I don't blame him for taking advantage of the system. What I blame him for is all of his supposed altruistic bloviating. No different than a Russian oligarch.
Huh, why not? If not for people taking advantage of "the system", "the system" would not exist.
I mean; here we have a guy that has taken all the advantage of all the benefits a developed industrial country has to offer and then in turn does everything in his power to give back as little as possible.
Hell yeah I'm going to blame him. It's not moral behavior. I don't care whether it is legal or not, he's behaving like a parasite and should be judged according to his behavior.
He should be forced to abide by the laws while he lives or does business here. But if he wants to live in a new place by a new set of laws in the future, I'm not sure what's wrong with that.
It seems more like you regret the laws in the US during the decades he was here, and you are hoping future changes in the law will retroactively address your concerns. But I see no moral basis for that stance.
If we want to change the law, we should be forced to consider the effects on the future, and whether those laws will negatively impact the wealth created in the future. If we start going back and seizing wealth from the past, that will give us a false sense that the laws are working, until the old money runs out and we look around and don't see anyone creating new wealth.
Morality != Legality! No sane person is advocating for ex post facto laws but it's wrong even if it's not illegal. He's been given every opportunity in life, accrued a net worth equal to the sum of 140,000 median Americans, then gives barely any of it back and apparently may flee to dodge being taxed on it.
> If we want to change the law, we should be forced to consider the effects on the future
Of course. This is why it's taken so long to come up with laws that prevent the kind of exploitation that creates a couple dozen billionaires while stagnating the majority of America's incomes. It's morality that drives the lawmaking -- since everyone has different morals and we all live under the same laws -- and at least if everyone hates the guy for this then hopefully we see some laws that prevent more behavior like this in the future.
The problem is benefiting from the advantages a system gives you, and then using those same benefits to deny others who are seeking those same advantages.
Like Paul Ryan who basically made it where he did thanks to US social services but did everything he could while in power to decimate those very services he himself relied upon now that he no longer needed them.
> “I am very proud of the structure that we set up. We did it based on the incentives that the governments offered us to operate,” Schmidt told one interviewer in 2012. “It’s called capitalism.”
As much as I enjoy watching people dissemble while describing their true actions, there’s not really anyone naive enough to believe Schmidt didn’t actively create the rules google currently operates under, is there?
Maybe he really was just a bystander in his company as it poured millions of dollars into lobbying the American government and he was powerless to stop them.
Or maybe he though the lobbying did nothing and he thought wasting money was a good thing.
Or he’s just lying and hopes people don’t acknowledge that there were maybe half a dozen people who had more power to shape the laws and regulations he operated under. But trying to just pass himself off as an uninvolved observer just rings thoroughly disingenuous.
I don’t advocate for trying to retroactively pass laws, as that is just mob rule. But to be one of the most powerful lobbying efforts in the country (in 2017, the single largest), while simultaneously claiming to be a helpless observer inside said system is hard for me to take seriously. His response was a claim that his behavior is socially acceptable and not tax avoidance (and thus would continue), whereas I’m saying this behavior is tax avoidance and should be labeled as such, and he’s well aware of how unpopular his opinion is and how much he invests from stopping reforms that would align the legal definition closer to the layman’s conception of tax avoidance.
Buying one. Citizenship is something that ought to be earned and given to people who show that they want to live in and contribute to a country. People like Schmidt purchase themselves a tax excemption or freedom of movement in a world where ordinary people right now lose their jobs and are locked into their country.
American citizens living and working abroad still must pay taxes to the US Government. As far as I am aware, the US is the only country in the world with this requirement. There is a reason the FBAR requirement is often called the "fubar" requirement.
I'm working in the US under a TN Visa at the moment as a Canadian citizen, and until this changes I'm never going to apply for a green card, and have been advising all my friends in similar situations to do the same.
We choose to live & work here because SV is the Mecca of software development, but that could very easily change within our lifetimes, so tying ourselves down with this ridiculous obligation for life doesn't make any sense in the long term.
> Does the global tax extend to green card holders who are not citizens?
Yep, see question 2:
> You have to file a U.S. income tax return while working and living abroad unless you abandon your green card holder status by filing Form I-407, with the U.S. Citizen & Immigration Service, or you renounce your U.S. citizenship under certain circumstances described in the expatriation tax provisions. See Publication 519, U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens, for more details.
