Wikileaks To Name Swiss Bank Tax Evaders 783
eldavojohn writes "The old cliche that the rich and corrupt hold all their money in Swiss bank accounts (to avoid taxation) may finally have a bit of transparency, as the news today is that Wikileaks has been handed a list of account holders tendered by Rudolf Elmer, former banker of Julius Baer. Julian Assange promises a 'full revelation' while Elmer cited his motivation as being: 'I want to let society know how this system works. It's damaging society.' This appears to be real, as Mr. Elmer is soon to appear before a Zurich regional court on charges of coercion as well as violations of Switzerland's strict banking secrecy laws. The public may soon find out that their favorite celebrity, politician or employer doesn't feel responsible to contribute financially to the commonwealth at the expense of privacy."
Hit them back (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed, I question the motivations of both Assange and this Elmer guy.
It's probably just another FUDD tactic.
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Funny)
Aha. Its a scam.
1. Have a Swiss bank confiscate your money ...
2. Publish name of other customers at bank
3 Profit!!
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Insightful)
FUD tactic or now, if the information is valid and real, this still carries numerous implications with it. For example, were certain wealthy politicians who rail against taxes found to be holding considerable sums of money in non-taxed accounts...
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually it would work better the other way. People who are voting to raise taxes hiding money in no-taxed accounts is where the story is.
Of course people who don't like taxes are trying to avoid them...
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
Other people have to pay more than their fair share in taxes to compensate.
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Here [guardian.co.uk]'s a recent example. For some dodgy reason Vodafone had their tax bill reduced by £6billion, which happens to be the amount local government spending was cut by.
(Obviously the two aren't directly related, but it made a good headline.)
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
We had a balanced budget a little over a decade ago. It was only after the "party of fiscal responsibility" took over that spending really spiraled out of control.
--Jeremy
Really? that's strange because the debt history shows that the US debt has risen every single year since 1977 and probably going back to 1870 although wiki doesn't break out individual years past 1977. Regardless of which party is in office, or which party controls congress and thereby the purse, the debt keeps going up and accelerating.
You should place less faith in what the talking heads of either party say they are doing and what the actual records shows they did. At the current rate of increase Obama's administration will outstrip both Bush and Clinton in debt accumulation....combined.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_U.S._public_debt [wikipedia.org]
The problem is when they claim a balanced budget, they neglect to mention the various programs they have decided to exclude from the formula. Both sides of the aisle are a bunch of Elitist millionaires who make a habit of exempting themselves from the very laws they impose on the rest of us. I distrust all of them until such time there is both a balanced budget law/amendment and term limits on the lot of them.
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
Turning a blind eye sure worked out for Greece didn't it.
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Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
someone here has a recognizable sig, to the effect of "I like paying taxes; with it I buy civilization" - or to that effect.
or, is common roads, infrastructure and stuff like that too 'commie' for people like you?
the fact that the gov mismanages our funds has nothing to do with the fact that the funds are NEEDED to 'run society'.
you think roads and stuff come from nothing but sunshine and the love of jesus? we BUY those with our taxes, at least that was the initial idea.
when you deny paying at least a reasonable amount of your fair share, you cheat us all. quite disgusting, really. yes, it should be punishable - at least in the court of public opinion.
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
A reasonable amount is one thing...
A disproportionate amount while the filthy rich pay virtually nothing?
Or paying for the government to simply WASTE that money instead of building roads or other useful things?
Or even worse, paying so that certain people within the government can embezzle the money...
How much of what you pay in tax actually goes on things that benefit the taxpayers like roads, and how much gets wasted or used on things which are detrimental to the tax payers?
Or more importantly, how much lower could the taxes be if waste/inefficiency was eliminated, and those who avoid taxes were made to pay?
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
Surprisingly, not much lower. You hear a lot about waste/inefficiency, but although you can find any number of egregious examples of misapropriation, they amount to a small fraction of the total.
You could even argue that asking for low salaries for civil servants/contracting to the lowest bidder does a lot more to make the process inefficient than actual waste. For example, if working for the agencies controlling the markets paid much better than working in those markets, do you think we would have the problems we have now? Would it not be better to have the greedy bastards working for us rather than against us?
Also, what is "waste"? is funding fundamental science waste? is funding liberal arts waste? are the likes of the FDA waste? is paying for some dubious piece of art in your own town waste? is paying people to check for fraud waste, or is the fraud the largest cause of waste?
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Interesting)
Surprisingly, not much lower.
Right. It's not just how government spends money.
Let's start with the on topic portion first. I've seen it claimed that the convolutions and writhing that the rich go through to minimize or even illegally evade taxes saps about 1% in absolute value from the US GDP. My impression is that a raw 2% increase in growth separates current levels of growth from the best decade to decade growth, the US has ever had. So a considerable portion of that, perhaps as much as half, can be obtained merely by vastly simplifying the tax codes.
A lot of mileage can be gained by targeting spending that changes peoples' behavior in adverse ways, such as subsidized educational loans and financial assistance, and mandated employer health insurance. Sure, it's nice to have better educated people and the security of health insurance, but these expenses increase faster than GDP (much less inflation) and are unsustainable in the long run. In the meantime, people are encouraged to go to college right after high school graduation even when they shouldn't (too immature, unready, and/or would be better off getting a job right now) and to the detriment of jobs that don't require college degrees, but still require significant training.
