TL/DR: Emma Watson spends time campaigning for social justice, and is one of the most prominent faces of the new generation of feminists. Right now she is employed by the UN as the "Women Goodwill Ambassador". Because of the panama papers we have learnt that she is employing the same financial tricks used by the neoliberal elite that is not paying their fair share of taxes and bleeding societies dry. This reinforces the red pill principle of how SJWs don't actually care about the social welfare of the masses, their true interest is in maximizing their power/influence, and they will hide behind causes while doing this.
I literally cackled with glee when the notification flashed across my phone: Emma Watson had been named in the Panama Papers leak. For those who haven't been following, the Panama Papers are a massive data leak that showed how some of the richest people/corporations in the world hide their money in off-shore companies based in Panama, often using these entities to reduce their tax burden or launder money.
This leak is so big it's going to take a year+ for us to figure out who is all in it. So far, major figures have been implicated e.g. David Cameron's father, Putin, the King of Saudi Arabia etc. Today we learnt that Emma Watson owns her London apartment through an off-shore company created by the same Panamian law firm that helped many of the global elite to launder money/avoid taxes.
Now, offshore companies are not illegal per se. However, this is because the world's powerful write the rules to not make them illegal. If the masses truly understood the big picture and had control the legislative process, these entities would be regulated way tighter than they are now, possibly banned. You do not get one of these entities unless you are trying to hide some sort of information about your money.
One of the big issues in our world today is wealth inequality. Worse than gender inequality I would say, because, if SJWs want more gender equality, then fixing wealth inequality will go along way to help. Money is literally being vacuumed to the top, and social programs are not being sponsored. For decades, people have been cheating societies by being able to use community owned resources, while not paying the appropriate fee that maintains those resources. Of course, the working schmucks (upper middle class and below) are left with the bill.
It is amazing that somebody who runs around preaching to us about social justice, and how we have to be better etc., employs the same oppressive techniques used by the supposed patriarchy that she is supposedly pushing back against.
This is her explanation. Tell me if it passes the sniff test:
UK companies are required to publicly publish details of their shareholders and therefore do not give her the necessary anonymity required to protect her personal safety, which has been jeopardised in the past owing to such information being publicly available
Oh, so your only way of protecting your anonymity just so happens to be buying a company from Panamanians that are world renowned for their money laundering and tax evasion expertise. Totally makes sense.
Lessons learned: It's always about power.
News Story: http://archive.is/22505
Edit: Wowzers! I clearly struck a nerve here! I am happy that we could get some discussion going. I appreciate that 150K of people are not going to perfectly align on political views. A diversity of viewpoints is a good thing. Putting the ideological differences aside, the key takeaway here is that Emma Watson is a hypocrite who advocates for big government for her social justice agenda, while at the same time hiding her money from said big government. Rarely do SJWs get caught out in such a way.
Edit 2 The feminist defenses have started to come out. General argument: "She did good for women, so the author doesn't care about her potential tax issues." I wonder if this defense would work for a man in the same situation.
I saw this tweet, and couldn't help but laugh out loud.
"Emma Watson only launders 79 cents for every dollar laundered by a man."
"Affirmative consent must be ongoing throughout money laundering."
The names revealed are overwhelmingly male... even money laundering is a patriarchy. When will we ever reach true equality??
HAHAHAHA.
Holy fuck for a sub that normally bums me out and is very serious/stoic in tone you guys are absolutely killing me today.
Fucking humour gains all around since I last visited.
[permanently deleted]
Before you internalize the red pill you need to internalize this message : No proper man uses "xD".
"Emma Watson only launders 79 cents for every dollar laundered by a man."
This made my day.
Now we know where the other 21 cents went
If they knew maths they'd still see that it adds up to a lot of money that was tucked away in a tax haven.
Emma Watson is also the one who claimed to eschew gender norms while dating Chad the alpha rugby player.
Me: Hey Emma, what's your favorite type of cake?
Emma: Vanilla!
Me: Then why is your refrigerator filled with chocolate cake?
Emma: Oh... uh... I mean other people should like vanilla cake because then the world would be a better place. But I can't help it if I prefer chocolate!
Not quite.
Chad the incredibly handsome, wealthy, posh, Oxbridge alpha rugby player.
Even money isn't enough. Has to be generations of old money and the lifestyle, networks, influence etc. that buys.
Even Oxbridge isn't enough social status/intelligence. She only dates public school (UK for a handful of extremely exclusive private schools that are 800 years old like Eton) boys who've had family money for generations if you look at her dating history.
She's the worst kind of champagne socialist.
The kind that every Guardian staff writer dreams to be.
The Guardian sports writers are pretty good though. That's all I read on that site.
God damn you hit the nail on the head there
champagne socialist is now how I shall describe these people. It's shockingly accurate.
Limousine Liberal in American parlance. :D
It's not really an oxymoron. The rich socialist is the one that seeks to be friends with the dictatorship.
yeah but secretly she just wants that average type of 'good guy' who isn't afraid to show his insecurities and vulnerabilities, you know, the kind of masculinity that is RIGHT
Champagne Socialist is a beautiful term
[permanently deleted]
Well your mom calls me white chocolate but your wife calls me honey
Sick burn Chad now go back to your hole.
Actually I just left your sisters house
Haha in this example, yes.
I figured 'vanilla' would be a good substitute for 'boring' since that's what it usually means in relation to sex.
Holy shit you Actually use that Chad shit.
God I thought that was a joke. Christ.
In case anyone is curious about what we're dealing with here: http://archive.is/by02T
What's the opposite of Chad? I'm sure he'd love to have that as his flair.
And Asmodeus, don't forget to recommend us to all your friends in ShitRedditSays!
I don't have to check your post history, though. Simply being a MRA means you're a loser by default, just like every other person in this sub.
Even at 6'5 and 408, I somehow have more self confidence than you. How does that make you feel? More like an exploited victim than normal?
I've disliked Watson ever since she gave that condescending UN speech where she said men should give up gender stereotypes and that we don't have to be stonewall macho alpha males to get women, before immediately going home to her stonewall macho rugby captain boyfriend.
Watch what they do, not what they say.
i almost see it as doing men a favour.
a handful of girls get swayed by her and fuck you while you're getting fit.
the majority of girls can't deny their instincts and when you finally turn into a macho hunk after a few years in the gym their basic biological programming can't resist you.
only now you have less competition because she convinced millions of lazy boys not to try to become men.
I used to be fit but had an fractured elbow injury and I stopped working out. All my other friends became fit as fuck and 2 weeks ago they asked me the one question. What am I waiting for. This will be day 4 at the gym for me and I plan to continue.
sound like good friends to keep around you.
I took an arrow to the knee
except instead of just saying that if I was a guard I'd be saying I'm starting to adventure again so.....
Feminism in general widens the gap between alpha and beta, no wasting genetics in the middle ground anymore. Things like denying gender roles, affirmative consent, divorce rape, cat calling, slut walking, etc are things that only apply to betas and only things they fall for. It's a good time to be an alpha male.
Back in the day the alpha to beta line was more of a scale 1-10. Now it's just binary, 0 or 1.
that's a good way to reframe it in you head.
i mean if we're just cynical for a second here this is nothing more than a power grab. the biggest alpha int he world can be brought to his knees via feminism (rape accusation, insensitive comment etc)
but in terms of everyone here's day to day life it's much more useful to frame it the way you are framing it.
I mean it can hurt alpha men, but it will rarely turn an alpha men beta. But it will make half alphas betas and betas more beta.
Bah... he's a neckbeard who hit the gym a few times. They lost the empire for a reason.
He's got a higher smv than most b list celebrities.
old money family
elite public school
got into oxbridge so he's fucking clever.
captain of the rugby team
tall and jacked.
.
don't delude yourself. it takes an immense smv to smash someone as high profile as emma
and George Bush got into Yale. He's in the clique, nothing more.
clever is not booksmart. lol this guy said clever.
Einstein was so clever >:) the lil rascal
haha stupid ass
Of course she's playing the woman card, why wouldn't she? just by bringing up security, as if a multi-millionaire star with more private guards than several heads of state had anything to fear, she can immediately shut up all the people whose careers are predicated on reinforcing women-as-perpetual-victims mentality.
Haha yes I noticed that too. "I tax evade because safety duh."
It's up there with her "Refugees are not criminals and we need to let more into our country! Will I visit a refugee camp without a body guard? Um, next question."
tried to find this on youtube, was not successful. any chance you know the name of the video or could find it for us?
I don't think she actually addressed this question in an interview.... But there was a good size petition for it, which was ignored.