For the vast majority of scenarios, the U.S. taxes citizens the same way as it taxes non-citizens. It doesn't matter whether you have a green card or are even working in the U.S. illegally, the tax laws apply to you just as well as they apply to a citizen.
Yes there are exceptions for some class of residents but they are quite fringe.
You get a pretty high exemption for salary earned abroad if you paid local taxes on it and the country has a tax agreement with the US, which most do. You're still taxed on income earned within the US normally, but it seems reasonable that if you earned income from rent from a US property, or received dividends from a US company, that you should pay taxes on it even if you are not in the country.
You are taxed on income you make abroad, even if you never set foot in the country. I'm not talking about capital gains. I'm talking about income. Yes, up to a certain amount, you can deduct dollar-for-dollar taxes paid in the foreign country, but you are still taxed on that income. It's the only country in the world that does this. Because of this, among other bits, I do not think it is reasonable.
Looking it up, it has the same rule as Germany: If your "center of life" is in Norway (roughly: spending more than 6 months out of a year there), then you have to pay your taxes.
That is not what the US does which is "We don’t care what you do and where you live, if you have citizenship you better file your taxes"
No, we don't. If you spend more than half the year in Norway, you are considered a resident for tax purposes, and chances are you will have to pay some tax.
However, income is not subject to double taxation; if you've already paid taxes in another jurisdiction, Norwegian authorities are not going to tax the same income again.
There are no tax benefits to be had for US citizens trying to hide money abroad post-FATCA. None.
The US has the most draconian global tax system of any country in the world, and has the unique position of being able to actually enforce it due to the fact the USD is the reserve currency of the world and every country needs to stay on the good side of the US Treasury to transact in the global economy.
In fact, the laws are so strict, they make living abroad as an honest middle-class expat a total nightmare. I have friends who cannot find a single bank in their country that will work with them because of the reporting requirements of working with US citizens. They cannot save in foreign banks and they cannot invest either due to the US penalizing foreign Mutual fund/ETF purchases by private citizens.
> Citizenship is something that ought to be earned and given to people who show that they want to live in and contribute to a country.
I mean, first, citizenship is made up. Many people have dual citizenship, and many countries will give you citizenship for ancestorship. And, of course, most countries offer citizenship to newborns who aren't contributing much and don't currently care about the country they're living in (and some countries, like the US, do so for babies born in the US to people who aren't citizens).
For someone like Eric S., it must be very easy to get a new citizenship, and this will help him to setup some of the schemes that, while legal, will allow him to evade billions of dollars in taxes over his lifetime. I believe this is just a way to simplify his tax dodging schemes.
Can you give an example of a scheme that this might help him set up? I believe that there are none, unless he pays a significant exit tax to give up his US citizenship.
There are all kinds of schemes, but the main vehicle used is to put all assets in something called a trust. Do your research. With a trust you can move your assets around without other people knowing where they are invested. While the US laws applies to all citizens, a trust is not a citizen of the US so according to international laws there is nothing the US can do about it. If Eric has another citizenship, this becomes even easier.
I guess it really comes down to how you conceptualize the nation-state. I think most people view a nation as a community, a body politic, maybe even an extended family. Buying citizenship is just as tawdry as paying for a mail-order bride.
But I’m sorry. Me and many others see the nation state as a service provider. An institution that enforces the rule of law, furnishes protection from invaders and criminals, and provides large-scale public goods in exchange for some slice of tax revenue and a code of conduct.
But if I’m unhappy with a service provider, then I should be free to change vendors to whomever meets my need. No different than the freedom to pay for a new phone plan or new gym membership.
You complain that ordinary people don’t have the same consumer choice as the ultra-wealthy. If so, the focus should be on how to make the global market for nation-states more competitive for a wider range of consumers. I agree that many are locked into a shitty service provider. But if anything, the tiny slice of people who can exercise a choice almost certainly makes this market more, not less, competitive.
> Citizenship is something that ought to be earned and given to people who show that they want to live in and contribute to a country
Says who? You?
The beauty of people is we have different opinions. If Cyprus wants to sell their citizenship for a dollar each, that's their right.
> People like Schmidt purchase themselves a...