The main problem with health care is that it is open-ended. You can always consume vastly more tests, longer hospital stays, ever more expensive equipment, etc. And this health care is funded mostly by open-ended health insurance (which is practically only limited by co-payments paid by the insuree) and government based health care (Medicare/Medicaid, veteran health care, government health benefits, etc). It's not helpful that government at the federal and state levels also limits supply of health care (professional licensing, regulation on who can do what, and the opening of new health care facilities) and opens health care providers to remarkable malpractice liability. End result is that patients consume too much and too expensive health care directly and indirectly (through malpractice and employer/government paid health benefits).
Then there are subsidies which actively harm US interests. A couple of key examples are farm subsidies and "cost plus" contracts (a popular feature of defense R&D and related spending, where the contractor is paid a base amount plus an additional amount based on "costs" to a fixed cap).
There's an emphasis on infrastructure building at the expense of infrastructure maintenance. For example, high speed train projects can obtain considerable funds in order to build the rail and buy the trains. But there's no money to support projects which notoriously aren't covered by ridership revenue. These projects are also a great vehicle for corruption. Those in the know can buy land near the rail projects ahead of time and reap the profits. The best part is that this sort of corruption doesn't show in the bottom line for government spending.
Speaking of wealth redistribution projects, a really big and nonsensical one is the movement of wealth via Social Security from the young to the elderly. So why does a retiree need wealth more than a young person trying to get educated, raise a family, and enter the workforce? It doesn't make sense from a societal point of view. If you want to take care of the elderly, there are cheaper and more effective ways to do it (such as welfare for poor or sick elderly, for example). As it stands, the US makes all workers about 15% more expensive. That's a big jump and about 10% logarithmically of the difference between a US worker and a Chinese worker, for example. Social Security also results in vast liabilities that can't be honored (it's yet another program where the current promised costs increase faster than GDP does).
For example, if working for the agencies controlling the markets paid much better than working in those markets, do you think we would have the problems we have now? Would it not be better to have
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not helpful that government at the federal and state levels also limits supply of health care (professional licensing, regulation on who can do what, and the opening of new health care facilities)
I shudder to think what kind of horrors would be inflicted on people, sick and healthy, if it were not for licensing and regulation. Even hundreds of years ago, people went to professional leeching practitioners because they knew the value of experience and some level of "the community has agreed this person probably won't kill me". Do you propose no licenses or regulations, but 50 free Rx pads printable at prescribenow.com and shiny new surgery kit deals on amazon?
Seriously.
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You realize that the government pays medical schools to NOT teach medical students. Just like they pay farmers to not grow food, they also want to limit trained medical professionals.
Also, such "medical" professions as chiropractic, herbal remedies, homeopathy, etc are not under government controls. So "real" medicine is under strict government limits, while "alternative" medicine is unlimited, as long as they don't kill too many people.
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Informative)
Even if someone opens up a shop, it doesn't mean you trust their credentials unless they act with deliberate subterfuge, and if they're willing to go that far they might ignore licensing laws anyway.
Your leech example is a very, very bad argument, because medical science in those times was non-existent and if you had regulatory bodies then they'd still be happily accepting common "knowledge" over mumbo-jumbo much in the same way the British Health system (used to until recently?) accept homeopathy. Your implicit belief is that regulatory bodies operate objectively and on sound science, which is neither true nor really possible (since "accepted science" is based on convention and the absolute truth is unknown to us). You have a very poor understanding of the history of medicine if you think that stuff like bloodletting and leeches was due to no regulation--it was based on theory at the time, rooted in the thought of Galen, Hippocraties, and other Greeks. Unscientific, yes, but these were hardly scientific times.
But a much stronger point is that simply a lot of the regulations are too strict and act to restrict people that DO have enough training and expertise.
As an additional musing, if you belief that the government should regulate things out of truth, then should the government regulate religious belief and only allow "scientifically true" beliefs, i.e., only those that can be demonstrated factually? Should advice be regulated in exactly the same manner that psychology is, since bad advice on human behavior is in essence malpractice in psychology?
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BTW, citation on the homeopathy thing:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1712197/ [nih.gov]
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Insightful)
For more than half of the history of this country, government spending was limited to around 2% of GDP, where today it is 40%. What is different between then and now? Only that our government is now a repression machine that dominates most of the planet, whereas back then it was "quaint". Hell, we didn't even have a standing army until WWI. Now the president can't even walk down the street without a hoard of secret service members clearing it a week in advance. This is the behavior of an unpopular dictator. Of course, our military empire has stomped on a lot more toes than the US did back when we were free.
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Insightful)
For more than half of the history of this country, government spending was limited to around 2% of GDP, where today it is 40%.
That doesn't jive with any set of credible numbers I've seen, so I'd appreciate if you could cite a source on that.
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Why? what is wrong with voting?
What is wrong with voting is that you can't make your own choices, you have to go with the majority.
we all use/need the collective services in the same way.
No we don't all need the same services in the same way.
If it makes you happy, think of voting as a market operation. But remember: it is not freedom to individually decide on a globally suboptimal solution that we then all need to collectively live with. It is stupidity.
You might argue that it is stupid or not optimal (I would disagree with that), but it certainly is freedom to individually decide.
And BTW, yes, people can decide for you. They do, all the time: doctors decide what you have, engineers decide on your car's design, coders on how your programs are made, cell phones companies on their pricing schemes, the shop owner on the products that are on his shelves, the traffic authority the circulation plan of your neighbourhood, other countries the rules for access to their territories, the central banks decide on the value of your bank account, designers decide on the look of your garments.
