[ellius]

The problem is that incorporation documents are frequently only a small part of the story. It does allow you to correlate ownership, but unless you can actually show some kind of money movement into and out of accounts, it is difficult to show evidence of a particular crime.

[tonfa]

Looked at one randomly, looks like some University fund is a shareholder (with over 200 other funds) of a Warburg Pincus fund (a private equity company).

I'm not exactly sure how that's a big deal, nothing there implies they avoid taxes or anything. (Maybe the fund they invest in does shady things, but it doesn't look like they have any kind of weird offshore setup)

[vixen99]

Do you mean evade or avoid? Everyone avoids tax. Currently taxes on property transfers in the UK are 5% on property priced at £925,000 and 10% if priced at £925,001. I guess Joe Nonavoider sets the price at the latter figure?

[zimpenfish]

> Everyone avoids tax.

No, not everyone. And not everyone evades or optimises tax either.

[ryacko]

It's hard to divert money when you're incorporated as a non-profit.

[ForHackernews]

Most of these offshore tax shelters are not illegal. It's just shady that wealthy individuals and organizations can stash their millions and billions away from public scrutiny and avoid paying taxes on them.

It's particularly egregious in the case of ostensibly not-for-profit educational institutions.

[toyg]

Yes and no. These arrangements are often grounds for prosecution once they come to light. Just because moving money from A to B and from B to C is legal, it doesn't mean that going from A to C is still legal.

Tax authorities usually struggle to reconstruct the entire chain, so they don't prosecute... until somebody else does the job for them, and then they piggyback.