Panama & Tax-Havens

[MintyTheCat]

Hello all,

this is one of the strongest accounts I have read in a very, very long time:

https://panamapapers.icij.org/20160506- ... ement.html

Who ever that is who blew the whistle has balls of steel.

I can barely believe what I am reading.

[BryanM]

It's almost not as if there was some old guy who saw this coming hundreds of years ahead of time.

It's like Guantanamo Bay. The investigation into torture there and its findings were redundant - the fundamental purpose of Guantanamo Bay was to be a torture chamber. That's why it exists.

Similar to the creation of the Euro. It was designed to remove the ability of governments to govern themselves. To make the weaker ones much easier to exploit.

All working as intended no surprises here.

[EmperorIng]

It warms my heart, as I understand it, to learn that Americans are an insignificant portion of those exposed. Even better, that the list is filled with fat cats from Europe. Justice~

[Satan]

And that doesn't raise a flag with you? Maybe as to who's responsible for the 'leak'? Next you'll be telling me you buy Snowden and Assange are who they claim to be.
Oh look everyone, a bunch of rich people have their cash offshore and one of them is David Cameron... and we knew that anyway before he was even PM, don't pay any attention to what one of the Anglo-American empire's clients is up to in Yemen.
Up next... Brexit and even more news about refugees and some bullshit about petty cash and Tory expenses in England.
Nothing going on in Yemen!

[Xyga]

It warms my heart, as I understand it, to learn that Americans are an insignificant portion of those exposed. Even better, that the list is filled with fat cats from Europe. Justice~

Rich people doing tax evasion don't give a fuck about countries and people, they're smarter than that comment.

[Ed Oscuro]

The very latest news (yesterday) was that there are at least 36 Americans named in the papers. This isn't a very big number so far, given the population of the US and our population of people who could theoretically profit from hiding fortunes, so at least in this sense Ing seems right. (A good interactive map is here and another is here.

Unless your thing is "taxation is immoral and bad" I think that the reveal isn't serving a bad purpose, even if you still think that there are other injustices elsewhere to be uncovered (undoubtedly). And if I were a powerful person trying to hide abuses, I would not do that by blowing the whistle on just the kind of abuses. Maybe you could say it's a case of competition, but that debate can go on endlessly. I think the best answer for now is simply: Some of the biggest pigs got caught.

Still there may be some explanations for why Americans aren't showing up more on the list, and why Europeans are. Apparently a lot of the shell companies involved here are reinvesting money (i.e., from Chinese) in European and American markets. American investors already have it easy - I'm not sure exactly how it stacks up compared to many other nations - with reinvesting and retaining gains; the barriers aren't high. I'd expect more taxation of capital gains (for example) to be the European norm, which might explain why so many Europeans are named.

Things look a bit different when you look at a list of people named in the papers, there are a lot of Middle Eastern heads of state, along with individuals from Ukraine, Iceland, Argentina and Sudan. With the somewhat surprising exception of Iceland, most of these are places where you'd expect problems. And even including Iceland, perhaps all this shows is that people who aren't that good get caught, though I'm not going along with the conspiracy theorists very far here.

[MintyTheCat]

As Ed wrote, I doubt it is a conspiracy either. Yes, indeed, you would expect more Europeans than Americans due to the higher taxes that are often to be paid in some european countries - e.g. Germany and the UK.

I am not quite sure how exposing this type of set up, and this company under questioned here is pretty much what many would regard as a 'big fish', would serve any other purpose other than to expose those dodging tax.

These findings will go on for years and lead to all sorts of ramifications I feel but what it tells me more over is that we live in an age where only a few decades ago people could get away with all sorts and not have to great a fear of being rumbled and along comes the massive data dump that we can all search and refer to. That at least gives me some hope but it is pretty amusing when you think about it

I managed to trace a few companies to Germany and I would imagine questions will have to be answered; I get one of those wry smiles when thinking about.

It can only serve for those wishing to dodge tax payment and hide their assets to look at more robust means and I would say that lessons would have to be learned.

[Xyga]

Countries/markets have their favourite tax havens, the USA have a first stop in Delaware which is their own local legalized tax haven before the Bahamas/Caiman, all big US businesses are there, the UK wire from the City to the Channel islands then Virgin Islands, France has Monaco, St Martin and others, lots in Europe use Luxemburg, Liechtenstein, then switch to Asia and go to Singapore which is probably the largest tax haven in the world, the Pacific has many shady islands as well.

Just publish a list of customers from any private cabinet/bank in any of those so-called countries and you'll find known figures from around the world, any origin.
Wherever there's money there's tax evasion, it's not a plot it's a system, almost a culture, the world of money is rotten and those who really pay taxes are the common people, not the rich.
Quit seeing this as whatever country vs. country design, because on a planetary scale it's really rich vs. common & poor.
You can debate some taxes are too high it doesn't change much the fact that those who have the means to avoid them largely succeed in doing so, they're not the losers, we are.

[MintyTheCat]

because on a planetary scale it's really rich vs. common & poor

Gospel truth.