But they don't decide which car I buy, which programs I use, what cell phone scheme I buy or if I even buy one of those. Imagine if we had to vote on what cell phone plans we wanted and then everyone would get what the majority
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
In the US, government jobs pay significantly better than private sector jobs on average.
One of the famous "lie while telling the truth" games that the right loves to play. The average US government job does pay more than the average private sector job. But US government jobs are NOT average jobs. Most require higher levels of education and experience than the average private sector job.
When compared to others of equal education and experience, US government workers are paid about 20% less than private sector workers. The discrepancy is worse for workers in medical fields and legal fields where the discrepancy approaches 45% (i.e. VA hospitals don't pay well) The only government workers that are paid better than their private sector workers are the ones at the bottom of the salary scale, janitors and menial laborers, and those, only by about 4%.
But apparently the right thinks a government lawyer should be paid like a grocery store clerk.
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
But in the US, the "rich" - to be specific, let's say the top 1% - earned 25% of the wealth and paid 38% of the income taxes. That doesn't sound like "virtually nothing".
You, like many others, have confused wealth with income. The wealthy 1% have over 50% of wealth (top 20% have over 84% of wealth).
http://www.people.hbs.edu/mnorton/norton%20ariely%20in%20press.pdf [hbs.edu]
Also income taxes are not total taxes paid (they are 1/3 of the total US tax base) and the proper measure is total taxes (after transfers) as a percentage of total wealth.
http://www.usgovernmentrevenue.com/ [usgovernmentrevenue.com]
On that basis the poor and middle class are massively overtaxed, and the wealthy are drastically undertaxed. Essentially the middle class and lower class are drastically subsidizing the wealthy.
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Well, I don't agree entirely with your post, but I think there is some merit.
It's a good case in favor of consumption taxes instead of income taxes, and legislation requiring taxes collected in one area can ONLY be used in that area.
Yes, I like roads - roads should be paid for solely through gasoline and vehicle registration taxes, and those tax revenues should not be allowed to be used on anything but transportation infrastructure. After all, the more you use the road (and the larger the vehicle), the mor
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Informative)
Do you realize how retarded it makes you look to use multiple accounts to rail against people for hiding behind pseudonymity?
You understand that nobody takes you seriously, right?
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
If you ask me, this is as close to a victimless crime as it gets.
No. Tax-payers are supposed to pay taxes to the collective pool of money called the government, to fund the services that we collectively receive. These people don't contribute, but do receive. We are all victims, which is why the government goes after tax-evaders on our collective behalf. No only do we lose the money these people should have paid, and the rest of us (nominally) have to make up, but they add to the overall system waste by forcing us to pay investigators, prosecutors, judges, etc. to hunt down and collect on tax-evaders.
There are plenty of real victimless crimes out there, and they need rectifying. I'll thank you not to make that fight harder by applying the same label to clearly victimful crimes.
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While I agree with you, you know these people probably still pay far more taxes than I do and are certainly covering their services. These people have to subsidize the 50% of the population that legally doesn't pay taxes.
Your numbers are off, for two reasons: 1. Not paying income tax is not the same as not paying taxes, SS, Medicare, Medicade still apply. 2. Your number is too high even for income taxes Here are some real numbers: http://www.factcheck.org/askfactcheck/do_40_percent_of_americans_pay_no.html [factcheck.org] I welcome your updated numbers if you can find them.
Heck, I doubt my taxes cover all the services I receive and I am in the top 20% of income earners. Of course this depends on how I factor defense spending as a service.
We have way too much of our tax burden assigned to the wealthy.
We have way too little of our tax burden assigned to the wealthy. As a percentage of income, they are paying historically low rates. See the wikipedia page on
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Insightful)
There's a big difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance. Tax evasion is "I am not going to pay the taxes I owe". Tax avoidance is "I'm not going to pay a penny more than I have to".
If a government, which has its fingers in every single revenue stream from sales and value added taxes, to income, to taxes for the business that make the products we buy, to death taxes, to estate taxes, to poperty taxes - is BANKRUPT, well fuck em. Put your own house in order before you come writing laws trying to steal my money.
But as it is, it doesn't have to make new laws. All it has to do is keep printing money. Inflation will 1) destroy everyone's savings and 2) force everyone into higher tax brackets. It's magic. But we'll call it "quantitative easing".
You have it backwards (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not as if the rich are paying their fair share of taxes, and they haven't really since 1980. The United States has the same tax collection rate as Romania. [wikipedia.org] So, you would expect it to have social services on par with Romania.
Once you get to the actual civilized world, like England and France and Germany, you see the rate in the high 30s or low 40s, because that's what it costs to build and maintain a civilization that takes care of the elderly, the disabled, and the mentally ill.
If you want to live in a place like Romania or Moldova, where the disabled and elderly are helped to die or filed away at the edge of town languishing until they are dead, that's fine. That's the road America has chosen right now. The wealthy have spent billions convincing the middle class that low taxes are great, but now we are seeing the results of that policy. They (the top 1% [taxfoundation.org]) have lowered their own tax rate from 34% to 23% between 1980 and now.
But they're not willing to budge on the military they use to forcefully open markets. They're not willing to allow the middle class to have a public option to lower the cost of health care. They're not willing to improve free access to education to make our economy stronger and our population more employable.
They want to keep depriving the US government of money until it breaks down, and then accept a much lower standard of government service so they can go for the 10 million dollar yacht instead of settling on the 7 million dollar model.