To keep her name off public records regarding property ownership, she can hold the real estate via entity, formed in any number of jurisdictions, or by a trust having no obvious association with her, although she is the taxpayer on the private return filed with officials. But if those entities are subject to British taxation oversight, taxes will be paid on the certain-to-be-had gains on the London real property when sold.
So yes, the privacy dodge she makes strikes me as a superficial claim, that gulls only the unknowing. The real likely purpose of holding London real property via offshore account is to make it possible to transfer title without paying taxes. She might not actually evade the tax upon sale, but she can do so more easily this way.
what does this mean? could you explain?
She personally doesn't own the house she is living in. She does own the corporation, or is the benifactor of the trust that owns the corporation that owns the trust that owns the corporation that rents the house from a corporation that owns the house... Each corporation is usually created in a different jurisdiction.
got it.
and is the purpose of creating all these shelf companies in different jurisdictions basically to make it very expensive for anyone who wants to track her to try?
or do a lot of these jurisdictions have very tight disclosure rules meaning even if you trace her to say the 3rd layer in the cayman islands, they cayman authorities will just tell you to fuck off because they don't disclose that info?
.
i'm assuming panama is usually like this which is why this leak is such a big deal? everyone thought that they were safe registering in panama?
.
if so, what's the benefit of doing all this? specifically how does this save you on tax/stamp duty? or is it just a privacy thing? if so, why do you ned privacy? do you just not want people to know what properties you own?
Part is privacy, part is protecting assets and the other part is hiding money from high taxes.
Actors don't get paid directly like regular people do. It is their corporation that gets paid. The actor takes a piece to live off of while the remaining gets filtered through he corporations into a tax haven country like Panama. Not only are they protected from the taxes on the initial amount that gets made but the future earnings of all investments from the protected money.
I am going to steal one guys example on here to explain it. These options are available to everyone to use. Most people it is not worth it. Let's say it costs $35k to open up a string of corporations like this. You wouldn't do it if you only had $45k or even $100k to protect. The cost would be more than the tax savings you would get. To people like Emma Watson who do it to save milions in taxes, the cost of $35k is definitely worth it. The potential amount of money you can still make from the millions you just saved invested makes you even more money. Whenever you need money like you need $100k and you have $50 million in the bank you will only get taxed on the $100k you pulled out instead of the $50 million in the bank because it is not money you have recognized as income even though it is still your money. It is technically the corporations money.
This is just one way to protect your money. You could do what the clintons do and when you get paid, it is your charity that gets paid which not only becomes tax free money for you but a tax donation to the people who pay you. You pay yourself a moderate salary to run the charity and you spend 90% of the money from the charity on "administration" duties while the other 10% actually does charity work. Not only the clintons do this. Anita Sarkesian does this, bill gates does this, warren buffet does this. So when you heard Warrent Buffett donated billions to charity, he actually donated billions to Gates charity where he knows he still has control over it but it is protected from taxes because it is in a non profit organization.
the real estate is owned by an entity that does not reside in that country, and thus not subject to taxation.
They not only have one offshore entity, but a complex network of them which makes it difficult to track who actually controls the assets owned by these shell corporations. These are spread out across many smaller countries who derive a large amount of income by allowing this to happen (Panama, Isle of Man, Luxembourg, Virgin Islands, etc).
cool. thanks.
i get the network of shell companies concept.
how does the tax avoidance work?
does she just get her movie and endorsement paycheques sent to luxembourg holding company number xxx and then spend that money as she wishes without the uk/usa taxman ever even finding out about it?
re the property in question. is this connected to stamp duty? or is she earning rental income that's being paid to a foreign shell company and, similarly, evading taxation?
She doesn't get paid when she does a movie, a company she controls does, she in turn gets paid a salary out of that which does get taxed, while the rest stays away from the taxman
i didn't look into this, but are you sure it was RE? I was thinking stock ownership. For example in the U.S. if you hold above 5% of a stock you have to file that with the SEC. Maybe there is something similar in the UK?
Even so, I don't know if there is much that is disclosed in either case. Maybe you'd have to provide an address or something, but that's probably available anyway. It's not like you have to have to disclose that much in these things.
It would be nice to get her to expound on this privacy explanation a little more, but I doubt that happens (because it's probably BS).
Which is a bullshit excuse to begin with.
We all know she is rich. So there is no secret to be exposed.
She is lying her pretty little arse off. While a contact address is required for all companies registered in the UK, there are professional service organisations (solicitors, asset managers etc) that can act as intermediary. This is the exact same service her Panama representatives would have provided for her off-shore companies.
Details
It is amazing how fast The Empowered switch to The Damsal in Distress.
You've got it back to front. There's no easy way to find out if a particular person owns a property in the Uk without a massive amount of detective work. But it is relatively easy to find out who owns a specific property. You just look at the title deeds at the land registry. If it is a uk company you can then go to companies house and find out who owns the company. If it is a Panama co, then the trail ends there.
However, Watson's claims that it was for security reasons are not entirely credible. What is more likely is that it was set up to avoid Stamp Duty when first bought ( rules have changed recently so that doesn't work any more). it also means that the transaction took place off shore so the money never came into the UK. This could also have avoided Income Tax on her earnings if she has the right set up for her personal financials.
what were the old rules and what are the new rules?
So if I got this straight:
(1) She set up a Panama shelf company which creates a UK shelf company subsidiary (or does it buy a new uk shelf company?) which bought a UK property
(2) Paper Trail for anyone stalking her as she claims is:
(2.1) Look up title deed for the UK property which gives you UK shelf company name.
(2.2) Look up UK shelf company name on Companies House which gives you Panama shelf company name.
(3) Panama has tighter disclosure rules. So you cannot find out who owns the Panama company.
BUT you're claiming that while this is plausible and correct info from Watson she's probably bullshitting because:
(4) Under old rules if a uk subsidiary had a foreign parent company they did not have to pay stamp duty? I'm confused about this bit.
(5) Also, her cheques get sent to her Panama company so she doesn't have to declare any of her income from movies, endorsements etc. to HMRC
(6) Is she generating rent from her UK property? Is she avoiding tax on that income too because it's being paid to her Panama company?
I agree that the name of the shareholder can't be kept secret. However, the address of said shareholder can be kept secret (from the public at least).
yeah it's pretty ridiculous that she wouldn't just get intermediaries. The only justification for doing this overseas is to save money, usually through tax evasion purposes.
I wouldn't say that pretty...she's about a 5-6
edit* Seriously? downvotes? If you guys think Watson is anything more than a solid 6, I'd hate to see what IRL plates you guy's got going......
"Gender equality not only liberates women but also men from government-prescribed wealth tax burdens."
Of course, Emma is no stranger to hypocrisy.
Anita Sarkeesian has been caught red handed with the cookies in her mouth so many times but feminists are so retarded they actually believe she's still legit.
It's time to officially classify feminism as a cult, a dangerous one at that.
I can't wait to see how she twists this into a feminist cause: "Oh well I HAD to put my money away because all because patriarchy. Women need to fight for their right to privacy!"
Clearly, she's trying to fix the gender wage gap.
The one that's been proven not to exist like, a billion times? That one?
The hypocrisy gives me a hard on. Oh wait, that's just Emma.
It's going to be interesting to see how she brings feminism into this
The patriarchy is after her hard-earned money.
You want to give Herhymenie your wand, Harry?
I feel like I'm in the minority when I say that I just don't find her attractive whatsoever. She's a HB5 by my standards, tops-- something about her face just turns me off
Meh... She's attractive. Not the hottest woman in the world. Certainly not ugly. Definitely a hypocritic.
To me she's attractive in the same way that a girl with that sort of body is attractive. Her face leaves a lot to be desired.
I feel ya. Personally, it's the same with Scarlett Johansson. Something about her face turns me off big time, and everytime it comes up in a discussion people won't believe me when I say I genuinely don't find her attractive (face wise).
Scarlett has that sexy voice going on.
Scarlett is another one (though I'd say she looks better than Watson)-- it's her face like you said... It almost looks boyish to me.
I think that I have quantified what it is about her look: she looks Trailer Park.
I saw some weird movie with her in it, and she was naked. Very bland. 7 on a good day. It looked like her medium/small tits were sagging already.
So, Trailer Park face, alright body, famous equals HB10+ to a lot of guys.
Yep. Just a bland girl. Not bad, not hot.
FYI, "not bad"="fuckable".
It's very confusing for me, too.
[permanently deleted]
If I'm being honest, that is a tough question. It shouldn't be legal, let's put it that way. The wealthy shouldn't be able to write such laws for themselves. If we are going to pretend that this democracy thing is for real.
