[mkingston]

It occurred to me in the wake of the release of these Pandora papers that mass availability of tax avoidance could be one way of shutting down (almost) any availability thereof. Worded cynically: bring tax avoidance to the middle class and the poor, and it'll be shut down promptly.

[pydry]

Your core problem is the rich mostly owns both parties and most of the media that can blast propaganda to the effect of:

* It's simply Not Possible to fix the problem of widespread tax avoidance because There Will Always be Loopholes.

* In any case if you tax the wealthy too much they'll run away with their money which will be worse in the long run and the government can't stop them and Then You'll Be Really Sorry.

The public can't really be trained to believe that tax havens are ok but maybe 70% can be led to believe the lie that theres nothing that can really be done about them so they dont demand politicians fix it while a good 40% are susceptible to persistent character assassination on politicians who do try to fix it (e.g. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/aoc-ethics-complaint-met-ga...)

Trying to convince Bahamanian lawyers to charge less than a million dollars for setting up elaborate tax structures that Congress winks at because their donors like them isn't really a viable fix. A) they won't B) if they did that particular method would be shut down and theyd shify to others because the core problem of "Congress doesnt work for you" hasnt changed.

[hyperman1]

France started heavily taxing some rich people, and some of them like Gerard Depardieu promptly 'immigrated' to Belgium (A whole km outside France in his case). As far as I know, France did not suffer too much from this.

https://jonathanturley.org/2012/12/12/french-government-deno...

[shapefrog]

Given most countries tax their residents as opposed to their citizens, I say let them leave and they forfeit their right to be residents.

In the case of the US, where they tax both their citizens and their residents. If you want to leave and not pay, you forfeit the residency and the citizenship.

[cinntaile]

How do you mean? He's obviously a resident in Belgium otherwise he'd be paying French taxes? If he moves back to France he'd become a French resident again or if he in practice spends more days of the year in France than in Belgium, then he'll be treated as if he's a resident in France.

[shapefrog]

Yes. He had to move to Belgium to remove the obligation to pay tax in france. Should he decide to move to the south of france instead, he would come back under the taxaction of france.

[soco]

Isn't Depardieu a resident of Saransk, Russia?

[pydry]

As far as I remember they acted like Depardieu and his ilk leaving couldnt be tolerated so they rolled the law back.

I didnt follow too closely though.

[lixtra]

> In any case if you tax the wealthy too much they'll run away with their money which will be worse in the long run and the government

I saw companies leaving countries for tax reasons.

I see people working 80% instead of 100% because thanks to progressive tax their net salaries remain 85+%.

Of course tax laws also factor into life decisions.

[pydry]

There was a NY law that raised state taxes quite considerably on high incomes followed by a study to see if people responded to this by moving across the river to live in New Jersey where taxes were lower. Turns out they couldnt be bothered: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2011/02/quelle-surprise-tax-...

A legion of people uprooting their entire life in response to a tax hike is threatened constantly in the MSM but pretty uncommon in reality.

On the other hand companies that can change their tax residency just by saying "this is our new HQ" will yes, seek out tax havens because there's almost no cost to "moving". With political will, it would be pretty trivial to enact legislation to say that the company gets taxed based upon where they actually are.

As to why that doesnt happen see my original point: A) Congress doesnt work for you B) the media acts like you could never really close these loopholes.

[fartingflamingo]

This does hit home. My significant other got a 600€/month pre-tax raise. Her net raise? 120€. She could actually go work 80% and hardly lose anything at all.

[pydry]

I did that for a while just because. Three day weekends are nice even without the rationale of progressive taxation.

Overall I'm not sure if a tax that encouraged it would be such a bad thing. It's obviously against the protestant work ethic which makes it seem almost unthinkable in America but it'd probably be healthier overall.

[Handytinge]

This is a global issue, and Americans make up < 5% of the worlds population. Who are "both parties"?

[hetspookjee]

I firmly believe that for any meaningful change in tax exceptions for multinationals one needs to bring it to the masses, like you say.

