
Bernie Sanders Was Right to Oppose the Panama Free Trade Agreement - doener
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a25fZFKtJ7s
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djschnei
Serious question: Do you consider tax evasion theft?

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dcposch
Like most moral questions, It's Complicated.

Even straight personal theft has a range, from the obviously amoral (snatching
an old lady's purse) to the morally ambiguous (Robin Hood stealing from
aristocrats to feed starving peasants).

Are there legitimate reasons for tax avoidance? Yes. For example, if you were
rich but had the misfortune to live in the regime-controlled part of Syria,
you'd be stuck there now, and nobody would fault you for trying your very best
to move your assets elsewhere to avoid funding a corrupt and murderous
government.

So to your abstract question about whether tax evasion is theft, I'd say
"sometimes".

However, the specific cases we're talking about here, revealed by the Mossack
Fonseca leak, were definitely theft.

There's a perverse trend of rich people in rich, democratic countries who
consider themselves above taxation. They're in free countries, and they're
free to leave: if they really wanted to take a moral stand against taxation,
they could pull an Eduardo Saverin, give up their citizenship, and emigrate to
a low-tax country. Instead they stay and lie about their income.

The poor don't pay taxes because they can't. The middle and upper middle class
pay taxes, often a huge fraction of their income, because they can't not. Only
the truly rich have the flexibility and resources to set up, say, a system of
Panamanian shell companies.

It becomes even more starkly amoral and flagrantly hypocritical when elected
officials do it.

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djschnei
Thank you for your well thought out opinion. Honestly. I know I come at these
issues with a strong personal bias, so it's a good thing for me to hear a well
constructed counter argument.

I guess I don't really disagree with you either. Where I become frustrated
with the response to this leak is the seemingly obvious misplaced blame
(again, maybe this is just my bias). The media and political talking heads are
all spinning this as a referendum on big business/the mega rich, when it seems
so obvious to me this is always the outcome when statist/socialist policies
are practiced -- corruption is always the result. It's not news that people
will generally act in their own self interest. Maybe we should stop
structuring our societies in a way that when people act selfishly (like
humans) it hurts everyone else.

But, alas, how will the political elite spin the outcome? With less freedom,
more regulation, by building a taller house of cards.

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mtanski
This seams to be a moot point... So far most people named in the Panama docs
are not US nationals.

Most US nationals have lots of options of hiding their taxes inside. Weather
it's Delaware corps, or trusts in the Dakotas. There's a great story on Planet
Money about this.

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dcposch
> Weather it's Delaware corps (sic)

What? Delaware corporations are completely standard. The state bureaucracy is
fairly efficient, the laws are reasonable, lawyers well versed in Delaware
corporate law are readily available in all 50 states, etc. It's not about tax
avoidance.

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jeffwass
It's entirely about tax avoidance, thats the whole point of using a Delaware
Corp and why they're so popular.

The fact they're standard is irrelevant to the parent's claim. They're only
standard because nobody wants to voluntarily pay extra state taxes. And for
some reason it's both legal and generally socially acceptable to have a
corporation that has its office and effectively does its business in another
state be legally based in Delaware to avoid state tax.

Edit - adding link to 2012 NYT article :
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-
delaware-t...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/business/how-delaware-
thrives-as-a-corporate-tax-haven.html?referer=)