Yes, that's one of the motivating factors for being rich, is being able to purchase things afterwards.
There's a child dying somewhere on this planet right now and here you are moralizing on HackerNews - people like you purchase themselves an internet connection and talk about blah blah, while a child is dying.
> Buying one. Citizenship is something that ought to be earned and given to people who show that they want to live in and contribute to a country.
Citizenship is just a legal relation between a person and a country. If both sides want that relationship, then it is perfectly moral to start such relationship.
> Citizenship is something that ought to be earned and given to people who show that they want to live in and contribute to a country.
But, by buying the citizenship, they are not just showing in some vague indirect way that they "want to" contribute to the country, they are actually, directly, palpably contributing to the country.
> People like Schmidt purchase themselves a tax excemption or freedom of movement in a world where ordinary people right now lose their jobs and are locked into their country.
I'm confused, is your complaint that Schmidt hasn't done enough to "earn" citizenship, or that people that don't have less capacity to contribute should also enjoy what Schmidt does.
You don't get to decide that about citizenship - Cyprus does. There are consequences to whatever they decide but "ought" in itself is meaningless as an argument.
How can you argue that Eric hasn't "earned" citizenship anywhere he wants. I have a buddy from India who has worked hard in the tech industry and is applying for US citizenship and I hope he gets it.
Its not like he just inherited his wealth and is now skipping out ASAP.
On top of the obvious tax benefits in Cyprus, the country is also member state of the EU since 2004.
That means 'Citizenship of the European Union', that includes the ability to travel to anywhere in the EU (visa free), the Ability to reside anywhere in the EU, hell Schmidt could even run for public office in any EU local governments municipal elections if he so wishes.
> There are no tax benefits for US citizens in Cyprus
- Dividend gains exemption
- Capital gains exemption
- Pension income capped at 5%
- Abolished inheritance tax
- All of the above plus bonus EU freedom of movement/residence
The guys fortune is parked on GOOG stock how can you say he has nothing to gain? There is a reason russian oligarchs are parking their money in that tiny island.
> hell Schmidt could even run for public office in any EU local governments municipal elections if he so wishes.
Here's an idea for a short story: Schmidt does indeed wish so; he becomes a politician in the EU and places himself in a position that allows him to make the EU a much more friendly place for the adtech industry and surveillance capitalism.
It's not necessarily about taxes, the marginal utility of money is basically 0 at his level. I'm guessing he just wants a guarantee of being able to get into the EU in case the political polarization in the US boils over. I certainly would, if I were him, especially given the steady drumbeat of demonization of the rich in the media.
Cyprus is not a member of Schengen but as an EU citizen you can still go anywhere in Europe visa free, stay, work and enjoy all benefits as long as you want.
This is the real problem. The EU shouldn't allow sale of citizenship in host countries, essentially paying a way to get into the EU. I highly doubt that would be possible to enforce though.
The Cyprus passport scheme has ended this month, only applications submitted before the end of October are considered. The same I believe applies to Malta which had a similar scheme.
Simple, this was probably in motion during Trump era - and for whatever reason (ability to work overseas, live overseas in EU, own property etc) there was an advantage to having an EU passport. This gets him that.
Are there US citizens here who wouldn’t take dual EU citizenship if it was offered to them? Taxes and social stability aside, Europe is full of nice places to visit, do business, and live. The value of being able to do these things without restrictions seems self-evident. I don’t see why you’d presume a nefarious motivation.
I don't know why you got that idea from. Those who renounce their US citizen might have some bureaucratic hassles when they wish to revisit the US, depending on what other passport they hold, but ex-US citizens regularly travel back to the US for leisure or to see family.
wait. if you renounce your citizenship you are denied entry? wouldn't he be able to just travel to the US under the same rules as any other Cypriot citizen?
None of what the parent said is correct. You would be treated like any other citizen of Cyprus if you revoked your US citizenship. Besides that, Schmidt is part of the Davos zillionaire elite, the US isn't going to deny him access.
> that has taken all the advantage of all the benefits a developed industrial country has to offer
a. He has also given a lot more back to the said country. than he has taken from it, IMO. Imagine what life would be like without Google.
b. Google is a global company, not just a US company
c. I don't believe in the notion of nations or citizenship and don't blame him if he doesn't either and is switching citizenships just for convenience/logistics.
