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Privacy is for things you do in private. Forming a corporation is necessarily public because a corporation is a creation of the state, and therefore everyone's

Privacy is for things you do in private. Forming a corporation is necessarily public because a corporation is a creation of the state, and therefore everyone's business.

bcheung 8y ago
Why is it everyone's business? Nevada, Wyoming, Delaware, and New Mexico are states and they all have varying degrees of privacy options for corporations by design. Only public companies should be required to be public IMO. So would you also say that self-employed people shouldn't have the same rights as employed people? Unless everyone should have all their financial and employment records public then this is a double standard. I don't think employees would be too happy if everyone can see where they worked, for how long, and how much they made at every job.
- vidarh 8y ago
  Self-employed people by definition are not working for a corporation. If they worked for a corporation, they would be employees, even if they also were the sole owner of that corporation, as the corporation is a separate legal person.
  - bcheung 8y ago
    Many self-employed people use corporations as their chosen entity structure.
    - vidarh 8y ago
      Then they're not self-employed. They're employed by their corporation. They may be "self-employed" in a social sense, but they'd not legally be considered self-employed in any jurisdiction where I know how it works. E.g. I used a limited company in the UK to employ myself. For the purposes of everything relevant, I'm an employee of that company, as well as a director, and the sole owner, and the relevant records are publicly available because I chose to form a corporation. Socially I might have been "self employed" but legally I'd explicitly chosen not to be because the benefits I got from that outweigh the downsides. If I didn't want to reveal that information, I had the choice to operate as a sole proprietor without forming a company.
      - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
        > but they'd not legally be considered self-employed in any jurisdiction where I know how it works In the U.S., most self employed persons contract for their entities. They are not employees of the entity. The entity may, for tax purposes, be a disregarded entity. This may be a quibble of a jurisdictional nature.
        vidarh 8y ago
        The point remains, relative to the original issue, in that whether or not information is public generally is related to your choice to be the owner or director of a corporation, not to your employment arrangements. If you choose to insert your own corporation in between, you're electing to accept the trade-offs of increased transparency because of the advantages it brings. I've contracted for US corporations both with and without a self-owned corporation in between.
      - bcheung 8y ago
        This is my point. Why is there a double standard against business owners? As an individual everyone agrees privacy is important. As soon as that same person is a business owner, then they don't have the same rights?
        Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
        Because corporations exist purely to establish trust. Depending on where you live, I don't believe there's much stopping a group of people getting together and offering services, they can do so anonymously if they want. However, when you incorporate you do so specifically to register your "group" with the government so that people dealing with you know you're operating legitimately, following laws etc. It's about trust, trust is inherently not anonymous.
        TangoTrotFox 8y ago
        People do not incorporate so others know you're "operating legitimately." Incorporation is required for legally formalizing ownership structures, separating your own assets from company assets, getting your employer identification number (which, in turn, is necessary to hire people), get a business banking account for the operation, clarifying tax/expensing factors, and numerous other business related reasons. While I'm sure somebody somewhere has incorporated for trust, but that's a very obscure reason. It's certainly not "the specific reason for incorporation." It also doesn't even make any sense. One of the benefits of incorporation is to minimize the recourse available to customers - namely in that your personal assets cannot be touched. Somebody operating an unincorporated business is exposing themselves to unlimited liability if they run afoul of anything.
- jasonvorhe 8y ago
  Afaik Sweden is pretty transparent in that regard and it's completely normal to be able to check the employment status and income of other swedish citizens.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    Norway too, leading to yearly "fishing expeditions" for newspapers writing about what celebrities earned and paid in tax. The justification for this in Norway at least was that it's considered a social concern whether or not you pay your taxes, and that it was considered important that people should be able to trust that people around them also contribute. But it's arguably shifted quite significantly in balance now that it's possible to look up online (and various restrictions have accordingly been put into place) vs. before when you used to have to go to the tax office and look it up in physical books - the latter took care of the public interest aspect while making it too cumbersome for people to do just to satisfy random curiosity (e.g. before it went online, I don't think I knew anyone who had ever bothered; afterwards "everyone" has probably looked up someone).
AdamM12 8y ago
I believe Emma Watson was caught up in this as she had an LLC to obscure her ownership in a flat in London so she could avoid stalkers and thus violence. There are legitimate uses for obscuring the ownership of a legal entity. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/emma-watson-panama-papers-database-the-reasons-behind-setting-up-an-offshore-account-a7026076.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/emma-watson-panama...
- gnu8 8y ago
  Suppose Emma Watson starts dealing heroin, and the state wants to seize her assets. Does she have the right to hide her assets to protect herself from the violence of the state, or only fans?
  - AdamM12 8y ago
    subpoena.
- ebikelaw 8y ago
  That's a good reason why a court could order that an LLC be allowed to mask its ownership, but not a good reason why all LLCs should be allowed to do so as a blanket policy.
  - AdamM12 8y ago
    Privacy is a right not endowed by the state so why would the court be the one to decide before the fact?