I don't think I would have been as mad if Emma Watson kept her views to herself. What makes this scenario particularly galling is the fact that she goes around spouting this narrative about how men are bad people, equality this, equality that, yet here she is, actively furthering inequality.
The very fact that they can is just another point on the practically infinite series of evidence that's really all anyone is doing with this democracy thing; pretending it's real.
Don't let it get you down. Democracy is actually a terrible idea. The very fact it is so easily manipulated and thoroughly sidelined is due to the idiocy of the very plebs those who would claim democracy as a virtue insist ought to play a part in the political process. They disqualify themselves and have for a long time by their ignorance and how easily manipulated they are by shallow emotional appeal and simplistic psychological manipulation coupled with a desperate weakness for the just world fallacy.
The world as it really is, is nothing like the image propaganda feeds us of it. Political power is now and always has been little more than a cancerous channel for the ambitions of the psychopathic, and nothing has ever diluted it into any less other than the simple destruction of political power itself. One of the few things which those that seek and wield said power actually fear, although the abject unthinking terror the proles react with at the thought of a world without political authority indicates such fear is likely not something they will ever be faced with in reality.
Case in point; The revelations in the Panama papers will be used as a fulcrum to lever even more power to the political authorities of the world, and the few who comment on the irony of the watchers being caught with their hand in the cookie jar having their power increased because of it will be sneered at, politely ignored or uncomfortably disregarded at the very most. The idea that this concrete and widespread evidence that the gamekeepers have fixed the game completely elicits practically zero calls for the heads of the gamekeepers is just hilarious and sad all at once. It's a beautiful racket, and I'm truly quite impressed that even with this level of evidence that the entire stinking cabal is nothing but corrupt, the sheep just beg to be saved and demand that very same cabal is handed even more power.
Humans are fools, and political power is their present opiate, either as masters or slaves.
This is incredibly important to understand. Democracy only "works" by manipulating retards into thinking that the rich and powerful are somehow not pulling the strings. This is why I tell everyone here the same thing-- protect your own interests, fuck nationalism or whatever other bullshit people sell to make you fight wars for the rich/powerful.
Your post both impressed and depressed me at the same time.
You have a way with words that I wish I had, but that would require among other things a knowledge of the world that I don't think I want to possess. I think I would rather stay ignorant, and yes I know fully well what sub I am posting on; the irony is not lost on me.
You just have to read more, dude.
yeah, this is really the crux of the matter. When someone is a moral crusader and it's found they're a bloody hypocrite, it's hard not to be a tad disgusted.
Oh, she's all for equality, if somebody else pays for it.
It's the hypocrisy that pisses me off.
I'm a libertarian. I think taxes are too high and government is too big. Sure I'd shelter as much income as I legally could.
But I wouldn't be out in public supporting big government and progressive ideals at the same time like a filthy two-faced snake.
That's what most of these politicians and SJW celebrities are. They might tout these big government and wealth redistribution programs to the masses but they continue to ruthlessly pursue their own interests.
Law 38: "Think as you like, but behave like others"
For politics it's more do as you like, say what they want to hear. Remember when Obama said he would go through the budget line by line and slash our debt, then he got elected and he tripled it. Anyone who believes anything any politician has ever said in front of a podium is a fool.
I hear you. So the "behave aspect" is more in the superficial sense. You outwardly convey behaviours in line with what the people want, but behind the scenes you plan counter to that.
it's not hypocrisy
it's machiavellianism
these people were not in this game for the sake of truth or authenticity but for power and money
if you still can't accept that you didn't interiorize many things from here, especially stoicism
The funny part is that shes is playing as a saint/mother theresa, the SJW who bring justice to the less fortunate while fucking everyone over.
Most people would do it but it takes another level of fucked up to pretend youre holy and a savior while fucking society more than an average person could ever.
it's not really about being 'greedy', it's more of stopping others greed from taking your money
The tax laws are retarded (at all levels) for taxing you on making money that you already paid tax on (in most places, some still used their brain when making tax code and are flourishing).
no matter which way you look at it, taxing money made on investments made with already taxed income is retarded and counter intuitive, yet when a govt sees a way to grab easy money they say 'why not' without considering the consequences.
and now we have this moronic logic "not paying their fair share" that even OP used, which just makes the whole thing more unbelievable.
Only the profits generated by investments are taxed. The principle of the investment may or may not have been taxed before it was invested, depending upon whether it was a 401K contribution or other non-taxable category. Money stashed offshore is not taxed at all.
It's fine to take issue with the tax code, just be clear about what it is first.
what is even the point in writing this? What else would be taxed, the losses?
yes, it is. If emma watson is paid $10 million for a movie, she still pays tax on that even if she puts the after-tax money offshore. Just be clear on what 'stashing offshore' even means first.
Your original wording makes it sound like money invested is taxed.
The whole reason for stashing money off shore is to avoid paying taxes on it.
No, for this exact reason. People could find out and when they do you lose your reputation and credibility. In the long run it's more profitable to roll with the punches and let those who made the wrong choice fall.
Somewhat related, I remember a post a month ago about a book that was similar to The Prince but was more modern. Anyone know what it is?
I wouldn't. I like contributing taxes.
I knew the feminists weren't going to attack her like they'd attack men found in this scandal.
The regressive left / limousine liberals are the embodiment of the phrase "do as I say and not as I do".
The girls who come from wealth and whose mommy and daddy pay for them to attend a 45k/year tuition private college to study "gender studies" and still have the nerve to call a working class white man more "privileged" than her because maybe she's half indian or something.
So what's your post graduation plan dear?
"Ummm... I think I'll go like... Traveling in SE Asia or something."
You know what Putin said? "yea, that shit is accurate"
I'm glad that someone posted this because I was too busy to do so. Every fucking SJW/beta male on this site was whiteknighting her ass to the ground.
Well, upper middle class to lower middle class anyway. The poor barely pay any tax.
People with power remain in power, the poor remain reliable dependent voters. Bleed everyone else dry, 'merica!
'muricaDemocratic capitalism!
That's not really how they bleed societies dry. But it is how some people hide secret payoffs, and THAT is a lot closer to how they do it. Not paying taxes is a drop in the bucket, but it does speak to how they think the rules are for everyone else, but not them.
Let's say you want to start a small business. You do well, have great management and supply chain structure and thus make a nice profit, you end up paying an effective tax rate between 35-45%.
Big corporation moves into your market, because they have millions of dollars invested in tax avoidance vehicles and lobbying they pay under 5% in taxes. They use this advantage to undercut your prices, puts you out of business.
The money they earn flows out of your country into a tax haven. How is this not bleeding societies dry?
Also don't forget overregulation. Big Corps don't mind it, because they have the money to comply and use economies of scale to make it cheap per unit. It becomes an expense to smaller businesses that they have less customers to spread around, so they become less attractive choice.
BigCorps like it. They write the regulative legislation specifically to advantage themselves by disadvantaging small companies.
That is not how it works. What kills the small business is not the tax rate, it is the supply chain and purchasing advantage bigco has over smallco. That has zero to do with tax laws, and everything to do with global trade deals.
And people generally consider the C-corp structure of Bigco to be less tax-advantaged than the S-corp/LLC/Partnership structure available to Smallco. You would know that if you actually dealt with tax rates and business operations for small and large companies.
Yes, this is how it works. Tax compliance is extremely expensive and there is a much greater downside to venturing into the grey areas of the tax code if you don't have a legal fund in the 7 figure range.
There's theory, then there's the real world. Supply chain plays a role in some markets, tax compliance plays a role in all markets. My background is in real estate and banking, I've seen many banks sell because the tax/regulation compliance made selling or merging the only choice from a cost scaling standpoint.
For example, do you personally own an international shell company? We both know the advantages in theory, but I'm going to guess neither of us is going to pay $35,000 in accounting and legal fees to save $45,000 on our taxes and risk an audit which could cost another five figures.
Again, theory vs reality.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/03/07/27-giant-profitable-companies-paid-no-taxes/81399094/
Read it yourself:
(Translation necessary? Or do you understand tax accounting enough to know what that means?)
It's a broken ruleset. What was done with the Panama shit probably wasn't illegal.
I'm not super familiar with the specifics. However the whole point of showing you that was to counter your statement that taxes play an insignificant role. If they find a way to get out of taxes, whether illegaly or not, is irrelevant. Things don't start costing less because someone pays less in taxes.
http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/Valuation_Allowance
If this site is accurate it sounds like a valuation allowance is akin to getting a payout for your business losing money. How does this differ from the colloquial bailout?
EDIT: Also, this negative value, is that payed out to the company or does it remain as a credit?