Absolutely, Google has added to this world, not taken away from it. Being a potentially abusive company is a completely different matter, but it doesn't automatically invalidate the good things and I still consider it better off existing than not.
In any case, with Trump gone nobody will be around to fight Google if that's your desire.
Thanks for writing that - he's such a supreme hypocrite, but why expect more from the originator of, "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
So many of his own peccadilloes are out there too, despite his personal attempts to delete them from Google.
Some randos on the Internet aren’t going to know why he ultimately gets #MeToo’d.
However it should be obvious that every potential acquirer of Android was aware of enabling Andy Rubin to enter “ownership” relationships with his subordinates, at a time it was obvious to every huge tech CEO they had to develop an iPhone competitor.
It remains to be explained why Google alone decided to enable him, and what role Eric Schmidt played in that. Like quite concretely, when he looks at the private investigator’s report about Andy Rubin, and everyone else’s people doing the same thing at all the other companies saying “don’t do this deal,” despite the money on the line, why did he say yes?
I would add that of course all the major tech companies were aware of the iPhone before it was released, in addition to being aware of Andy Rubin’s ownership relationships of subordinates, and also Eric Schmidt sat on Apple’s board and was aware, and it was of course instrumental to Android’s acquisition.
Why do people think this is a "bad thing"? It's no different than buying an expensive home anywhere in the world, except it comes with a citizenship. I doubt he can use the favorable taxation - he would have to renounce his US citizenship for that.
When a billionaire makes a move like this (getting citizenship in another country) it’s often criticized as an “escape plan”, or somewhere to run if any number of bad things happen to or in the USA. It’s viewed a little differently from most other ex-pats because these are the people who have the money and power to dramatically influence the government, so if they’re running from something here in the US, it’s either “their” (by that I mean billionaires in general) fault for pushing the government in the wrong direction, or within “their” power to fix.
For example, if mass civil unrest breaks out in the US as a result of the recent election, Eric Schmidt can flee to his estate in Cyprus and ignore the fact that he owned a social network (Youtube) that knowingly hosted radical content and disinformation which would have (in part) caused the civil unrest he’s fleeing from.
Whether or not that’s his intention, it doesn’t matter. True or not, what people are seeing is billionaires knowingly destabilizing the country in order to make a lot of money, then using that money to protect themselves against the country they just damaged.
That very thing happened earlier this year at the start of the pandemic, SV billionaires fled the country to go to a private island in New Zealand, while their employees suffered and died back here in the US: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...
Google bought YouTube in 2006. Schmidt was CEO until 2011. YouTube got out of control with disinformation mostly after 2011. And he probably had almost nothing to do with YouTube in the five years he was CEO after Google purchased YouTube.
I wouldn't blame Schmidt much for YouTube's disinformation problem. I'd blame the people directly running YouTube (especially people running it recently / now).
Sadly I think the radicalisation started when the censorship did. I honestly believe they're making things worse by clamping down on misinformation. Streisand effect is real.
Ahem... He "owned YouTube"? That's a "bit of an exaggeration".
As an anarchist - most people love the state and love giving it power, rich people just use the power that the masses so eagerly give away.
If you want to know where the power of the SV billionaires comes from, just look in the mirror. Nothing, other than our compliance, makes them that powerful and wealthy.
Do they expect the same things from the billionaires from Saudi Arabia, china, japan etc who have invested in american companies? I was also under the impression that the jet set is generally considered international
How is this a "conspiracy", that post is pointing out how wealthy and powerful people don't have to worry about the long term effects of their actions like their employees do.
The statement about it being different from assumed ability to control things - if that was true then we wouldn't see the farce of anti-trust hearings and it would be ignored like Disney's prepostorus levels of consolidation. The real world is more complicated than those simplistic soundbites and scapegoating as many agents struggle for power. If they really had that level of control the governments would have given up on their moronic backdooring of encryption ideas.
> "Eric Schmidt can [...] ignore the fact that he owned a social network (Youtube) that knowingly hosted radical content and disinformation which would have (in part) caused the civil unrest he’s fleeing from."
Conspiracy is maybe the wrong word, but OP seems to genuinely believe that Schmidt caused the recent civil unrest through his Youtube ownership.
