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Germany’s dividend-stripping tax scandal
- mcv 9y agoI'd like to read the article, but instead I constantly get big animations all over the screen. Very distracting. Apparently this is a frivolous topic rather than something serious?
- morsch 9y agoReuters: http://www.reuters.com/article/germany-dividends-idUSL8N1991BN http://www.reuters.com/article/germany-dividends-idUSL8N1991...
- ikornaselur 9y agoYeah, it looked cute once, but every time I scrolled down something was animating. It was really distracting. I don't see a good reason behind animating every number from 0.
- beberlei 9y agoIt is an infographic encompassing an article, which sadly I can't find translated to english on the site.
- hrktb 9y agoThis should have been an animated video with the explanation narrated. They did 90% of the work, just needs someone for the voice over.
- marcosdumay 9y agoYeah. I still managed to read the english part. Painfully and slowly, and only because the subject looked really interesting. If they just added a voice over and changed the format they would finally ensure that I wouldn't watch it, what seems to be the goal.
- bolololo12 9y agoNot a smaller scandal was former Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk (now President of the European Council) reform to move money saved on privately owned pension accounts called OFE (OFE invested peoples money into obligations and bonds) to the public pension system - circa 151 billion PLN, so around 40 billion USD. link: http://www.money.pl/gospodarka/raporty/artykul/skok;na;pieniadze;z;ofe;rzad;zabiera;nam;150;miliardow;zlotych,14,0,1375502.html http://www.money.pl/gospodarka/raporty/artykul/skok;na;pieni...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bgarbiak 9y agoI don't want to start a political dispute over here, but the private pension funds scheme is a theft by itself. The country transfers money over to these pension funds, and by doing that it raises it's own debt. Now it has to sell bonds to cover that debt. That bonds are being bought by the very same funds. Country will have to buy them back, but with a loss. In the end: the profit on that pension funds is, in fact, funded by the citizens themselves. The only beneficiaries are the funds themselves, as they got the margins, and take a some sickly huge commission. In short: it was an unpopular but wise decision by the former Polish gov to stop this scam. I believe that the current government is going further into that direction. Also a good move.
- bolololo12 9y agogovernment pension funds are not a smaller scam. Enough to say they constantly raise the age at which you can start collecting your pensions and return you small % before you die. So privately owned funds, even if they have massive commissions, still return back more than the government. The government introduced this type of investing in Poland in the reform in 1999 and in 2014 just didn't buy back obligations which were bought using peoples money.
- charlesdm 9y ago> BERLIN, June 22 German banks exploited a legal loophole that allowed two parties to claim ownership of the same shares, the financial watchdog will tell lawmakers this week, in schemes that could have cost the state billions of euros in tax over many years. ZEIT: "The Multibillion Euro Theft". To call it theft then, is a bit ridiculous. It was a loophole. There are loopholes everywhere. If lawmakers would make proper laws (isn't that part of their responsibility?), and took sufficient time to think them through, a lot less loopholes would exist. Unless they're put there by design, of course.
- jstanley 9y agoMost loopholes allow you simply to pay less tax than you might otherwise owe. This loophole seemingly allows you to take back more than you paid in the first place. This is theft.
- charlesdm 9y agoOr a tax break. If you get an R&D cash subsidy from the government, is that theft? If it's possible within the boundaries of the law, it isn't theft. It's a design flaw (and one certain politicians should definitely be held accountable for, for sure!)
- kurthr 9y agoIf you tried to double count R&D spending with a subsidiary and request both tax credits in excess of your liabilities, then yes... I'd say you still owe taxes, interest and penalties. That is what the article is about, claiming the same tax rebate for the legal fiction that there are 2 simultaneous owners of a stock due to a short sale. If you allow that, why not let me sell your short sale short, and then sell that short so that there are 8,16, or 32Billion rebates to be had. Legal fiction is the key... and yes, they let lobbyists rewrite the law promising they wouldn't exploit the new one, but they were caught doing it again (on the excluded foreign accounts).
- stupidcar 9y agoNo, no, no. Fuck that. I cannot understand this kind of sociopathic attitude to morality, even on Hacker News. Theft is a social and moral concept. Right and wrong are not defined purely by what's legal. The law is just a (flawed) attempt to codify a society's moral consensus, not an excuse for individuals or organisations to abdicate all personal moral judgement. If a child in a nursery grabs away another child's juice box for themselves, they haven't broken any law, but it's still theft. If an autocratic government passes a law allowing it to seize the assets of a minority group, it's still theft. If a bank exploits legal loopholes to take billions of taxpayer's money, it's theft, regardless of whether it's legal.
- runj__ 9y agoThe very first number is incorrect isn't it? €3,100,000,000 != 31.8 billion
- VMG 9y agoMaybe related to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales
- beaconstudios 9y agoit's actually due to a missing 0 and a misplaced comma.
- atemerev 9y agoIf theft is involuntary taking of other people's money, then tax is theft. Employing every legal trick to minimize taxes is moral and encouraged.
- Bjartr 9y agoSome pay taxes voluntarily.
- kaffeemitsahne 9y agoJust like governments have a monopoly on violence, they also (somewhat consequentially) have a monopoly on theft. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_on_violence
- beaconstudios 9y agobasing states' moral rights on the monopoly of violence (instead of secondary concerns like avoiding the tragedy of the commons and establishing a baseline living standard) opens the door to justifying pretty much any violent state action. Governments having a monopoly on violence means they technically have a monopoly on genocide too, but that doesn't mean it's morally acceptable.