The problem is all the efficiency gains have gone to the elite
Take wal mart for example. What's more efficient, wal mart's distribution system, or one made up of mom and pop operators? The mom and pops were paying more to middlemen and using more in labor/materials to get the goods on the shelf, so they died as they should have. The problem I have is that while consumers benefited from the lower costs, all the wealth from the company is just passed down to heirs so they can be useless, when it could have been used to fund endwments for education, scientific research or what have you.
The crux of the problem is that YOU have a problem with how they spend THEIR money.
I might argue that I have a problem with how they spend my money when their workers are living on assistance paid by my taxes. Also, what determines that it is their money? They didn't earn it.
I actually started out as a pretty libertarian guy and still am in a lot of ways. But the reason for my position was that I thought that it would result in the greatest good for the most amount of people. It's not a religion for me, and when I see evidence suggesting I should reconsider my views I do. For me, 30 years of no growth in real median income, while america has prospered greatly and the wealthy have done very well, is evidence enough that what we are doing is not working.
"Some of their workers are living on assistance...."
What determines that it is their money??? Go home.
yes, this is a kind of tragedy of the commons
[permanently deleted]
I believe you misunderstood the post.
Small businesses who can't compete should go ahead and fail. In this case, you are saying the small business wouldn't compete regarding their lowest cost business structure, and so they would be passing those larger costs on to consumers. The people running the small business need to find something they're better at. You seem to not understand that there is a consumer side of that relationship as well.
Your example seems to presuppose that there is some virtue in more collected taxes. There is not. In fact, I'd argue the opposite.
I'm going to assume you've never run a business if you don't immediately recognize how red tape gives an advantage to larger companies.
I'm not judging you for that, and if you own a business I apologize, but let me explain.
The government has created a tax code where small businesses are taxed at significantly higher rates than large businesses. Furthermore, the paperwork and compliance is incredibly expensive. This is by design. Large companies have used the police powers of the IRS to win markets that they could not win based on skill and business acumen alone. If you don't believe me, talk to a business owner with 15+ employees.
Example: After the financial collapse congress passed a large amount of "compliance regulation" which most bankers found to be non-sensical and expensive. This forced a lot of small banks to sell, not because they weren't good at banking, but because the costs of complying with the government made operating many local banks untenable. Would it surprise you that the expensive regulations were written by lobbyists for the larger banks who then bought those smaller banks at a discount?
If you're going to say it's a dog eat dog world and that a company which uses lobbying for a competitive advantage is no different than a company which uses efficiency for a competitive advantage, I can respect that. But then you would also need to agree that if a person were to burn down a competitors building, that is also an acceptable business practice provided you can get away with it.
Look I'm a realist same as you. I make decisions based on how the world is not how I would like it to be. Do international tax havens drain society? You better believe it. We have trillions of dollars abroad which would reside here in America otherwise. Do my fee-fee's matter? Probably not. It's why I work in rental properties which gives me tax advantages and don't open my own brick and mortar store.
Most small businesses are organized as pass-through entities, and therefore pay no tax on their income. Instead, the owners pay taxes on the income they receive in dividends/distributions. Those owners pay taxes at the marginal rate imposed on such income.
So you could say that small business income=taxed at 0% at entity level, unless the small business opts for subchapter c status.
Meanwhile, large corporations must be organized as subchapter c corporations. They carry with that tax designation the dreaded "double taxation" regime, whereby the corporation is taxed on its net income, and the shareholders are taxed on dividends when receiving dividend income or gain on sale of shares.
A great deal of tax planning for small businesses is to avoid being treated like those larger corporations, who take it in the neck in terms of taxation relative to smaller businesses.
So, given that, please explain how that reality this squares with your claims that "The government has created a tax code where small businesses are taxed at significantly higher rates than large businesses".
When you trade in intangible goods, like Google, you can minimize your taxation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
What about tax loopholes and subsidies? My understanding is that the really large corporations are able to effectively pay no taxes at all.
Also, is a corporation's net income measured before or after dividends are distributed?
I don't think I disagree with anything you said in this post, besides the building burning part.
But your original example is flawed. There will be savings to consumers if offshore companies are competing with lower tax liabilities. The offshore companies with better tax structures will compete the prices down, and the consumers will keep the extra - instead of it going to the "small business" guys and local taxing authority. Why should consumers pay extra to keep the small business guys afloat? And that consumer savings you are ignoring stays in the country, so it is not something to ignore when you are talking about flows in and out.
As for companies using government to kill competition in any way, I'm all against that. That is really a different issue from tax rates.
I don't think that consumers should pay more, I think small businesses shouldn't be hamstrung by government regulation and taxes. You can't really separate taxes and reduced competition, when tax rates are not even those two are connected at the hip.
Again, not trying to get on a soapbox and lament the unfairness of the world, just talking reality. If I was buying a small company or investing in a small bank I'd have to consider these factors.
With regards to tax shelters keeping prices down, in many cases yes, other cases no. Looking at the big picture: When the government makes it tax advantageous to move capital out of a country the effect is that it lowers the productive output of the population, which lowers the velocity of money, which lowers disposable income, which in the grand scheme of things costs me money, costs you money, it only profits the politically connected. Maybe one day if I'm politically connected I will change my tune, but at that point I don't think I'll be posting on message boards either.
both are bad, both abuse society( i mean taxes and corporations) its how the world works
It's a bit sad in a way, it reminds me of scientology that targeted young stars and filled their minds with a bunch of crap.
Well can you give other examples of when an SJW was caught just trying to maximize their power/influence?
Watson is a special SJW cause well she's rich as fuck
Poor Emma was just trying to destroy gender stereotypes.
how is she even that rich, she had those harry potter movies but not much else and that was years ago.
she could donate a lot of that to charity! women's causes! amirite? won't hold my breath.
are you kidding? There were 7 harry potter movies, and every single one of them was insanely popular. I'd be more shocked if she wasn't rich after all of that. I think she's worth under 100 mil though, so i'm not sure why you're making it seem like she's worth more than makes sense.
Why are we acting surprised? Fuck that bitch. In every orifice.
Implying that not getting double taxed is bleeding your country dry.
Her defense will be I did it to show the world that women can be better than men in illegal economical activities and you'll see a big number of womyn going crazy about how empowering (whatever the fuck that means anyway) her actions are.
Does anyone actually expect that there is some kind of redpill message in this beyond: "If you are a high net worth, get a decent accountant".
Plus: "If your name appears in the panama papers, hamster out whatever you need to minimise liability".
Social justice faggotry and politics aside, I pay my accountant to minimise my tax liability, and pretty much sign whatever he puts in front of me. If I actually had a decent amount of cash I'd be in a similar situation.
You might be able to dig around for a bunch of tumblrs and shitpost media trying to turn this into a real issue, but why the fuck are you reading those in the first place?
Consciously: "Well I don't really care about those Panama Papers anyway."
Unconsciously: "But she's hot!"
That was a bit unpredictable,
but one thing i've been saying over and over. Most of these celebs dont even give a shit about whatever cause they'r co-signing, be it feminism, social justice or whatever. They just pick a niche and go with it just to have a reason to get some bonus attention on the side. Most of them, Emma, Beyonce, taylor swift,..etc
and its not even exclusive to leftists, a lot of celebs are getting on the conservative shit just to get that redneck money too. cough trump
But anyway, putting ones money offshore is actually a smart move and i dont blame them, fuck taxes. Its just a bitch move to claim to be a social justice advocate while doing it.
By what metric? Because liberals said so? Fuck that noise. Income inequality has worsened over the past century. It also just so happens that people are also more well-fed, experience better healthcare outcomes, work in safer jobs, and generally speaking enjoy higher standards of living than ever before.
"Income inequality" is the boogieman that socialists have had to turn to since the global, public collapse of their deity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okHGCz6xxiw
I have not the words. I am gobsmacked.
If all that money got you was better televisions and bigger houses, yours and Maggie's argument would hold up.
But money is also political power, even the Supreme Court of the US has come out and said it. Concentration of wealth is the concentration of political power, and therefore the process of the concentration of wealth is anti-democratic, and illiberal. I use the word "liberal" not in the political sense of connoting left wing ideas, but in the older sense, relating to liberty itself. Wealth inequality is illiberal, it is destructive of liberty, the kind that everyone can agree on.
I am so incensed and infuriated by your comment that I can't even properly articulate my thoughts about it, but for you and Maggie to respond to this concern with "Well, EVERYONE is better off, haha!" is to brush off the true nature of the problem.
Bread and circuses.
Propose a solution to this that doesn't a.) completely undermine the utility of money as a "universal medium of exchange," and b.) that doesn't also erode individual rights massively.