They are worthless fucks who don't care about their countrymen, and I'd rather them emigrate to Romania before they rob America of the rest of it's wealth. Not after.
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
FUD tactic or now, if the information is valid and real, this still carries numerous implications with it. For example, were certain wealthy politicians who rail against taxes found to be holding considerable sums of money in non-taxed accounts...
Wouldn't it be more damaging for politicians who supported high taxes to be holding considerable sums of money in non-taxed accounts?
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
Either way, it's going to be hilarious.
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Sorry, yes...I have a case of typing stupidity this morning -_-;;
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Wouldn't it be more damaging for politicians who supported high taxes to be holding considerable sums of money in non-taxed accounts?
What, like when U2 moved out of Ireland [independent.ie] to the Netherlands to avoid paying tax?
Bonus hypocrisy points to Bono for saying that we all need to pay more in tax to help the developing world...
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
Who cares about the motivations? We don't have to like Assange or Elmer to appreciate the disclosure of the info.
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
Assange isn't a fact-checker. He's a middle man that passes facts from ones disclosing to ones fact-checking.
Fact checkers include big name newspapers like NYT. Assange's merits lie in setting up the system and agreeing to take the heat.
Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Interesting)
I think this is going to backfire on him. I think he believes that if he does something to help governments (allowing them to track down tax dodgers) that they may leave him alone.. I doubt it, usually national security trumps internal revenue.. but not always.
It's also going to backfire because many of his supporters believe strongly in personal privacy (while oddly, wanting full transparency for everything else), and they will view this as WikiLeaks invading personal privacy. (it's not just the filthy rich that have "hidden" bank accounts).
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Supporting personal privacy, yet wanting government to be transparent is not a dichotomy - especially when government officials end up taking away personal privacy to protect or increase their power.
A minimal government that doesn't play puppet master with world politics, try to protect citizens against themselves, and doesn't spend on pork projects is a government without need for much privacy. The reason governments hide most things isn't to protect the country - it's to protect the duplicitous government
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a sign of virtue for me to not pay taxes. It's disgraceful that anyone richer than me should avoid them. Other people hold similar views.
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is that the system is set up that only the rich can evade taxes. Factory line worker Joe Blow doesn't make enough to go put it all away in a secret swiss bank account, nor does he have enough to hire an accountant to manage some holding companies abroad, etc etc.
Most people on Slashdot think evading taxes is immoral based on the fact that it's an exploit in the tax laws that only the rich can afford to do. If it were possible for anyone and everyone to avoid paying taxes, I don't think anyone would mind. We're all just pissed off that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, and taxation is supposed to help balance that out.
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It's also not worth it for factory worker Joe Blow to spend $3,000 a year setting up a and maintaining a trust that provides tax free income which Joe and his children would have to pay.
In some cases, they are even a total sham. I set up a trust and give it to Jill to run for me. Jill sets up a trust and gives it to Sam to run for her. Sam sets up a trust and gives it to me to run for him.
No way to prove collusion but we basically all get $3000 a year to run each other's trusts... plus tax free status as
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Re:Hit them back (Score:4, Insightful)
How many of these people do you think have $10,000 USD sitting around?
There are lots of people who live paycheck to paycheck, perhaps more than you realize. And it's not that they don't know how to save money, its that they are stuck working dead end jobs like Gas Station attendants or WalMart greeters, and about 80% of their income goes towards living expenses like rent, food, utilities, phone bills, etc. The rest is spent on the 1 dinner and a movie a month to keep their sanity, and then birthday and Christmas presents when they come around.
For some people, saving up 10 thousand dollars would quite literally mean giving up everything you enjoy in life for over 2 years.
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The only difference between the two is that one is considered illegal!
In most cases with the upper class, "Tax avoision" is basing your company in another country so that you don't have to pay the taxes associated with operating in the country you do your business in. Doesn't that seem a bit sleezy to you? That the only difference between paying a few thousand dollars and no money at all is by having putting a receptionist in Jamaica?
It's basically using the services the government provides you without actu
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
US has (together with the UK) the lowest social mobility between generations among developed countries (how far children can progress from the socioeconomic status of their parents, basically) - so much for "self motivation, personal responsibility, hard work, American Dream" (just that, a dream, another product to sell)
The highest is in so-called "nanny states" BTW.
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Insightful)
And I'm of above average intellegence, I'm in the top 20% of drivers, my parenting technique is clearly the best (and any issues my kids have is due to the schools screwing them up), and my religion is the correct one. If I had been given the same opportunities as Joe CEO, I'd be at least as wealthy, and do a better job running his company. If I had been subjected to the same difficulties as Sam HomeLessGuy, I would have "pulled myself up by the bootstraps" and got myself a real job. Given the opportunity my pet economic policy would simultaneously eliminate inflation, and guarantee ever-increasing profits for everyone (as well a unicorn and a fairy for every household).
Polls basically just say that we all just selfish ego-centric bastards.
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
I guess Assange didn't like that the swiss bank PostFinance closed his account.
Actually, wikileaks has long disclosed a lot of information about Julius Baer bank, starting a few years back.
Assange opened the PostFinance account under false pretenses, they were entitled to close it. PostFinance isn't a "normal" Swiss bank, it's owned & run by the post office.
PostFinance isn't what you use when you're trying to evade taxation by hiding cash, you would use one of the privately owned Swiss banks.
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PostFinance isn't what you use when you're trying to evade taxation by hiding cash, you would use one of the privately owned Swiss banks.
