Panama Papers

Generali

DigForVictory wrote: »

Ripping fun though all this stuff is, unless the leaked documents will be acceptable to courts, most of what it does is just open eyes to wrongdoing, not making it formally punishable.

The legal status will determine whether HMRC may seize or freeze assets for the benefit of the Exchequer.

There are going to be some Chinese nationals with some awkward questions to answer as to how they ended up with millions outside of China when they are limited to taking out $50,000 a year.

DiggerUK

Why one nation tories, and fair tax for all lefties, can't agree that the same tax rate, alongside the same tax free allowance for all, wouldn't work, is beyond me.
It would require the closing of all tax loopholes of course, and I see that as a bit of a stumbling block. :think:

That would just leave us with the problem of fair company and corporation taxation to sort out. I'm joining the International Campaign For Real Guilotines.

As an aside, has anybody else noticed how the amount of data from whistleblowers is more verification of Moore's Law..._

antrobus

DiggerUK wrote: »

...As an aside, has anybody else noticed how the amount of data from whistleblowers is more verification of Moore's Law..._

Yup, I did read that the Panama Papers were something like 2,600GB data compared to Wikileaks's 1.7GB. So it's just as well hard discs are getting bigger and cheaper.

Mind you, it also says that the leak comprises 40 years worth of records, i.e. presumably everything that Mossack Fonseca has since it was established in 1977. Thus a good chunk of those 11.5m documents must be pre-digital, as in scanned images of paper documents - wouldn't those be heavier on the storage scale?

antrobus

Generali wrote: »

There are going to be some Chinese nationals with some awkward questions to answer as to how they ended up with millions outside of China when they are limited to taking out $50,000 a year.

To me the issue of 'tax havens' has never been about people parking profits offshore, it's about secrecy, and the use of said secrecy not so much even in terms of being used to hide tax evasion, as being used to hide outright theft and fraud.

There are people out there basically stealing large amounts of money from countries, and using offshore shell companies to launder it into legitimate looking capital that they can then, well, investing in London property is no doubt one popular option.

And we shouldn't forget that good old Mr Blair gave the UK, Limited Liability Partnerships, which are used for the same darned thing. (See Private Eye passim.:))

Double_V

antrobus wrote: »

Yup, I did read that the Panama Papers were something like 2,600GB data compared to Wikileaks's 1.7GB. So it's just as well hard discs are getting bigger and cheaper.

Mind you, it also says that the leak comprises 40 years worth of records, i.e. presumably everything that Mossack Fonseca has since it was established in 1977. Thus a good chunk of those 11.5m documents must be pre-digital, as in scanned images of paper documents - wouldn't those be heavier on the storage scale?

Also how did they pass on 2.6TB of data to the German journalists.
Was the physical hard drive given ? Link to dropbox ?

antrobus

Double_V wrote: »

Also how did they pass on 2.6TB of data to the German journalists.
Was the physical hard drive given ? Link to dropbox ?

You can get a 3 TB portable hard drive from Argos for £109.99. With same delivery available.

And I can recall QI claiming that the fastest way of transmitting large quantites of data was to copy it onto disc, and then Fedex the disc.

vivatifosi

Heard on R4 today...

David Cameron and Lionel Messi are both named in the Panama files, but that's not all they have in common. Both lay claim to number 10, both deny any knowledge of the financial affairs of their fathers and both are from countries that lay claim to the Falkland Islands.

vivatifosi

Found this article about tax havens, has some interesting stats in. Most interesting part, imo is the extent to which wealth is hidden in tax havens. The interviewee believes it to be 8% of the world's wealth, but that it's spread is uneven... perhaps 4% for USA, 10% for Europe, however numbers are much higher for other parts of the world... 30% for Africa, 50% Russia,20% LatAm. Makes development much more difficult.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11371712/panama-papers-tax-haven-zucman

Generali

vivatifosi wrote: »

Found this article about tax havens, has some interesting stats in. Most interesting part, imo is the extent to which wealth is hidden in tax havens. The interviewee believes it to be 8% of the world's wealth, but that it's spread is uneven... perhaps 4% for USA, 10% for Europe, however numbers are much higher for other parts of the world... 30% for Africa, 50% Russia,20% LatAm. Makes development much more difficult.
http://www.vox.com/2016/4/8/11371712/panama-papers-tax-haven-zucman

If you were a middle class person in much of Africa or in Russia would you trust the Government to keep their thieving hands off your hard earned? I wouldn't.

That's one of the problems with development: if you can't hold property reliably then you can't or won't invest locally. Better to buy shares in Apple and Coca Cola.

vivatifosi

No I wouldn't, which is depressing. I did a term of developmental economics once and we had this very early computer game (it was a long time ago) developed by either the IMF or World Bank, where you could change the amount of spend that you gave to different areas. Spend more on food stability and less on your army, and they would revolt, build a strong army and you take away from education... and so on. The variables were many more than this illustration. It isn't easy running a developing nation without much in the way of competitive advantage, chuck a despot or just plain embezzler into the driving seat and millions suffer.

It's pretty depressing tbh.