Money is speech. As a man, it's practically your only speech. That you beseech a decidedly anti-male organization known as the Federal Government as some great and noble force that has only been corrupted by those evil monied interests is tragic.
No, it isn't, obviously, or we shouldn't be sitting here disagreeing about it. Inequality isn't illiberal, it's a real thing that is as much a part of the human condition as is sex itself. We cannot agree that concentration of wealth is inherently bad, because from my standpoint, concentration of wealth happens to be a feature of every society that has ever done anything meaningful.
Every society that attempted to eliminate it, meanwhile, became a fucking human catastrophe particularly with respect to human liberty and freedom. You cannot have your cake and eat it, too.
No, it isn't. It is to judge solutions to the world's problems not by our limited human experience or by the stated intentions of people, but to act logically, and judge them on their merits and their results.
"Bread and circuses?"
I'm sorry, while I unapologetically like fast food and HDTVs as much as the next man, I was talking about the fact that the profit motive you so decry is responsible for miracles in the field of healthcare that weren't even fucking dreamt of just 50 years ago. We eliminated want for food, clean water, and then built a global electronic communications network that brings the world's closer together. We went to the fucking moon, not out of a desire to profit, but out of a desire to realize human accomplishment.
THAT'S what wealth, competition, and markets brought us - but please, go on telling me that I'm deluded by bread and circuses, and how your prescribed redistributionist solutions to the world's woes will surely work this time around. Without the men in these fields, trading and exchanging becoming wealthy and then utilizing that wealth for the betterment of society, we would've done none of those things - regardless of whether they were financed by prudent businesses or the taxpayer. You look at an uneven distribution of wealth and conclude that it is a problem in and of itself, and can't even articulate WHY it is when it is pointed out that the world it created is the best that has ever existed.
Be gobsmacked. I do not give a fuck.
You mean the US under the New Deal suffered hard? From what I've read, taxing the rich and giving the normal people space to live worked pretty damn well. We are approaching the same levels of wealth inequality again. Not only in the US, but in other countries, too.
It's bad because money equals power and we got people in our world, who are more powerful than ancient kings because of their wealth. In a world, where people at supposed to be kind of equal. I mean, it's cool if Bill Gates or Elon Musk want to help humanity with their riches. Just....Bill Gates is in a stronger bargaining position than the countries he deals with. A single person is more powerful than a whole state.
Another point is: Ancient kings had to employ their power personally. It was relationship-based power. Money is impersonal, can be transfered almost freely and can be inherited. And: It grows by itself. People whining about rich people will see them double or even quadruple their wealth in a few decades. Imagine people like Gates and Musk being small fish in a huge pond. Democracy just doesn't make sense at that point anymore.
Is that what you think is cool for everyone?
Wealth inequality never, NEVER created problems for civilized people. What problem is it creating now, other than the government wanting to steal from the higher strata and give it to people who do not produce it? The poor are fed, housed, given phones and cared for, medically, which is something that the middle part of the producing classes cannot afford for itself.
If you want to look at your cherished New Deal, you will see that it actually delayed recovery. The New Deal was, in essence, Herbert Hoover's programs with new names.
You are sorely confused when you go on about money/power/equality/democracy.
This is (probably) a tautological argument. Let me guess, once problems arise, these people are not civilized anymore?
I actually share your animosity against just giving stuff to people. Yet, there is no real solution besides doing that.
I'm not gonna argue with you any further. It's gonna be pointless. Even decades and decades of discussions, people still have their sides. Lets just leave it at a good disagreement.
"I am so incensed and infuriated by your comment that I can't even properly articulate my thoughts about it."
Congratulations on admitting your failure to maintain frame in the face of nothing more than an anonymous Internet commenter with good intentions.
Meh. I doubt that she or most of the people named in "The Panama Papers" really knew or cared what was being done in their name. They just have an accounting firm that does their books and they, like the rest of us, just say to their accountant "just minimize my tax liability, please," and that was the end of their interest in the matter.
You CAN read too much into this stuff.
You don't think she knew that she was buying her main piece of property through a shell corporation in Panama? You know when your house is not in your name.
You are a middle-class person, and are looking at the problem from a middle-class perspective. Middle-class people WOULD know whose name their house is in. Emma Watson is NOT middle-class. She's fucking loaded, and people who are fucking loaded don't look at this stuff the same way as middle class people.
I think she knew in a distant, detached sort of way, but I doubt she gave a shit about the implications of that. I've worked with super rich people. They usually have some sort of structure of agents that does ALL their paperwork for them, from car registrations to property acquisition to taxes to travel arrangements and visas, and all they have to do is just slap a signature on whatever is shoved in front of them.
This agent structure can take many forms based on the preferences of the person, from a personal assistant who is physically close by most of the time and juggles contacts with law firms and talent agencies, or it can be what's called a "family office," which is essentially a small combination law and accounting firm that has only one or two clients, or it can just be a junior attorney in the "wealth management" section of a prestigious and global law firm (one of these is usually involved somehow regardless), or a combination of all of these.
Regardless of the form this agent structure, again, the whole point of it is that the super rich person in question just doesn't have to give a shit about any of this bureaucratic nonsense anymore. I'm sure she knew about her personal financial structures in the sense that she knows that one of the planets in this solar system is called "Uranus," but her knowledge of the important details of both is extremely limited, and her desire to change the state that knowledge even more so.
At some point along the way, probably either to her parents when she first hit it big in the HP series, or when she turned 18 (probably happened on both occasions, actually) some junior lawyer from the above-mentioned wealth-management section of the above-mentioned law firm sat down in front of her and said "I assume you'd like us to minimize your tax liability then?" And then she says, only half-comprehending or -caring, "Yes, please, that sounds nice."
The really great thing about being super rich is that you don't have to give a shit about this administrative crap anymore; you can PAY people to do it for you. Again, and finally, she probably sort of knew about her financial arrangements in a distant way, but never really contemplated the implications or explored their exact nature because she didn't have to.
I applaud her and everyone else involved in this "scandal" for trying to have the least amount of their money stolen from them by their respective govts. Although Watson has made most of her money promoting feminism and social justice so that might not apply to her. But overall, I applaud anyone who wants to actually keep their money, as long as they don't then go and advocate everyone else have their money stolen.
I think she made most of her money by pretending to be a child wizard going to wizard school
I like this post. You make your case clearly with just a couple of snags which I believe you are painfully aware of at this point.
One criticism: "Literally" means there is an actual, physically tangible vacuum at work. My ex-gf's mouth was literally a vacuum that figuratively sucked me into complacency. It wasn't powerful enough to literally suck a golf ball through a garden hose, but it was figuratively or metaphorically that powerful. In the future, please use "figurative" or "metaphorical" instead.
As far as the political/economic backlash goes: you'll deal with a lot of that here. You've learned some of their trigger words and phrases already. It's funny, because they tend to subscribe to the same left/right manufactured political divide that they purport to be aware of and reject. Once they label you a "BernieBro" or "SJW" or something, their lack of depth and nuance is apparent. You may still learn something from them, but they will not learn anything from you. They've already made up their minds.
Haha thanks for the feedback. Will be sure to only use literally when it literally applies.
This "fair share" faggotry again.
Fuck Emma Watson and all, she's a hypocrite I guess, but how much do you think Emma Watson has actually paid in taxes? Most likely a lot more than any of us have or ever will. She's probably getting raped in taxes.se what I did there?
Did she do anything illegal? No? Then what the fuck?
I'll take any tax write-off, or legal loop hole that'll help me keep more of MY FUCKING MONEY that I can and I suggest you do the same. If its legal its legal.
Oh I don't doubt we would all do it in her position, it's the fact that she went around spouting off how tax evasion was wrong, while doing it herself.
No one likes a hypocrite.
And on top of it her pathetic excuse of "my privacy" is just patronising as hell, seriously how fucking dumb does she think the general populous is that we believe that she needs an offshore company based with a firm famous for its tax evasion specialty the sole sake of "privacy"
This line of thought amazes me.
I'm just saying, if we agree to rules (e.g. a tax system), everyone should play by them.
You are likely a peon who doesn't have enough money to make moves like this, and have to play by the rules. Yet here you are campaigning for people who are cheating you. The level of brainwashing is amazing.
At this point, taxes are just theatrical anyway. A way of keeping the audience invested in the act of government. A way of turning us against each other if one of us doesn't "pay our fair share".
The government can fully fund itself by simply borrowing and printing the money. Taxes mainly create an obligation and thus demand for the fiat currency. The monopoly currency is the government's primary source of power.