I’m not sure where you read in my comment that I “genuinely believe” that he “caused” the “recent” unrest when I feel like I went to major lengths to paint the situation as a hypothetical scenario that may possibly take place in a hypothetical version of the future. I used a lot of “if” statements and “for example” and future tense, and “as a result of the recent election” (so not relating to this summer’s unrest). I even used so many weasel words like “whether or not that’s his intention” and “true or not” and “what people are seeing”. None of that in any way implies a genuine belief or does it imply I’m speaking about something that actually happened in the past.
I then linked to an article that shows this hypothetical future situation has actually happened in the recent past, billionaires fleeing to safety while their employees suffer and die. If that’s “QAnon levels” of “conspiracy madness” then holy fuck we’re screwed because this has actually happened, and recently, as shown in the article I linked to. And the fact that it actually happened is the reason people assume that’s what he’s doing now... because the same thing actually happened earlier this year with other billionaires.
I mean, I went way out of my way to explicitly avoid comments like this and it seems like you just ignored all of that and read exactly what you wanted to read. That’s not the level of discourse I expect from HN.
Some people might see the ultra wealthy in the USA of late as having taken part in destroying the country and also preparing to leave it, which they can do thanks to their wealth. Pete Thiel and his New Zealand plans are another more explicit example.
People escaping lock downs in jets and boats are annoying, but at least understandable. Given the opportunity to escape to somewhere physically safer, I’d probably do the same thing.
Expatriating your massive wealth to avoid paying taxes makes it feel like they’re performing a smash and grab job on the whole country. Doubly so because the people doing this would still be fantastically wealthy if they stayed and paid their taxes; they’re just doing it to be even richer still.
True, however right now US people can't travel to cyprus due to restrictions. Plus i m not sure why he would want to travel to europe since everything is locked down atm
countries like Malta and Cyprus have plenty schemes under which they attract HNWI's like him. I'm surprised about Cyprus considering Schmidt is from the US which is an odd choice since it's usually Russians and Russian companies that launder their money through Cyprus.
Malta is much more popular among expat Brits and native English speakers and also (still) has a cleaner reputation compared to Cyprus.
Both jurisdictions fill a void that opened when Switzerland agreed to hand over data on US citizens to the USA. Technically Cyprus/Malta too shares data but while the Swiss banking is a lot cleaner now than it was 20 years ago and certainly lot of things are now impossible that places like Nevada, New Mexico etc still allow.
Both Cyprus/Malta have no shortage of crooks dressed as lawyers, accountants, notaries and bankers that will help him bypass the tax-men if he wants to but I strongly doubt that is the reason simply because he has better chances doing that at home. The US is now the biggest tax-haven in the world. It sounds more personal than this.
Maybe he is planning to do business with wealthy Russians (unlikely) maybe he watched Mama-Mia and is now obsessed with the idea of falling in love on a Greek island, or maybe he wants to live in a city that is politically divided as much as his home planet. (Nicosia) /s
cyprus has 12.5% tax (like Ireland) and are not in OECD's tax haven list since many years ago . They also participate in every EU exchange of information programs and audits etc. They aren't even considered cheap compared to other EU low-tax places
FWIW Cyprus is kind of a shithole, so it's not exactly like "buying an expensive home anywhere in the world". These people want the citizenship, not the real estate.
Not that I think there's anything wrong with this, probably half of my friends have these passports. Until recently this was the easiest way for Russians to move to the EU.
It really is, my wives' family has property there thanks to this very citizenship scheme. Sometimes we holiday there because it's literally free, but the place really doesn't have any redeeming qualities.
There's nothing that Cyprus offers that's not done better somewhere else in Europe if you have the money to spend.
Sure, there are worse places out there. But to the Eric Schmidts of the world it firmly falls in the shithole category.
It’s not good or bad it’s whether society as a whole should be bestowing such gifts on banal office administrators, in terms of real daily work.
If they want to leave the nation that built them, it’s America’s wealth; fat tax inbound.
These are normal mortal men.
Believing they can live some decoupled free agent life on humanities tab for their accomplishments which are banal business at the core of it, not novel science, is no different from creating a monarchy and its regents, etc
They are normal men. Not deities. This is the first era where their mess being left behind isn’t just some stone fortresses and a handful of factories. This has been accomplished at great environmental cost.