Privacy is for things you do in private. Forming a corporation is necessarily public because a corporation is a creation of the state, and therefore everyone's business.

bcheung 8y ago

Why is it everyone's business? Nevada, Wyoming, Delaware, and New Mexico are states and they all have varying degrees of privacy options for corporations by design. Only public companies should be required to be public IMO. So would you also say that self-employed people shouldn't have the same rights as employed people? Unless everyone should have all their financial and employment records public then this is a double standard. I don't think employees would be too happy if everyone can see where they worked, for how long, and how much they made at every job.

vidarh 8y ago
Self-employed people by definition are not working for a corporation. If they worked for a corporation, they would be employees, even if they also were the sole owner of that corporation, as the corporation is a separate legal person.
- bcheung 8y ago
  Many self-employed people use corporations as their chosen entity structure.
  - vidarh 8y ago
    Then they're not self-employed. They're employed by their corporation. They may be "self-employed" in a social sense, but they'd not legally be considered self-employed in any jurisdiction where I know how it works. E.g. I used a limited company in the UK to employ myself. For the purposes of everything relevant, I'm an employee of that company, as well as a director, and the sole owner, and the relevant records are publicly available because I chose to form a corporation. Socially I might have been "self employed" but legally I'd explicitly chosen not to be because the benefits I got from that outweigh the downsides. If I didn't want to reveal that information, I had the choice to operate as a sole proprietor without forming a company.
    - JumpCrisscross 8y ago
      > but they'd not legally be considered self-employed in any jurisdiction where I know how it works In the U.S., most self employed persons contract for their entities. They are not employees of the entity. The entity may, for tax purposes, be a disregarded entity. This may be a quibble of a jurisdictional nature.
      - vidarh 8y ago
        The point remains, relative to the original issue, in that whether or not information is public generally is related to your choice to be the owner or director of a corporation, not to your employment arrangements. If you choose to insert your own corporation in between, you're electing to accept the trade-offs of increased transparency because of the advantages it brings. I've contracted for US corporations both with and without a self-owned corporation in between.
    - bcheung 8y ago
      This is my point. Why is there a double standard against business owners? As an individual everyone agrees privacy is important. As soon as that same person is a business owner, then they don't have the same rights?
      - Benjamin_Dobell 8y ago
        Because corporations exist purely to establish trust. Depending on where you live, I don't believe there's much stopping a group of people getting together and offering services, they can do so anonymously if they want. However, when you incorporate you do so specifically to register your "group" with the government so that people dealing with you know you're operating legitimately, following laws etc. It's about trust, trust is inherently not anonymous.
        TangoTrotFox 8y ago
        People do not incorporate so others know you're "operating legitimately." Incorporation is required for legally formalizing ownership structures, separating your own assets from company assets, getting your employer identification number (which, in turn, is necessary to hire people), get a business banking account for the operation, clarifying tax/expensing factors, and numerous other business related reasons. While I'm sure somebody somewhere has incorporated for trust, but that's a very obscure reason. It's certainly not "the specific reason for incorporation." It also doesn't even make any sense. One of the benefits of incorporation is to minimize the recourse available to customers - namely in that your personal assets cannot be touched. Somebody operating an unincorporated business is exposing themselves to unlimited liability if they run afoul of anything.
jasonvorhe 8y ago
Afaik Sweden is pretty transparent in that regard and it's completely normal to be able to check the employment status and income of other swedish citizens.
- vidarh 8y ago
  Norway too, leading to yearly "fishing expeditions" for newspapers writing about what celebrities earned and paid in tax. The justification for this in Norway at least was that it's considered a social concern whether or not you pay your taxes, and that it was considered important that people should be able to trust that people around them also contribute. But it's arguably shifted quite significantly in balance now that it's possible to look up online (and various restrictions have accordingly been put into place) vs. before when you used to have to go to the tax office and look it up in physical books - the latter took care of the public interest aspect while making it too cumbersome for people to do just to satisfy random curiosity (e.g. before it went online, I don't think I knew anyone who had ever bothered; afterwards "everyone" has probably looked up someone).

AdamM12 8y ago

I believe Emma Watson was caught up in this as she had an LLC to obscure her ownership in a flat in London so she could avoid stalkers and thus violence. There are legitimate uses for obscuring the ownership of a legal entity. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/emma-watson-panama-papers-database-the-reasons-behind-setting-up-an-offshore-account-a7026076.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/emma-watson-panama...

gnu8 8y ago
Suppose Emma Watson starts dealing heroin, and the state wants to seize her assets. Does she have the right to hide her assets to protect herself from the violence of the state, or only fans?
- AdamM12 8y ago
  subpoena.
ebikelaw 8y ago
That's a good reason why a court could order that an LLC be allowed to mask its ownership, but not a good reason why all LLCs should be allowed to do so as a blanket policy.
- AdamM12 8y ago
  Privacy is a right not endowed by the state so why would the court be the one to decide before the fact?