Assuming the gov't isn't in on money laundering, you mean?
Re:Hit them back (Score:5, Informative)
Karma's a bitch ...
Better article (Score:5, Informative)
Personally, I'm just gonna sit back and watch this unfold *grabs popcorn*
NY Times Links Broken Via Submission Process (Score:5, Insightful)
There are more details here. [nytimes.com]
It is indeed a better link and was one I found in my Google Reader this morning. However, I also have noticed continuously that New York Times links provide me headaches and disappointment when used in Slashdot's submission process. Here's a recent example, earlier this morning I submitted a story about video games and mental health problems [slashdot.org]. Now in that submission I referred to a well written New York Times article an used this URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17gaming.html
Every time I previewed it or edited it, it came out like that. But when I hit submit, it magically changed to this URL:
http://www.nytimes.com/glogin?URI=http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/us/17gaming.html&OQ=_rQ3D4&OP=70b1f348Q2FQ5D-2yQ5DgoksPooZQ27Q5DQ27W33Q5DW3Q5D3VQ5DisQ5D3VdQ241Q26rdQ25OZ14
What is going on? I've written to CmdrTaco about this and I thought he said they'd look at it ... like their system prefetches URLs or something? Makes adjustments to avoid TinyURL in the submission? Avoids redirects that might go to goatse? I don't know. What I do know is that if you go to the firehose and type in 'nytimes' as your search term you will find submission after submission with login/paywalled URLs exactly like the one above. Here's one [slashdot.org] and another [slashdot.org] and another [slashdot.org] ad infinitum.
So when you do this, people get upset they can't read the article and I heavily sympathize with them and generally consider my submission a failed attempt when that happens. So the solution? Don't link to the New York Times in submissions! I'll find some other site to send a billion Slashdot eyes at if they don't want their page views. It really is a shame because I love the New York Times and think they have some great writers but from the above it's evident the affection is asymmetrical.
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Why are they announcing this stuff ? (Score:5, Insightful)
I do not understand why wikileaks is telling everyone what they will reveal later.
Can't they just post it immediately ?
Re:Why are they announcing this stuff ? (Score:5, Informative)
I don't recall hearing Wikileaks making this announcement at all though - it sounds like someone handed over some big leaks than immediately turned the corner to the local news outlet and said "GUESS WHAT I JUST HANDED TO WIKILEAKS".
This news report is by some other news agency, not Wikileaks.
Re:Why are they announcing this stuff ? (Score:5, Informative)
I do not understand why wikileaks is telling everyone what they will reveal later. Can't they just post it immediately ?
Better media management. It's easy for something even as large as the US diplomatic cable leak to get swept under the rug of the incessant 24 hour news cycle. By letting it out in bits and pieces he keeps the media interested and talking about Assange and Wikileaks. He is also going for brownie points by establishing relationships with more mainline media outlets. Those take time. TFA also mentions that Wikipedia is trying to evaluate the provenance of the disks, although it's not clear how they plan on doing that.
Rather a dangerous game he's playing. He seems to enjoy it - likely feeds his apparently large ego. I would wonder, though, just how long he can keep this sort of thing up. I don't see an heir apparent in Wikileaks, but there are other sites that are trying to duplicate their efforts.
As long as there are people with source material who are willing to give it to essentially total strangers we may see this as the new big thing. Information wants to be freed....
Re:Why are they announcing this stuff ? (Score:5, Insightful)
During the Iraq war log leak someone at wikileaks, probably Assange, was interviewed on NPR where he said that just publishing something once they got it didn't garner the media attention on the documents that they wanted. It was only because of the fact they pussyfoot around with the media that they're interested in the information.
When their goal is to get people to see the information they're publishing rather than just let it sit somewhere on a web server, it may be worth it for them to play the games they do. Yes its stupid that to get the attention they want they are forced to play "the game", but they've played it damn well.
Re:Why are they announcing this stuff ? (Score:5, Insightful)
What would the use of releasing information nobody reads?
The Swiss dirty public secert. (Score:5, Insightful)
Just how long has world known that the Swiss are the bankers of choice for criminals, dictators, and the idle rich that do not want to pay their taxes?
I mean really this is no shock to the world. I do have to wonder just how much blood money is in Swiss banks and how much of the wonderful Swiss lifestyle is paid for with the misery of the world.
Re:The Swiss dirty public secert. (Score:4, Insightful)
I do have to wonder just how much blood money is in Swiss banks and how much of the wonderful Swiss lifestyle is paid for with the misery of the world.
That's the point - now you won't have to wonder anymore.
I realize this will harm my "Karma". (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201043146825.htm [businessweek.com]
While I am all for businesses making a profit, I am NOT all for a multi-billion dollar company paying effectively 2.4% while I continue to pay nearly 30% of my income. The argument "Well, that gets turned into research and good pay for employees" still doesn't float IMO, when you have the higher executives of Google being paid millions. Reduce the salaries of those PHBs down to something reasonable, pay the rank and file programmers and researchers that money, and pay taxes like everyone else.
Re: (Score:3)
Sure, as long as you adjust the laws to account for crap like Steve Jobs' "one dollar sallary and make the company pay for everything I do", or Bill Gates' "allow charities to use Office for free, then claim a donation equal to the number of copies used times Office's MSRP" schemes.
Though, as another poster once said, as long as the potential savings of tax evasion are higher than the rates of lawyers and accountants, stuff like this will inevitably continue to happen.