- golergka 9y agoThis article obscures the most important question you can have about this: was it legal, or wasn't it? You can have as many ethical systems as you want and call it "evil" or not depending on your opinion. But you don't have multiple law systems (in a single country) and call it "theft" or "legal loophole" depending on what mood you're on. It's either one or another.
- MagnumOpus 9y agoYet to be determined I guess. Cum-ex wasn't explicitly mentioned as forbidden between 1992 and 2011, cum-cum wasn't forbidden until 2016. In my absolute layman's opinion cum-cum trickery might have been legal unless forbidden, but cum-ex sounds more like fraud than exploiting loopholes - and the state has sued all the people and organisations involved starting from 2014 - looking for tax evasion and fraud convictions...
- nenekino 9y ago>What the state could have done with €31.8 billion: >Covered the costs of the refugees who came to Germany over more than one year. Yeah... why spend it on the citizens, right
- smoyer 9y agoIt's a small crime - the real crime is this web-site! These developers were the same ones who thought combining <blink> and <marquee> was a good idea in the '90s.
- glenneroo 9y agoNot to mention the discrepancy in the first graphic (which clogged up the screen with dropping money bags for 15 seconds): > Total amount lost by the state due to the tricks: at least €3,100,000,000 (31.8 billion) So which is it? 3.1 billion or 31.8 billion? It's not a minor difference! Also, does anyone else have extreme difficulty reading text while an animated gif taking up 1/4th of the screen constantly loops? I usually scroll until the gif is off-screen so that I can continue reading. In this case it's impossible because there are multiple gifs per page so I can't scroll in any direction.
- tveita 9y agoIt now says "€31,800,000,000 (31.8 billion)", so presumably the latter.
- jahnu 9y agoLooks fine to me in Lynx
- smoyer 9y agoI Only Regret That I Have But One Upvote to Give
- willvarfar 9y agoI thought the 'ka-ching' effect and animations really effective. My sample is small, but people in the office (who are not techies) all found it engaging and actually read the damn thing, and they don't normally read links I forward. Maybe the action keeps them interested? None are German.
- Joe-Z 9y agoI don't get the number of people here commenting 'this isn't theft' and they're just exploiting legal loopholes. Yes, you may be able to justify this legally, but it is a morally highly questionable behaviour nonetheless. I mean jesus, aren't many people on here some kind of intellectual elite? And these are the people that argue FOR the ones fucking over the general populace for their personal gain? This kind of shit has to stop and we should be the people stepping in for the little man. Unless of course you dream of one day profitting from the same anti-social tax-evasion bullshit.
- VMG 9y ago> Yes, you may be able to justify this legally, but it is a morally highly questionable behaviour nonetheless. Same goes for taxation itself. Many in this thread will argue that it cannot be theft since it is legal, which is absurd.
- gambiting 9y agoThe notion that tax is theft is absurd.
- vertex-four 9y agoNo, not because it's legal - because it's collectively agreed upon to be a necessary thing. That it's legal is a result of that - you're mixing cause and effect.
- VMG 9y agoThe idea that collective agreement dictates morals is flawed and dangerous.
- vertex-four 9y agoAnd the idea that only individual rights matter, and that people don't have a duty to others, is also flawed and dangerous. As with pretty much everything else, the solution is somewhere in the middle that doesn't suit extremist slogans very well.
- VMG 9y ago> What the state could have done with €31.8 billion If we start with these sorts of calculations, why not set the tax rate to 100%? Apparently the taxed populace doesn't ever do anything worthwhile with their money.
- kagamine 9y agoRemind me to overcharge you if ever I serve you in a shop. When you complain that with that extra $n you have done some thing, I'll point you back to that comment.
- aszantu 9y agoAs a poor person, I'd like one cum cum pls orders
- lordnacho 9y agoWhile I do think the rules should be fixed, I don't think it's fair to call it theft. They do have lawyers to make sure it's legal. There are desks at banks whose entire reason for existence it tax arbitrage. It's not really a great use of people's education and time, but it's real and it's legal. I don't know the specifics of how it's done, but I do know these desks exist. There was another case in Denmark where the tax department basically neglected to check that the claimants actually owned the shares and just sent them a huge amount of withheld dividend tax. The underlying issue is that the rules can be gamed, but only by entities who can pay for the professionals who understand them. There's gotta be a smarter way to arrange the tax system.
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoIf I Pay lobbyists to change the law in my favor, at the expense of the tax payer, and then I do something like this. It is correct to say its legal? Yes it is. Is it correct to call it Moral, ethical, decent, good for society thing to do? No! Do things like this appeal to the Randian Masterbatory section of the HN "Libertarian" on here? Yes it does sadly. Its clear that "loophole" exploitation that lobbyists create is an issue. Perhaps analysis software could be created to counter balance this global gaming issue.
- throwawaymanbot 9y agoThere is a better way probably, but we will never know it, because I'm sure that lobbyists have been paid to buy and pay for the politicians who will never implement it.
- verinus 9y agoThere is something in Law that is the sprit of the law and if you use loopholes you clearly understand the intent of the law and decide to abuse it for you personal gain- and I think of this as theft...
- once-in-a-while 9y agoSince our States betrayed us in many ways, it's slowly becoming almost criminal to still pay the taxes to support them. And this is not an exaggeration. I know what I'm speaking of.
- philipps 9y agoGreat long-form reporting about the case in German (minus gifs) > http://www.zeit.de/2017/24/cum-ex-steuerbetrug-steuererstattungen-ermittlungen/komplettansicht http://www.zeit.de/2017/24/cum-ex-steuerbetrug-steuererstatt...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]