Exactly. I love when people argue for respecting the tax system they completely forget the financial firm and GM bailouts of 08-09, not to mention quantitative easing. Taxes are just a control tool, the elite will always win. The power that the non-federal Federal Reserve Bank has is unfathomable by most people.
No arguments from me there.
Regrettably I'm yet to see a viable means of checking off from this ponzi scheme. Sure you can minimise your exposure to it and have a medium level of comfort as I have (tax avoidance as opposed to tax evasion), but I would not recommend checking off entirely.
There is always a tax that has to be paid on something, can't even own land without that happening either (be it a shire council or land tax depending on country of residence), so an independent self-sufficient lifestyle keeps you on the game board to some extent.
I never agreed to the rules, I was born here. Taxes are enforced through threat of violence by the State. I will always do whatever I can to pay the least amount of taxes. Fuck the State.
Get yourself a good CPA. That's our job. As for local, state and federal authorities, we're not allowed to turn over anything without a court order. Confidentiality laws for CPAs are tougher than those for attorneys.
To be honest, they cheat the IRS. Fuck IRS, you are paying for some welfare state, for someone else life.That is taxation.
I didnt agree to shit
Everybody plays by the rules or risk going to jail. Did she do anything illegal? Then rules are the rules.
Emma Watson is cheating me? Exactly how?
Social contract theory 101: By participating in society you tacitly consent to follow the laws. If you use your privileged position to bend rules that others can't, then you are cheating because everyone else has to play by a standard that you do not, even though we all agreed that we are better off if everyone follows the rules that we set.
There is no consent, and there is no agreeing. You follow the law or you go to jail wether you agree and consent or not. That is social contract theory 101.
Emma Watson is privelaged? Is she some kind of blue blood? Fuck.
This doesnt mean anything. You are either breaking the law or youre not.
Cheating by following the rules?
There is only one tax code
Nobody agreed to shit. we didnt set any rules. You certainly didnt. Emma Watson (as far as anyone can tell) followed the set rules. You just dont like them.
Look man, if you want to close all possible loop holes, thats going to be one big ass (impossible) tax code on top of our already big ass tax code that no one will be able to follow. Are you really ready to say "you cant under any circumstances and for any reason write off any amount of taxes whatsoever or attempt to lower your tax burden in any way and must always pay to the fullest extent considering all income, expenses, and property." Because thats crazy (and some bullshit). You're also taking away the governments power for tax incentives.
Okay I'm going to edit this now, and try to make it clear that I'm talking about two different things at once without clarifying because I just fucking woke up on a day off, and seeing people acting like it's okay for the biggest sources of revenue in the country to not be paying any taxes is somehow okay pisses me the fuck off.
Except it isn't even really a loophole that is the primary problem.
S-Corporations (along with countless other types of companies) pay zero in federal taxes, and here in Oregon only 150$ in state taxes. Large fucking multi-million dollar companies paid 150 total dollars and haven't for as long as the CPA I worked under has been doing their taxes.
I'm going to correct myself because I didn't bother looking shit up on Nike specifically, but was rather talking about gigantic corporations as a whole. Sure, some C-corps pay taxes, but it's a significantly smaller % than it should be. In fact, if there was a simple comprehensive list of names you recognize as household names, I'm sure many people, even here, would be shocked to learn how little those name brands pay in taxes, %wise, each year (pro tip, a bunch of them, such as Facebook, don't pay a dime [zuckerberg pays taxes now but he was pretty good at avoiding them for a while there, too]).
Re-write common... Overly complex tax law, and suddenly us as individual tax payers would likely only need to pay 1/10th of what we currently pay (probably less honestly, although the end result will be higher, not lower) and the government would still collect more in taxes annually than it does now. That obviously would never fucking happen; I'm just talking about reaching the same total collected amount that is collected now each year would easily be doable with a fraction of the little guy's dollar.
That's just how much big business is worth as a whole in this country, and why corruption like the panama papers leak is so prevalent. It's hard for companies to hide their earnings, but it's much easier for those who run said companies to do exactly that. So stop trusting the CEO-tier of people, and just start siphoning off from the reported earnings. Makes the IRS's job a whole hell of a lot easier, too.
[permanently deleted]
I assume you are saying they have not paid taxes recently.
Please examine the following, and identify where your allegation is supported by the filed SEC information.
http://s1.q4cdn.com/806093406/files/doc_financials/2015/ar/docs/nike-2015-form-10K.pdf
I would also note that:
Nike is not an s-corporation. It is a subchapter C corp.
Although the annual report information suggests Nike paid income tax in 2015, I would note that even if Nike had not paid any tax in a particular year, it is incorrect to look at any year of income tax payments by a taxpayer, and claim "they pay no taxes." The concepts of loss carry forwards, weighing of expenses versus revenue, and any number of basic and totally fair tax rules can wipe out net taxable income for a particular year.
And if you are claiming that Nike has NEVER paid net federal taxes, please say so, so we know just how extreme a factual stance you are taking here. Then please show how you know this.
What law? No seriously, what tax law are you saying must be rewritten? Cite the specific section. And then show us how that affects the payment by the different marginal tax rates for individuals and businesses.
Lol. You think they're going to lower your taxes if they raise them for Nike. They're not.
Then re-write the fucking law for fucks sake. Thats what I'm arguing. Is it legal or not? It is? Then your problem is with the law. Change it.
That doesnt follow. What law are you going to put in place?
Also, Nike is a corporation not a person. Its not a real thing. Its a legal construct. Tax them all you want. Who cares? We're talking about people in this thread.
Sucks for Nike though. They'd probably just leave Oregon.
And your condescending post amazes me. The post you were responding was addressing that socialist cucks who have never made a dime in their lives constantly harp on 'paying their fair share'. Okay. Do you know in my country my income level (which isn't the top) pays for almost 20% of all tax revenue for the government, despite that we are approximately 5% of the population?
We are talking about my fair share. According to your bullshit logic I should be paying more? My fair share is even more than that?
You love rules right? I'll bet that nothing this cunt did was illegal. Therefore, your pathetic 'if we have rules, we should abide them' argument fails as well.
If you only pay 20% of all government revenue then you are not part of the class I am talking about. You are a lower-middle to middle-middle class salaried worker who has a higher income than some members in your society. Affluent at best, once you have paid off your debts. My argument is that people like you are getting stiffed, because you cannot escape taxes like the truly rich can. Yet here you attack me because you cannot grasp the bigger picture.
I am talking about corporations that make billions and yet pay 5% tax, even though they depend on national infrastructure. Those are the people who should be paying more, not people like you.
If you don't get why Emma Watson's behavior here damages the social fabric then I can't help you.
No, boy. I work for this crowd and even accepting these types of dealings they pay far more than 'their fair share' because even 10% income greatly exceeds the contributions of the vast majority of everyone else.
How do you define 'fair share'? At what point do these people and myself included, end up paying more than the fair share.
She's a piece of shot hypocrite but the real ducks are the bankers and politicians who set this shit up.
Nobody's pissing about her paying/notpaying taxes. The complaint is that, while she makes demands for social programs, and castigates others for not doing what she wills, she is not paying for it, and, in fact, is jumping through hoops to see that she pays as little for it as possible. Which means, that she is making orders for things that others must pay.
Fully agree. There has been a campaign (started by Gordon Brown in the UK) which tries to confuse people about what 'tax avoidance' means. People think it means tax evasion. It does not, it means ordering your affairs, perfectly legally, to minimize your tax burden according to the rules set by parliament. The politicians made the rules, and these people are playing by them. There is nothing immoral about not paying more taxes than you are legally required to do. Having offshore accounts to take advantage of better tax situations in other countries is perfectly legal, so long as you declare those accounts to the tax authorities (not doing so is tax evasion, which is illegal). The Crown vs Duke of Westminster established that people are perfectly entitled to order their affairs for their best advantage (minimal tax required), and not required to order them to the State's advantage (to pay more tax than the tax laws as they stand require).
Now, I can't stand Emma Watson, she is a feminist toady, but for this, unless it is shown that she is actually guilty of tax evasion she is doing nothing wrong at all.
The other trope that gets put about (came up in my FB feed just a couple of months ago) is to try to shame entrepreneurs and people who run industries, saying they should pay more because they make use of people educated at the State's expense. No, they already pay more, in fact most of the income tax is paid by just a few percent of the top earners. Further, the rest of it comes because they provide employment for the rest of the people.
It seems to be a common thing going on by governments in the west to ignore the fact that politicians can't draft tax laws right and make them too complicated, and try to use social shaming to make people work against their own best interest. Free movement of capital is just as much an essential to modern economies as free movement of labour. If governments decide to make their taxes high, they can't blame people for investing in countries where governments make the burden lower (again, so long as it is legal, which in the cases so far I think it always has been).