Why Single Out Google? (Score:5, Insightful)
The only reason that it should hurt your karma is that you confusingly singled out Google when your own article lists Apple, Microsoft, IBM, Oracle, etc. Why pick on Google when everybody plays the same screw-the-taxpayer game? They're all crooks avoiding taxes in ways that a single individual like myself that makes very small fractions can't enjoy.
You'll lose karma when you spin it like this: "Apple Hurts Schoolchildren by Avoiding Taxes" and "Google Welcomes World Peace by Denying War Machine Its Pound of Flesh." See what I did wrong there?
Re:I realize this will harm my "Karma". (Score:5, Informative)
The inequitable taxation also unfairly hits small businesses. They're unable to offshore their finances, and they end up bearing the brunt of the public's anger at multi-billion dollar companies evading taxes. Consequently in the U.S., small businesses pay some of the highest tax rates among OECD nations. The business taxes passed to assuage people upset at big corporations evading taxes, are instead helping big corporations by crippling the small businesses who could otherwise challenge their domination.
After a lot of thought, I actually reached the opposite conclusion as you. One of the core objections leading to the U.S. Revolutionary war was "No taxation without representation." That's a principle I think most people would still agree makes sense. And since I believe corporations should have no influence on government, I can't simultaneously justify to myself wanting to tax them.
Sure it floats. All you have to do is raise the tax rate on the folks paid millions. I don't think this problem is as large as most people think it is though. If you pour over the IRS tax statistics [irs.gov], you'll find that the vast bulk of the income base (in the U.S. at least) is the upper-middle class and lower-upper class, roughly $75k-$250k/yr. What they lack in income, they make up for in population.
The area where it gets tricky is perks paid for by the business but which the individual doesn't report as an income-equivalent benefit. e.g. a CEO flies around in a corporate jet, but doesn't report the added expense of operating the private plane over a coach ticket as a taxable benefit.
Re:I realize this will harm my "Karma". (Score:4, Interesting)
That's true at face value, however:
The more profit the company keeps, the better valued and compensated the executives are. Also, this increases the value of the stock, which increases the net worth and credit worthiness of the executives.
The richer the company, the more lavish the perks the employees, and particularly the executives enjoy. For example, a country club membership so they can make sales.... a yacht to entertain business partners with... first class travel around the world, including paying for the spouse to accompany... all considered as a business expenses. Industry parties... the list goes on.
Look, I think it's a good idea not to tax businesses at all, because they provide employment. However, I do think it's wrong wrong wrong, to allow businesses to write off expenses and assets that only (and disproportionately) favor the executives while rank and file employees get shafted.
I think a company's executive leadership should be forced to make a choice: either disburse funds throughout all employees in such a way as to avoid taxation penalties, or... get taxed exponentially up the ass relative to the discrepancy in executive NET WORTH (not pay) vs lowest rank pay factoring in things like cash balance and stock worth of the company. This would make it less attractive to throw parties and more attractive to spend money on the employees so as to avoid paying more taxes yourself, as an executive. Alternatively, if you don't want to compensate your employees more, because you feel the company needs to save money for future projects, then you would either have to reduce your salary, or pay substantially more taxes (which would benefit society if not your employees).
cactus net (Score:5, Insightful)
Not one person here would voluntarily pay taxes if they didn't have to.
You're a bit dim concerning the larger scheme of things if you think you can cast the net that wide without catching a cactus. The short answer is that any person who has ever chosen a lottery or a casino over a mutual fund is not half as tax averse as you make out.
I was reading John Rawls "Justice as Fairness" not long ago. He has this concept of the "original position". The way I recall the idea, you get to choose how the world is constructed, but you don't know who you will be when you wake up in this world when it comes into creation. You could be anyone, with uniform probability.
With no foreknowledge of personal privilege, do you choose a world with no tax system? Or a world with kinds of institutions that have evolved in society as we know it? Some worlds will combine spectacular opportunity with spectacular inequity. The bottom of the pyramid is fat, so your odds of showing up as a burger flipper are relatively high; or with small probability, you could be the patriarch of Galt's Gulch.
I didn't think the concept of choosing before coming into being was all that philosophically brilliant, but some people can't get their minds around the difference between choosing a *system* you can live with, or choosing your place within it, and that needed to be addressed. So I give Rawls his due.
In a fictitious world where the no-tax fairy arrives and asks you if you would like a lifetime tax exemption, not many people would turn the offer down. But that's fantasy, not insight.
If the Libertarian-transporter fairy arrived, and offered to poof you into a society organized on Libertarian ideals, with nothing resembling a tax system, I'd be terrified about what kind of society I might get poofed into. It's hard to pay for each service required individually, that would be a treadmill from hell, so I guess there has to be some kind of group organization, I can only imagine many of the groups once formed resemble condo associations. Ugh. But it's voluntary, so the coffee tastes great.
There's a perception in world aid circles that when a country with a weak civic infrastructure discovers vast resource wealth (diamonds, oil, tantalum) that the country is just as likely to tip into civil war as to become an affluent society. And even if the society does become affluent in the short term, when the resource is exhausted, the country usually declines, and often ends up worse off than their neighbours, who didn't stub their toe on a giant diamond mine, and had to build their social capital the hard way. Countries with strong social institutions, like Canada, tend to benefit the most from resource wealth. Some countries with little resource wealth but cohesive institutions manage OK, because they don't have much choice, other than to work hard and row together.
