

Because there's nothing illegal about having an offshore account, it's one of the smartest retirement plans you could have to spend the rest of your life on a permanent vacation in the tropics. I still haven't seen any proof that the Icelandic PM did anything illegal, does anyone have a link to the actual leak docus? The problem is that there are corrupt governments that would allow people to bring the tax free investments back to their home countries without paying their share of the tax rate, if you tried doing this and returning to the US you would get raped by the IRS, some less than fortunate country's government might encourage this type of illegal activity to bring money back into their economy.

[Vibe]

Because there's nothing illegal about having an offshore account, it's one of the smartest retirement plans you could have to spend the rest of your life on a permanent vacation in the tropics. I still haven't seen any proof that the Icelandic PM did anything illegal, does anyone have a link to the actual leak docus? The problem is that there are corrupt governments that would allow people to bring the tax free investments back to their home countries without paying their share of the tax rate, if you tried doing this and returning to the US you would get raped by the IRS, some less than fortunate country's government might encourage this type of illegal activity to bring money back into their economy.

Theres legal tax evasion then there's illegal tax evasion. And there's lots of illegal tax evasion in these documents, apparently.

http://www.bbc.com/news/35956324

[Xant]

This what? I'm talking about tax evasion in general. And yes, I expect that more money coming in via an increase in tax efficiency does lead to more public services, less public debt and less taxation eventually.

What is eventually? Half a year, a year, two years?

If you pay taxes and bills regularly, you must feel like a fool when you see something like this. It is natural response. If everybody was behaving like these criminals, dear Xant, your Finland would be a lot more like Russia. That means you have to pay for shit you're used to being free (paid by state aka tax money) and you would be robbed in the process.

Yeah, if everyone was behaving like billionaires, sure thing, Leshma, dear. You go ahead and try not paying taxes. Let me know how it works out for you.

[Grytviken]

Theres legal tax evasion then there's illegal tax evasion. And there's lots of illegal tax evasion in these documents, apparently.

http://www.bbc.com/news/35956324

Seems like a witchhunt to me so far, none of these news articles are explaining anything illegal, they are just dramatizing the stigma of owning an offshore account. In the story she merely paid a legal firm to transfer the money out of the offshore account and do the legal fees and tax accounting to bring the money home for her the correct and legal way, it's actually very complicated and costs alot of money to do it the legal way and if you fuck up it can cost you big time.

[pogosan]

[Grytviken]

Guys, let's say you own 1 billion dollars. You have a choice of giving, let's say, ~40% of it - 400 millions or keep it all. Yes, giving it to government will lead to having better roads in country, healthcare and other stuff (in theory), but you don't need it because you have a private jet and healthcare facility with your name on the building.

I'm not defending tax evasion, but their actions are perfectly understandable from their perspective.

From what I understand the PM of Iceland actually lost alot of money investing in Icelandic banks and put a large sharehold under his wife's name in an offshore account to try and rebuild their funds after the crash because he was actually fighting against his country and the average taxpayer being responsible for repaying the share he invested and lost out on fair and square and knew his loss wouldn't be insured because it wasn't a private investment. I guess we will just have to see who ends up in jail, it would be interesting to see the actual leaked documents not just the dramatic spin the news puts on everything for ratings and to build up the drama.

[Vibe]

Seems like a witchhunt to me so far, none of these news articles are explaining anything illegal, they are just dramatizing the stigma of owning an offshore account. In the story she merely paid a legal firm to transfer the money out of the offshore account and do the legal fees and tax accounting to bring the money home for her the correct and legal way, it's actually very complicated and costs alot of money to do it the legal way and if you fuck up it can cost you big time.

So hiring someone to have a person pretend as the real owner of a company to avoid taxation is not illegal? Did you even read the article?

[Grytviken]

So hiring someone to forge documents and have a person pretend as the real owner of a company to avoid taxation is not illegal? Did you even read the article?

Since it's an offshore account that is tax free  they don't have to announce the beneficiary to the offshore bank, they only have to announce it to authorities where they are transferring the money. She paid a firm to do it for her legally and save her the hassle of travelling to overseas to do all the paperwork and stuff.

[Vibe]

Since it's an offshore account that is tax free  they don't have to announce the beneficiary to the offshore bank, they only have to announce it to authorities where they are transferring the money. She paid a firm to do it for her legally and save her the hassle of travelling to overseas to do all the paperwork and stuff.

No, she did it so she could hide how much money she has, to avoid taxes. Not to 'avoid the hassle of travelling'. You don't fucking hire a law firm and pay large amounts of money so they can hire someone to pretend to be the beneficiary just so you 'avoid the paperwork and stuff'. I'm sure there are much easier, cheaper and much more legal ways to avoid the hassle of paperwork and travelling.

"One wealthy client, US millionaire and life coach Marianna Olszewski, was offered fake ownership records to hide money from the authorities. This is in direct breach of international regulations designed to stop money-laundering and tax evasion."

Excuse me for prefering BBC version instead of yours.