Something the data show quite unavoidably. However, don't expect others to know this, or when told, grasp what it means for their crank worldview that "the rich" don't pay their fair share.
The best you can typically hope for is the person acknowledges the facts, but simply retreats to "I think the rich should pay more, even still." That is fine, of course, because everyone can have an opinion, but they cannot have their own facts. Facts are everyone's.
And when you examine who pays taxes, the answer is: the rich pay taxes. A lot of the taxes. That is precisely what a graduated income tax system is supposed to achieve, and it does.
When people scream about how Huge Corp "made $400 billion in 2015 income and didn't pay a cent in taxes!", they are typically failing to understand that Huge Corp may have some pretty massive losses offsetting those gains, resulting in no net income over time, and that Huge Corp is also spinning off plenty of tax revenue in other forms. Forms which individuals do not typically face.
Exactly. I find it particularly bizarre that Red Pill guys fall for this shaming trick. Remember, you are here to make the most of your life, which includes being a financial success, which means that you need to be savvy with finances, but it also means you will pay more taxes than those who are financially hopeless. You will pay to support the financially hopeless, you will pay to support all the single mothers and the drug addicts and the criminals who spend years at the State's expense. This is all well and good, but that is no excuse for falling for this transparent politician's ploy. It is their job to make the tax system fair, not yours.
This thing is getting out of hand. Europeans will be familiar with the shaming of companies like Amazon, Apple and Starbucks in the last year or so. 'But Apple based its head quarters in Eire and pays low corporation tax!'. Exactly, that is the result of the Irish government's deliberate tax policy to attract foreign companies to set up there, and it is the deliberate choice of the EU politicians to say that there are no trade barriers between EU countries, so if you are set up in one you can sell to them all. Similarly with Luxembourg for Amazon. This is nothing immoral, let alone illegal, they are doing what governments intended them to do, then other governments (eg UK) cry that they aren't getting the revenue. If they want the companies to set up in the UK, it is in their power to set their corporation tax rates to a competitive level, not to whine about it.
In to the trash you go. Fuck off pinko.
Wealth inequality is liberal bullshit. You should know that.
Phrases like "money being vacuumed to the top" are pathetic attempts to get us to turn towards Marxism.
even if so, it's still a good thread to show proof of hypocrisy. I think the truth is, rich folks, like emma here, want just socialism/Marxism for the rich. So if someone is a liberal and wants socialism, well we have had socialism for the rich only since 08 when banks got bailed out. But not capitalism either, crony capitalism. So whether you're a liberal or a conservative, either way you're getting screwed right now.
I agree. And it issolutely hypocritical and I agree with that part of the post as well. However, his assertion that everyone should pay "their fair share" and other similar points are tells of a harmful philosophy that doesn't rely on being self reliant which is kind of what trp is all about
true. being red pill is similar to waking up about these kind of economic things. pay their fair share? do any of us, rich or poor, need to pay these pieces of paper that are printed out of nothing? money is made up just like wrong blue pill ideas.
Typical response from royalty...
For the people who downvoted: it's because he's the gorram prince of Saiyans
You know tons of government officials from around the world named in those papers male and female. Yet people get hung up on some dumb actress being named. I could care less.
How do these leaks work anyway? The ones in power could easily discount it all has a hoax couldnt they? Since the ones who leak it are at risk of prison or death, so ita not like they are bringing the documents forward to confirm the process in front of congress.
is this linked as in wrong doing? Or like trump where he was linked but because he has legit businesses there and stuff?
I can see how one would benefit from this. You'd tax heavily the middle or upper middle class. While the truly wealthy and knowledgable would go through the special methods to stay super rich.
Wouldn't it be better to stop fighting against people's interests and incentives, which almost never works, and try to understand and erase the reasons why these people are putting their money away into other countries in the first place?
how is wealth inequality an issue ? join them the winner takes it all, seems fair to me.
She's a SJW?
I didn't know this.
I don't know much about her but I think that if you look at the things she has done, speaking to the UN about feminism , dating the 1%, dodging taxes... it all makes sense if you view her as a social animal using whatever strategy is available to her to maximize her status, instead of some kind of moral leader. This is just what people do.
As for her explanation... there could be something to it, the devil would be in the details. But if it walks and quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck.
Oh and please cut this socialist/communist "the elite" crap.
You are sadly mistaken if you do not believe there is an elite class at the top.
Most people can't conceptualize this group because it is so far removed from reality for 99.5% of the global population.
I'm not talking about your lawyer/doctor. I am talking about the people that jam up vegas airport with their private jets before a floyd fight.
Did the Vegas airport give them the use of their airport for free? I'll bet that the "elite" have to pay just as much for a private jet that a group of poor people would have to pay, if they were given a private jet to use. Probably more.
So if a couple hundred people have private airplanes, and it happens that they sell out an airport, therefore an "elite" exists? How old are you? I expect red-pillers to have better sense of logic.
You know who else has a private airplane? Yours truly. So what now, am I also dictating the world's economy and how much the average person will pay in taxes? Jesus Christ, people. Stop believing everything Micheal Moore defecates.
The elite. Give me a break.
EDIT: My lawyer is pretty rich tho. Gotta admit that.
Social justice warrior complaining about other social justice warriors.
More like social justice warrior downplaying her privilege.
Do you think that she actually manages her own money to make the informed the decision that she was taking part in this? A part of me could see her being like "I don't want to deal with the responsibility of all this money so I'm going to hire someone to make prudent investments for me."
Irrelevant. If you're signature is on it, you are responsible. That's why Wesley Snipes went to prison.
Yes, but Snipes was a black man, and Emma Watson a cute white woman, so...
Its not about race, its about money. I'm trying to see what happened to his accountant.
This is almost certainly correct. The number of (wealthy) people who actually manage their own money, as opposed to turning it over to accountants, is quite slim.
The proper response in that case would be to express shock and dismay that this was done in her name, and publicly insist that her accountants stop doing it in the future.
You really think every single rich person isn't evading taxes and stockpiling wealth? Wake the fuck up.
The papers are nothing, if your surprised your like a prude whose since a phallus for the first time.
Your hate of wealth and money is disturbing. Income equality is not a right. Money is earned and with the right skills it is earned easily.
You misunderstand me u/d4ng3rzon3. I am very much in favor of free enterprise and believe those who create value for society should be rewarded accordingly. I love what some of today's billionaires do. I agree with John Rawls' view that wealth inequality can actually be beneficial for society. However, wealth inequality can reach such a point where it destabilizes society (e.g. buying elections/laws), especially if that inequality is being created because some people are not actually creating value, they are just cheating the system.
What I don't like, is the two tiered system we have operating today, where capital avoids taxation, while those from the upper middle class and below have to pay their share because they are salaried. Lets agree on what the tax rates are, and everyone pay what we agreed to. If we agree that Apple should pay no taxes, great, let's write it down and I'll happily go along with that.
Let's not have what we have today, which is a deliberately convoluted tax regime that allows certain individuals/entities to avoid paying what we have all agreed to. In other words, I believe in the rule of law. Trust me, I don't hate wealth, I'm by no means a berniebro.
The tax code is written, and there are people very familiar with its application and administration? Lots of people, in fact. Including plenty of people armed with guns who enforce said tax code.
Having been in corporate board rooms and private consultations with fabulously wealthy people, I can assure you that my experience, universally, has been that the approach of such wealthy people is not "how do we put our freedom at risk by lying on tax returns". Oh no, they are keenly interested in maintaining their freedom and complying with the law. The written law. The one you can go look up right now.
Yes, but how do those laws get written? The legislative process itself is broken.
your problem is with the law.
My capital gains are certainly taxed. My salary is only $45k but capital gains kick my ass every year. Short term CG is at the taxpayer's ordinary income rate. LTCG were taxed at 15% since I'm in the $37,651–$91,150 single bracket.
Sounds like your problem is buying elections and laws, not wealth inequality. If you make over 30 grand youre in the 1%. If you really hate wealth inequality so much why dont you volunteer your paycheck to some Africans. You're living like a king to them.
the 1% of what? of the world? of the USA?
Lmfao how poor are you that you think making over 30 grand puts you in the one percent? Go get a fucking job.
I'm at a point in my life where my incomes is very comfortable, but to say it's EASY? You will need to teach me that one.
Yes. The basic principle of business and making money is, "Help other people make more money."
If I helped you make $100k with little effort/participation, would you pay me $10k? All day someone will do that. The more money you affect, the more money you get paid.