For example by creating a multinational entity that swallows you all the small shops, while letting them be the owner as they were before. But they now use a service that consistently costs so much that it's not returning a profit. While they also start a new business through a foreign Enterprise that is stationed in any tax Haven you have your eyes set on. When on scale this will drain the tax income of most small shops and must force the government to shut down these constructs. Challenge being that in doing so the precedent crested will also force the multinationals, like Shell, Unilever, etc. To shut down their unfair tax advantages.

I don't think the idea is novel, and I think it's extremely risky, but something worth chasing I believe.

[throwawaycuriou]

Stepping sideways from the multinational revelations of the Pandora Papers, as a US citizen I'm floored by how much tax abuse comes from organized religion and how little we seem to be concerned by it.

I've considered creating my own church for along the same reasoning you describe. If I can make a Mary Mag Was Actually Jesus Church with minimal effort, and the end result is I get to play the same game that corrupt ministers do, shouldn't I ethically do so? There's good and bad about it, and I leaned towards no. But maybe the problem is it's unethical if too few people do it. If I scale it up, does it become ethically different?

Say TurboTax starts providing any Joe Schmoe the chance to click a few buttons and handle all the hard things to establish his new 'church' is a legally tax-exempt financial vehicle on religious grounds. What would come of it? Would it accelerate the good or bad?

[jokethrowaway]

The issue with mandatory taxation is that the powerful in society will always corrupt the system somehow to pay what they are happy to pay (paying taxes or doing charity can be good investments reputation-wise) while everyone else will have to pay "their fair share".

As soon as everyone start using loopholes they will simply lobby to make it harder, to keep the powerful safe and everyone else paying. From anecdotal evidence, I'm pretty sure the religious route you recommend won't work.

The only way to make things fair in terms of taxes would be to have zero mandatory taxes. With zero taxes there is no-one benefitting from corrupting politicians. Career politicians would not exist anymore because there would be no more money in it.

Without taxes you're left with the problem of organising society without a central entity, eg. by having private police and protection, private healthcare, private education, private roads and by supporting those without means through voluntary charities instead of mandatory taxes.

[sbacic]

> Worded cynically: bring tax avoidance to the middle class and the poor, and it'll be shut down promptly.

This already exists in certain places and under certain conditions. Several EU member states offer very generous tax rates provided you make under a certain sum and meet other (fairly specific) criteria.

[nspattak]

I do not think that this will work. Unless people actively force them not to, they will shut down this door and they will build a new one for the elites to continue their business as usual.

[lixtra]

In the end I don‘t see how hiding value somewhere can be stopped without total surveillance.

Maybe we are getting there.

[fartingflamingo]

In case of the land locked EU micro states, a blockade would be an obvious way.

Rather surprisingly, I can't seem to find a lot of historical examples of, say, German trade unions completely blocking Liechtenstein, demanding a fairer taxation system.

[AmericanChopper]

End corporate taxes and all of a sudden the whole scheme becomes unnecessary.

[smackay]

Wouldn't you have to rescind the concept that corporations can act as individuals as well?

I'm not sure whether this is a legal, moral or philosophical position but in the spirit of no taxation without representation then it seems right that all political lobbying by corporations would have to be ended as well.

[AmericanChopper]

They can’t act as individuals. This is a falsehood perpetuated by people who want to make witty hot takes.

[shapefrog]

God damn the Supreme Court and their perpetuating of falsehoods with witty hot takes.

[AmericanChopper]

The Supreme Court has never ruled that corporations are people. They ruled that corporations have 1st amendment protections. But yes, that was exactly the type of substance-free hot take I’m talking about.

[flud]

Yup, that sounds like the perfect solution to the problem of companies not paying enough taxes

[AmericanChopper]

Companies were never supposed to pay taxes on their profits, they were supposed pay dividends which are then taxed as income. The desire to tax that profit twice (or 3 times if you count consumption tax) is what creates this whole mess, because you fundamentally can’t force a company to make a profit.

The outcome of trying is a tax system that only applies to SME.

[cpursley]

Corps don't pay taxes, their customers do in the form of higher prices.