We're still learning that human nature is not as intrinsically wealth maximizing as many economists would portray it. I always think of one of the original theories of fluid dynamics, which perfectly described the behaviour of water, neglecting surface tension. Great, someone remarked, we now have the complete theory of water that isn't wet.
It's the surface tension term in human nature that leads to cohesive social institutions. Sapolsky studied some non-human primates where self-interest is a lot more raw (the animals behave like impulsive two-year-olds). It was pretty clear they weren't able to stop bickering long enough to stack one stone on top of another, much less bake a mud brick. Libertarian to the last hairy armpit. What in economic theory distinguishes us from them? Our greed is more nuanced and restrained.
One thing you can say in favour of Libertarianism is that it serves as an intellectual flu shot against certain kinds of really terrible thinking about how society could be better ordered, by the same kinds of people who destroyed Africa (out of kindness).
Personally, there's no social structure I understa
What is more damaging to society? (Score:3, Troll)
An individual who seeks to minimize his tax obligations or a government that feels that it is ENTITLED to tax everything that moves?
Re:What is more damaging to society? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What is more damaging to society? (Score:4, Informative)
Oh good lord (Score:4, Insightful)
Switzerland has great banks. In fact, there's at least one whole country where everybody puts there money there. There's no reason in the world not to put money in them. Having money in a Swiss bank is not a crime and it doesn't imply you're a criminal or a tax cheat. For example, maybe people are spooked by the circus surrounding US banks or something.
The static from the US IRS got so bad that Swiss banks simply closed all accounts of "American persons". They completely kicked Americans out of their customer base. I find that pretty darn disappointing that my country is acting so obnoxiously that I personally can't do business on equal footing with the rest of the modern world.
Don't see the correlation (Score:3)
What does having a bank account have to do with taxes? Taxes are supposed to be about the money you earn, not the money you have. Funny how this is turning out.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What does having a bank account have to do with taxes? Taxes are supposed to be about the money you earn, not the money you have. Funny how this is turning out.
Did you earn a large amount of money that you don't want to pay taxes on? Hide that income in a Swiss account. US banks report that information to the IRS, Swiss banks do not. This allows you to hide income from the IRS and not pay taxes on it.
Re:Don't see the correlation (Score:4, Informative)
Interest is money that's taxed.
Income earned in other countries may not be adequately taxed (or declared as taxed in your home country) and then never actually get taxed because it doesn't enter that country. A bank account will tell you *exactly* how much that person earned worldwide and who needs to tax it. Most Swiss banks will NEVER tell the countries involved that they suspect untaxed money is sitting in their accounts - go abroad, earn £10m, stick it in a Swiss account, come home, claim benefits.
There are a million and one ways to launder money, and to avoid taxation, and most of them involve off-shore accounts like these.
that's good and all (Score:4, Insightful)
Meh (Score:3)
Personal Swiss bank accounts are so 1990s. What Wikileaks will be revealing (and the IRS/Treasuery/US DoJ already has access to) is a list of names attached to accounts. That's a list of stupid people who went out on their own and got a Swiss account because they thought they were smarter than the law.
The big bucks are sitting in bank and brokerage accounts under corporate names. Foreign corporations that the USA can't touch, owned by a series of holding companies, the details of which are locked in a filing cabinet somewhere in the Caymen Islands.
Sure, there's 10 million francs in a Swiss account held for ACME GmBH. Who owns and controls them? Meanwhile, someone owns 100 shares of stock in Nauru Industries. Where's the connection? Good luck untangling that mess.
Re: (Score:3)
Re:Media whore (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't care if he's a monkey and likes to play a recorder with his butt.
It's a Good Thing (tm) this information is being made public.
These negative responses are almost as juicy as the leaks themselves. You've left us wondering whether you're a tax evader, a Freedom Fry? Or maybe it's just jealousy or a secret crush... not trying hard enough to be an astroturfer.
Re: (Score:3)
I wouldn't support an organisation that shared my private details, I don't believe anyone who feels the same, while being happy to see it happen to other people, can claim to be anything but a hypocrite.
Re: (Score:3)
I dunno. I'm pretty sure that FooAtWFU genuinely hates both freedom and the educated as well. Oh and he eats babies.
My statement is as valid as yours. See how it makes you look?
Please go and actually read up on what Assange and WikiLeaks does, has done, and is about... and no you cant use FoxNews or any republican hate rag as a information source.
Re: (Score:3)
As long as they aren't politicians.
Re:Outing criminals is one thing . . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
But then again, I bet you're one of those people who wants your taxes cut, but wants somebody elses services to be cut or diminished to finance it. I think the term for that is "fiscal conservative."
Re:Outing criminals is one thing . . . . (Score:4, Interesting)
They don't have to pay, they could move to another country.
Not true - the US taxes all income earned by people born in the US, regardless of where they live / have citizenship. To avoid this, you have to:
1) Renounce your US citizenship
AND
2) Convince the IRS that you did not renounce your citizenship to avoid paying taxes
I am not kidding. If the IRS thinks it is possible that you renounced your citizenship to avoid paying taxes, they will annul your renunciation. And remember, the IRS does not require any proof, and your have no appeal outside of spending hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax court. After which they will probably win anyway, because in tax court you are considered guilty until proven innocent. Please see the relevant legal part of the tax code.
Re:Outing criminals is one thing . . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
And if those who are hiding vast amounts of money from the tax man paid their fair share on it, the majority would pay less for a lot better civilization.