The problem is, our education system NEVER teaches that basic principle even though it is the #1 reason the world goes round. So most people spend 16+ years of education without really learning how the world works. Its no wonder college grads come out with $50-$100k of debt and cant find good jobs.
I digress. Money is easy if you look at it right and learn how to do it.
Fundamentally I don't disagree, except for the easy part. You may just have more natural talent than me :)
But it's far easier to make money once you have money. Money breeds money and it is quickly consolidated at the top because of this fact. The idea you can make a couple million is a laughable idea of wealth compared to the the billionaires that truly control things at the top. Tax conditions are favorable to this type of wealth as well.
My brother is a doctor. Made $310,000 last year, MFJ (Married filing Jointly) His % of income was just over 25%. However, he (and his wife) start deducting it went down to 16%. I made a whopping $45,000 last year. Single. Only a few deductions, but I was hit with the capital gain tax - Stocks that I did NOT cash in on but are accruing. My effective tax rate was 19%.
Oh it's ridiculous how certain activities are incentivized. When I eventually sell my rental portfolio and buy larger investment properties I can defer 100% of my capital gains. If I do it right this will go on for the rest of my life and I'll never pay taxes on these investments.
But if I wanted to provide a service to society, THAT will get taxed at ridiculously high rates. Whatever, it's the world we live in, but I can't help but comment how unfair it is to regular guys.
Who let the commies in here?
You use that word "literally", but it does not mean what you think it means...
Math and data, or STFU.
For decades, people have been cheating societies by being able to use community owned resources, while not paying the appropriate free that maintains those resources.
Math and data, or STFU. Go examine the effect of marginal income tax rates, and how much of government revenue is paid by the various strata of income earners. You will likely be left with the realization that your only real argument is that, despite paying the bills for the rest of society, by and large, the high income earners should be paying still more.
When you examine contemporary economic arrangements and how taxes get redistributed, you will find that working shmucks are getting cash infusions from other people, people with higher incomes.
That's the crux of my argument. What is your rebuttal against this? And I don't think doctors/lawyers/etc. should be paying more. I am talking about the people who are the level above that.
EXACTLY. Eg: how many Walmart employees are on food stamps. Source. Why the fuck should the public be feeding Walmart employees? Where is that extra value going that Walmart saves from underpaying its employees? That's the literal vacuuming I am talking about.
Do you think this is an appropriate state of affairs? It's easy to just write me off as a socialist, but I am actually right of center.
Most people are too retarded to realize they are actually subsiding Wal-Mart through taxes. I guess that's not socialism but questioning corporate welfare is.
I would not waste time trying to argue with the "Temporarily Embarrassed Millionaires".
This is a retarded reddit meme repeated ad nauseam by retards. Nobody "fails"to realize this. Everybody who's been on reddit has seen it repeated constantly. And its just a faggot ass meme.
MAth and data or STFU
What is the rate you would apply, and how much of the overall tax pie should be paid at each level?
Walmart is not obligated to pay people at a level you find appropriate. Their job is to pay people a market wage necessary to maintain operations. Don't make some employer the obligee on your desire to see people have more money.
Cool, lets agree to disagree.
I find it problematic that one of the biggest employers in America underpays its employees to such a degree that we the public has to support them. And to add insult to injury, it is also one of the companies that helped to kill manufacturing in the US. All in the name of enriching their shareholders.
Having a problem with that is not being a commie. It's called not being cool with being robbed blind.
I share your exact sentiments in terms of financial policy, but you're making a very weak case for our position... it doesn't do us any good if your arguments aren't thought out, even if we're right at the end of the day.
This guy has zero clue about what the economic and tax payment data show. If he had familiarity the breakdown of who pays what bills in Western democracies, he would not say these things. The data shows a far more interesting and nuanced picture of matters.
He is doing what SJWs do: spout garbage rhetoric, without data, and expect people to take him seriously. When challenged, more unsupported assertions, and a demand for proof from others without having shown his own bona fides.
Putting this guy aside, I have plenty of highly informed friends who, after noting how much of the tax revenue pie chart the upper brackets already pay, still argue that the rich should pay still more of this or that portion of government obligations. Fine. I enjoy that conversation. But to take the posture that they--the upper income brackets---are not paying bills, and that the "working schmucks" are paying those bills, well, that is not a person to be taken seriously at that point. That person is just blathering.
You still have not been able to justify:
1) why the public should pay for Wal-Mart employees to be welfare. I.e., why we subsidize Wal-Mart with our tax dollars.
2) How this does not qualify as a transfer of wealth from American tax payers to Wal-Mart's shareholders.
I'm afraid I can't take you seriously if you can't reconcile your position with 1+2.
God damn it with this stupid ass reddit meme. First you come out with muh fair share now this?
Um.. do you want people to be poor as fuck? No? Then why shouldnt Wal Mart enployees get government assistance?
Lol. All government transfers end up in somebodies pockets breh. We give them those benefits so they can use them.
For what it's worth I agree with you on several points, all these republican bigots in here are not using their brains.
Saying that wealth inequality is not real is like denying global warming and climate change, it's real and you have to be fucking blind to deny that fact.
But muh republitards why dey hate tha poor?
Nobody said that.
And get a job.
Several have said it in this thread.
Also I have a job, thx.
If you had ever done any economic review of this issue, you would have found the basics on this topic. Here are some made-for-the-averageman publications and releases.
http://www.aei.org/publication/no-government-isnt-subsidizing-wal-mart/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/11/13/apologies-but-welfare-payments-to-employees-are-not-subsidies-to-walmart-and-mcdonalds/#692d52234bdb
You need to clear your head.
Although you don't realize it, you are in essence demanding Walmart pay employees some theoretical "living wage" you believe exists. This stuff is so far from the Chicago School concept of free market capitalism, and so close to the historical "command and control" concept of markets, it is startling you claim you are in favor of free enterprise. No, you are not. You are deep blue SJW Bernie Bro material, and you don't even know it.
Go back and start with Von Mises, Hayek, and Friedman. Keep reading from there. Once you can appreciate the Chicago School analysis of your views, you will likely not hold those views much longer. And, if after doing the reading, you still want to assert the notion of a living wage, you will be able to do so without coming off as you do now to people who are up on this multi-century ongoing debate you are unwittingly participating in.
Put simply, you think you are saying something new, but you are not. It is just new to you.
What is lost in your vision of labor markets and pay rates is productivity as determined by both capital deployment and (pause) the laborer's productivity. If you are going to demand wages without reference to a worker's productivity, you are into command and control.
Some people prefer command and control mechanisms as compared to market pricing mechanisms. Some of those people are awfully smart and informed. But they understand the debate in ways that address the undeniable utility of market pricing mechanisms. Those people do not use this Wal Mart thing to make sound arguments, unless they just want to score cheap political points.
[permanently deleted]
In my head I read it as 'Stafoo' and then he just seems chin-dribblingly retarded.
I have a hard time affiliating anything with these leaks as truthful, the whole agency tasked with releasing these "leaks" are owned by George Soros. As far as I'm concerned its just misinformation and propaganda.
Putin has said they're real and hes in them.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/14/europe/putin-question-session/
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/apr/14/vladimir-putin-panama-papers-correct-sergei-roldugin
Wish some of her nudes would leak. That'd be some good karma.
Her rep is pretty adamant that she's not getting a tax advantage by doing this. It's all gonna come out, so I doubt she would take that position if it isn't true.
Today. But what happens in the future, when gain is recognized via sale?
Sounds like a question for a CPA.
Of course she would. Now this is a big story, now you reach more people with the "it's all legal" stance.
In a few days, if it indeed was illegal, this won't be such a huge story. It will be a footnote in the papers.
it's already out and too late to lie about it now but of course they will try.
How the fuck are you relating Emma Watson buying an apartment through a Panamanian off-shore company to AWALT?
There are hundreds of people implicated with reps that are a million times worse.
Get the fuck out of here.
Pretty simple: I'm saying SJWs pretend to be out for the greater good, but really they are just out to further their own position. I.e. they don't want the justice they campaign for, they just want more power for themselves and use the justice posturing as a shield.
This is a redpill concept - I didn't come up with it.
I will do anything legally possible to minimize my tax bill.
"Think as you like, but behave like others"
I would never say this in public and would be spewing the same shit that Emma is saying.
This isn't a gender-related issue or something unique to SJWs. This is about humans in general. It's about power like you said.
For every Emma, there are thousands of multi-millionaires who do much worse and attend/donate charity events to clean their image.
You could have easily made this post about this law of power and it would have been concise and accurate.