Just how stupid do you think we are?

[deriksmith]

So I was reading this article about offshore tax-havens on Time.com. It'S a perfectly nice article, a little short but nice.

And then I see the read other stories about this with the Forbes.com article If You Want To Crack Down on $32 Trillion in Offshore Tax Havens, Lower Taxes For the Ultra-Rich, and I am filled with emotions.

RE: Post

Comments

[ext_1327046]

Because clearly the solution to the ultra-rich illegally/unscrupulously not paying taxes is to have them legally not paying taxes.

[dvandom]

Well, less sarcastically the idea is this: rich people can avoid taxes, but it takes some effort and cost. If you can make paying taxes cheaper than avoiding them, or at least not too much more expensive, rich people will pay taxes. But if taxes are too much more expensive than avoiding taxes, the rich will do what it takes to avoid them.

So, there's two solutions to the problem: either make taxes cheaper, or make avoidance more expensive. And since the second option tends to be on a par with nailing jello to the ceiling as long as any nation is willing to be a tax haven....

[ext_1327046]

Thing is, taxes would have to be near-zero for that to work, so you'd barely get anything out of it anyway. Plus it's basically rewarding rich people for being leeches/freeloaders.

[deriksmith]

Except the first article linked outlined how tax havens aren't just countries anymore -- they're more often turning into complex economic structures and shuttling funds around so it becomes impossible for ANY country to tell how much it owed, then telling them all "no, that's taxed elsewhere" and paying none at all.
There's more of that now than there is of the traditional tax-haven kind.
*sigh*

They're just being no-good shits. And the ideas that as long as we make it alright to be a no good shit, they'll stop is epicly stupid. It's up there with self-deportation.