
Millionaires Flee Their Homelands as Tensions Rise and Taxes Bite - spking
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-30/millionaires-flee-their-homelands-as-tensions-rise-taxes-bite
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Tsubasachan
You can tax the shit out of people if you provide something in return.
Millionaires don't flee the Netherlands or Sweden.

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jankotek
I do not know about Sweden, but from Norway they do.

My friend moved to Prague. He said it is difficult to raise children in Norway
if you are a christian. He could not afford to buy a car. There is long
waiting list for a house. And Norway is taxing expats even after they leave
country (for three years).

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Angostura
>He said it is difficult to raise children in Norway if you are a christian.

What?

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jacobush
Exactly?! - this doesn't jive with my (prejudiced) view of Norway as the
"Bible Belt" of Scandinavia.

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barry-cotter
Isn’t that like saying the most depraved of devout Mormons? It’s technically a
defined concept with a sensible meaning but the connotations are misleading.

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paxys
Makes perfect sense to me. There has been an immense amount of wealth created
in developing nations over the last couple of decades. Quality of life,
safety, infrastructure and political freedom, however, are still the same or
getting worse. Combine that with ever-increasing official and unofficial
extortion by the state, and there is no doubt that a millionaire would prefer
to live in a first world country.

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d_burfoot
At least in the case of China, it's probably less about taxes and more about
the fact that rich people have a bad habit of dying mysteriously:

[https://twitter.com/novogratz/status/1087548420129214464?lan...](https://twitter.com/novogratz/status/1087548420129214464?lang=en)

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TomVDB
It’s less about taxes, but it’s also not about dying mysteriously.

The main reason is to have a backup plan in case things go wrong: there aren’t
a lot of reliable legal protections to begin with and the political situation
can change any time.

Better have your wealth stored outside of the country and an additional
citizenship so you can leave when necessary.

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markvdb
Related observation. Wealth used to especially escape countries to small
neighbours. Examples:

* Belgium: Luxemburg

* France: Monaco, Luxemburg, Switzerland

* Germany: Liechtenstein, Luxemburg, Switzerland

* Italy: Vatican city, San Marino, Switzerland

* Spain: Andorra, Gibraltar

* UK: the channel islands

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byw
Luxembourg and Switzerland have really hit the jackpot.

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mjcohen
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gC29ArkGG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gC29ArkGG0)

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jaabe
It’s always been like that, hasn’t it? I seem to recall it being one of the
reasons why liberalism has had such staying power.

It was how the Dutch became a powerhouse on the line of Spain, England and
France in the colonial age. Because they let their people be, and didn’t take
their wealth, it became an attractive haven for rich families who then did
business.

I’m not sure the latter is as beneficial as it was then, as you can now turn
money into more money without investing in local business, but the former is
going to remain true forever. People who have the means to do so, will always
chose the freer country.

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adventured
It's still true. Alluring taxation approaches rapidly turned Hong Kong,
Singapore and Ireland into very wealthy nations. All three used very low tax
systems to draw wealth and investment to their shores in various ways. Works
very well for small, stable nations. It loses effectiveness with increasing
population scale. The approach is better to the extent you have a population
to tax system benefit imbalance (Ireland having < 5 million people and drawing
hundred billion dollar companies to invest).

Ireland went from being an always-underdog to Britain, to having nearly twice
their GDP per capita. Finland and Sweden in 1990 had a GDP per capita 100%
higher than Ireland; now Ireland is ~50%-60% higher. It took only 30 years to
transform Ireland into a far wealthier nation and it was mostly due to the
very attractive tax structure for large corporations. It made them very well
positioned to ride the globalism economic boom.

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walterbell
Do you happen to know who/what lead that policy change in Irish government,
and why it was not opposed by neighboring EU countries?

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pjc50
The history section on Wikipedia is good;
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_tax_in_the_Repub...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_tax_in_the_Republic_of_Ireland)

It seems to have got started in the early 80s, when Ireland was still a very
poor country. The major changes were in 1995.

Tax policy is still mostly a reserved matter in the EU and there is a taboo on
trying to dictate rates, but this is changing - in part due to the obvious
huge tax avoidance problem.

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rectang
> _In October 2018, it released a blacklist of 21 jurisdictions, including
> Malta and Cyprus, that it believes are undermining international efforts to
> combat tax evasion._

Every possible means should be brought to bear in punishing these enablers of
tax evasion. Steal from the rest of us at such a scale? Prepare to feel pain.

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seibelj
If I donate to a nonprofit, itemize my deductions, and get a tax reduction
based on my donation, am I not "evading" taxes?

Sure, donations are perfectly legal and an above-board way to evade paying
taxes to the USA, but it's still tax avoidance and I _could_ choose not to
itemize, especially if my donations were 100% pure of heart.

Similarly, emigrating to Malta, or Bermuda, etc. is perfectly legal and if I
do so for the weather, or to avoid paying taxes, is not one just as legal as
the other? Even moving from New York to Texas so my combined state and city
income taxes drop from 10% to 0% has a whiff of tax avoidance.

Simply put, people vote with their feet, and the rich have the best shoes
money can buy.

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solidsnack9000
At a high level, what makes tax evasion wrong is when people are able to
benefit from the commons — stable currency, weights and measures, a climate of
rule of law and the commensurate security of property — without paying into
it. People who have successful businesses and are worth millions of dollars
would be robbed and cheated every single day if it were not for the vast array
of institutions — expensive institutions — that facilitate the climate of
trust and security characteristic of developed countries today.

~~~
seibelj
The majority of us would agree that 100% taxation is unworkable, as in, every
single cent of income I earn is seized by the state.

Given your comment, I assume you think 0% taxation is also infeasible.

So we agree that somewhere above 0% and below 100% taxation there is some
optimal amount. However, given the circumstances of the country and our
personal philosophies, we may disagree on that optimal level.

The fact that free people can move to lower (or higher!) tax jurisdictions,
and judge the quality of those services based on how much they pay and what
they get in return, is a good thing in my opinion. The competition keeps
politicians from elevating taxation to that unworkable 100%.

~~~
techsupporter
> The fact that free people can move to lower (or higher!) tax jurisdictions,
> and judge the quality of those services based on how much they pay and what
> they get in return, is a good thing in my opinion.

I think few would disagree that if you move to a new jurisdiction to benefit
from a different tax scheme, that's fine. But therein lies two problems:
First, so few people are able to move; the wealthy are disproportionally able
to have their pick of tax jurisdictions so they can extract benefits from one
society and then jump ship when it suits them without returning benefits to
that society.

Second is when people move on "paper" to benefit from another jurisdiction but
don't physically move in reality. Thus they continue to benefit from the
society they nominally "left" but don't pay into it. That's the kind of tax
avoidance / evasion that most people have a problem with.

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nordsieck
> Second is when people move on "paper" to benefit from another jurisdiction
> but don't physically move in reality. Thus they continue to benefit from the
> society they nominally "left" but don't pay into it.

What jurisdiction allows this?

The US is particularly draconian by taxing worldwide income; every other
country that I know of will tax your income if you live there.

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pjc50
Many jurisdictions have residency rules that allow people to _partially_ move
- e.g in the UK if you have a residence overseas and spend less than half a
year in the UK, you don't count as UK resident for that tax year.

Although really most of the tax avoidance schemes rely on moving one's income
and assets to a company and then playing games with the "residency" of the
company.

