In the end they simplified by simply cutting a deal with the Irish government. Of course they also went on enjoying all the facilities and infra provided by those who did pay their fair share of UK taxes. If any of the directors or their children had been taken ill or been in an accident, they surely would have expected the NHS to take care of them...
At the time, this was many years ago, I just saw all this as a fascinating technical challenge in database replication and distributed transactions; I’m obviously alot more woke now and wouldn’t get involved with it now.
Canadian mining companies do this with "hedging" contracts with their Swiss subsidiary that is basically a desk with 3 directors. Wait until you've hit a low in the market, then sign away the future growth to the subsidiary for "price-stability".
On the WAN side, I deliberately choose foreign AWS locations just to avoid the sales tax from domestic AWS sites...
I have been enormously buoyed up, though, by hearing from journalists and other pundits that ‘the rich won’t end up paying the 50 per cent income tax because their smart accountants will find a way around it’. When I put this to my own accountant, a senior member of a reputable London firm, he laughed and said: ‘Unless you want to go and live abroad for a very long time, or associate with some extremely unsavoury people, or invest in risky tax schemes, then for someone like you there is really nothing that can be done.’
But the other thing to know about the tie-wearing professions is that although one guy says something, another may say something completely different.
Aside from not being alive, what prevents Terry Pratchett from moving to some island to write his next book?
Why do you think normal flat in Monaco costs up to 20+ million eur? It is a nice place, but not THAT nice (In MCO case you need only postbox which can be rented cheaply as many professional athletes do... unless you are French citizen, then you are screwed but can go elsewhere)
Not true for Monaco. They will go to such lengths as watching the CCTV footage that had been recorded of you in order to see if you are actually present in the country.
As I said if you are French citizen all this tax haven sugar isn't valid for you, Monaco banks will report you to French authorities, but for rest of the world it works (unless something dramatically changed in last year or two).
Not true for Switzerland: You have to be 6 months per year here to officially / taxwise "live here". Otherwise, you lose your permit. The same is true for Singapore, I believe.
If you come as an outsider to Suisse, private banks/tax companies will either refer you to their branch in place where this applies to you, or if your net worth is high enough (can't remember exact threshold but it should be in 5 mil CHF ballpark and above), you can literally buy citizenship and you're covered (ideally in Zug/Luzern as one can witness in local property market there but it always depends on the case).
Hiding usually means just avoiding paying most of the income taxes (ie 5% instead of 40% or even much more in places like Scandinavia). In most countries, tax brackets for really high incomes are just ridiculously high, so everybody seeks to pay less taxes while staying legal. Taxes are a sinkhole from rich payer's perspective - you get back very little and you pay a lot.
It's like expecting common Joe not claiming some tax breaks he is entitled to. Why on earth would he not do it?
What exactly is untrue in my posts? Happy to learn more. My posts are quite generic for the topic, since we're on public internet forum but they come from my knowledge on this topic (which might be obviously invalid).
Not every country has that luxury. And Norway didn't get there by seizing rich people companies to make them pay taxes.
The problem with picking one place your idea (sort-of) worked is you may miss the overall trend. Try picking all places the rich have had their companies seized and see how it plays out overall.
True, but more often historical behavior is the correct prediction looking forward. The future is not likely random in all behavior.
So your claim is only true when it's demonstrated that the historical averages are no longer valid ...
There are countries right now failing after seizing wealth from their citizens (Kim in NK, Marcos in Phillipines, Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Chavez in Venezuela, Pot in Cambodia, among others).
France recently tried it for a season, and enough rich and wealth left the country that they reversed it almost immediately.
Are there any that have recently prospered as a result of seizing the wealth of their rich?
All of those countries failed for different reasons and never solely because of "seizing wealth from their citizens", although that was always a component.
while it's honorable to do so, one single person/entity isn't gonna change the tide. It's political will and changes to tax code that will make the difference - stop tax loop holes, and stop off-shore accounts that are untracable, etc.
The idea was for people to spend at least a couple of hours a week listening to and commenting on the music of P Diddy. I'm not sure how it connected legally on his side of the deal, but I also got this feeling that my musical input would not have a great impact on the artistic vision of Mr Diddy.
The poetry one was some guys who somehow found out that you could publish a book of crap poetry and write it off as a loss. Some spidery network of entities would in effect use this to reduce your taxes by a lot.
I know of people who've had the court rule against them, and they ended up in massive trouble.
This is a insidious myth that has never been uphed in court. It's just an excuse managers use.
As soon as you're making more than a few hundred grand, or you become a junior on a ladder that looks like you'll get there, people will get a hold of you on the personal side.
On the corporate side, as soon as you touch offshore, one of the big 4 that you already work with will suggest some tax optimization as a matter of course.
It's always weird, requiring whole pages of A4 diagrams, and you'll never really understand why these constructions work.
Some of the ones I've been offered have been downright ridiculous. One involved setting myself up as an advisor on rap lyrics. Another required me to publish my own poetry. IMO the weird ones are the most aggressive, and it's always sold as a tax reduction, so I've never gone ahead with them. It just seems too good to be true, and someone's gotta pay for social expenses.
On the corporate side, it's a bit less clear cut. You have a duty to shareholders to more or less do what everyone else does. There's also the fact that some governments actively court firms to set up shop with a discount, which is a sort of mutually beneficial bargain.