I make good money, I pay my fair share of all my taxes, around 45% for all federal, state and local taxes together after all legal deductions. Then I hope the roads are paved, the youth gets a good education, the truly needy get the help they need and the fire dept shows up quickly if necessary. If that looks like it's happening, then I'm happy and I d
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:3)
If they don't like paying for things like Police, Fire departments, Military etc then they can always move to a tax haven where they don't have to.
Re:Outing criminals is one thing . . . . (Score:4, Insightful)
Outing honest people whose only so-called "crime" is wanting to avoid the theft of their hard and presumably legitimately-earned dollars is completely and totally wrong
Tax is not theft. Someone evading tax is not honest.
Black is not white, whatever you libertarians might like to believe.
Re:Outing criminals is one thing . . . . (Score:4, Informative)
I know this one. The ability and legality of the US Government to levy and collect taxes is directly codified in the Constitution.
If taxation is theft in a democratic country, (Score:5, Insightful)
then so is the use or reliance on roads, public schools or universities, police, firemen, zoning codes, enforcement of contracts, national defense, and so forth. Which is to say, taxation is not theft, and a civilized society is not free of financial cost.
Re:Outing criminals is one thing . . . . (Score:5, Insightful)
What sense does it make to out those crimes, but also at the same time sign what might as well be the death sentence for many, many honest people who were heroic and brave enough to, at great personal risk, try their best to avoid funding those crimes?
Should I Monty Python you? It's so overdone though.
Reg: They've bled us white, the bastards. They've taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers' fathers.
Stan: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers!
Reg: Yeah.
Stan: And from our fathers' fathers' fathers' fathers!
Reg: All right Stan, don't belabour the point. And what have they ever given us in return?!
Man: The aqueduct?
Reg: What?
Man: The aqueduct.
Reg: Oh yeah, yeah, that they've given us, yeah, that's true, yeah.
Man: And the sanitation.
Stan: Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like.
Reg: Yeah, all right, I grant you, the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things the Romans have done.
Mathias: And the roads!
Reg: Well, yeah, obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they! But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct and the roads...
Man: Irrigation.
Man: Medicine.
Man: Education!
Reg: Yeah, yeah, all right, fair enough.
Man: And the wine.
All: Yeah, yeah, the wine!
Francis: Yeah! yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left.
Man: Public baths.
Stan: And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
Francis: Yeah, they certainly like to keep order. I suppose they're the only ones who could in a place like this!
Reg: Yeah, all right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us!?
Man: Brought peace.
Reg: Oh, peace. Shut up!
Re:poor title (Score:5, Informative)
They don't report amounts, but they DO now report that you DO have an account with them now. /something/ elsewhere...
If you hold money abroad, and file a US tax return, you have to submit your holdings. You could get away with it (probably) before as the banks wouldn't say a word.
Now the government knows you've got
Re:poor title (Score:5, Insightful)
Keep in mind, the U.S. taxes *income*, not *wealth*.
Most wealth generates income on its own. And shoveling income into a hidden pot of wealth is a way to evade taxes.
Only Tax Evaders and Criminals to Be Named (Score:5, Informative)
Despite their exotic reputation, the vast majority of accounts were held by fairly ordinary folk (there seemed to be an inordinate number of german dentists). So while this may sound like a blow at the rich and powerful, there's going to be a lot of very unextraordinary middle class folk whose financial details are laid bare by this. Having a Swiss bank account is not illegal in itself.
From the New York Times coverage [nytimes.com]:
A former Swiss bank executive said on Monday that he had given the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, details of more than 2,000 prominent individuals and companies that he contends engaged in tax evasion and other possible criminal activity.
Emphasis mine. Elmer is doing this because he feels the list he has compiled is a list of unjust individuals and right now Wikileaks is doing all in their power to verify that these individuals are, in fact, tax dodgers. He says the list has 40 politicians and “pillars of society” worldwide among those two thousand.
You might want consider whether you'd like your finances laid bare before you acclaim this as another win for david over goliath.
Precisely why I ended the summary with "at the expense of privacy." And it's not just tax evasion. You do realize that if Julius Baer is associated with heinous criminals worldwide that it could get ugly on an international level, right?
Re:Only Tax Evaders and Criminals to Be Named (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Not just "the rich and powerful" (Score:5, Funny)
How many times have we told you not to post Slashdot from work, Homer?
- Mr. Burns.
Re:Well now (Score:5, Insightful)
you have it somewhat backwards.
we are now seeing how out of control THE WORLD is.
people running things knew this. 'we' didn't.
this is what all the rukkus is about. exposure of the raw, uncut reality of how the world really world. no sugar coated disney movie view of things.
peoples' view of reality are being challenged and those who lived on the lie are being caught.
information revolution, to be sure. this is why its such a big deal. this IS a revolution; we're seeing it happen and unfold right now.
Re:sick of wiki gonna-leak (Score:4, Interesting)
If he has information on illegal dealings, corruption, etc., release it.. Why the threats, why the talk? His current behavior is more like someone trying to shake down folks, not someone trying to uncover the truth.
A while ago (last year I think) when some wikileak documents were released, they were criticized for not redacting sufficiently (I recall that some analysis into found that they were, and the criticism was mostly unfounded, of the informant names that were actually available, one was dead and one was a double agent or something like that). I suspect now the time between getting a leak and releasing it has increased a lot, due to an increase in checking and double checking, to avoid those sort of criticisms again.
I guess its kind of like a double edged sword; they'll either be criticised for not allowing sufficient time for redaction, or criticised for taking some time to release something.