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Nope, because they'll just setup a load of shell companies.

• Dahoon 8y ago
  Should there be a limit to how many Shell companies a lord can own?
  • adrianN 8y ago
    You can probably set up a tree of shell companies.
    • Y_Y 8y ago
      The law is sophisticated enough to walk trees, and smart enough to have concepts like "beneficial ownership" where who _actually_ owns something matters, at least in common law.
• ginko 8y ago
  I always wondered if there might be some way to write a law that essentially bans clever financial tricks.
  • dalbasal 8y ago
    Clever? no. Clever is how you get to where we are now. The law(s) that would need to re-written are the core laws that define what a company is, how ownership, liability and such work. These are all clever-complicated. They cross jurisdictions, and enable cascading ownership (companies, owning companies, owning trusts, etc.), each with different (incompatible) rules: tax, reporting & transparency obligations, definitions of terms like profit. They've been complicated constantly for hundreds of years, trying to encourage one things and discourage another, usually for a small picture reason. Most of the "tricks" involve using multiple types of legal "persons" registered in multiple jurisdictions with multiple ownership structures. New laws try to plug certain loopholes, open other ones, or achieve a political or policy goal. This complexity is why it's so hard to do anything with company law.
  • EliRivers 8y ago
    There is, but the trend in US (and UK) law has unfortunately gone down a path that makes this very difficult. The letter of the law is given great weight, no matter the intention of the law. For example, in tax law, the game is to find ways to not actually violate the exact letter of the law. The idea of the spirit of the law has no force; everything has to be precisely outlawed. This, of course, is an infinite game that will never end, and leads to the endless games of shell companies and foreign domiciling and so on and so on; everyone knows that this is not what was intended, but it's what we have. The alternative is to write into law the intentions of the law, and allow subsequent assessment and judgement. Some places do this, and in this way the game of finding ways to ever so slightly dodge the exact wording of the law is a much less fruitful game.
    • dexen 8y ago
      >The letter of the law is given great weight, no matter the intention of the law. You are assigning the responsibility the wrong way around. The letter, and the intent, of the law have two points of interfacing: the point of execution (interpretation by the taxpayers or by the courts of law), and the point of redaction (the lawmakers distilling the intent into actual letter of the law). In case of the letter of the law not representing the intent, we would be much better off assigning the blame to the lawmakers. It is both their primary duty, and also what they have the best tools for. Putting the onus on anybody else than the lawmakers creates perverse incentive to get bribed for sake of writing loopholes into the law. When the lawmakers fail at properly writing the laws, punish the lawmakers: both vote them out, and also have the media launch investigation into possible corruption - the slip-up could very well be intentional.
  • hjk05 8y ago
    There are plenty of laws that are specified in such a way that no matter how you structure your shell companies they still apply. The only way to truely get around that is to start having strawmen owners or unregistered ownership relationships, all of which will get you in trouble with the law.
• reallydontask 8y ago
  I'm not saying that this would work but as a thought experiment: Any entity that buys a house zoned as residential has to pay a tax of 100% of the value of the house. Private citizens get an exemption on this tax, if their main residence of which you can only have one, and are 18 or older. CGT is 100% (Deductions for home improvements could be added) The municipality builds affordable housing The tax would probably need to be gradually increased as it would likely cause a bit of crash on the housing market, say over 10 years. There is an obvious lack of political will to carry out such a measure and I'm sure that there are loads of unintended consequences
  • dalbasal 8y ago
    This is pretty much the same as banning non-resident owners, bit it's formally a punitive tax rate rather than a ban. The problem is still the same problem, rent markets collapse.. so, public housing would have to plug that hole. I think it's important, in the context of public debate, to keep things simple. If an idea approximately transposes into another one... address them as a single idea. I'd catalogue this one under. "Owner-occupancy and public housing only." This is not realistic in most places, but maybe in the context of Berlin it's possible.
  • pintxo 8y ago
    Won’t work. Due to higher property sales taxes here in Germany, any building complex worth more than a couple million is already owned by a shell company. If the building is to be sold, they sell the shell company instead to not have to pay property sales tax. Such a law would simply result in each building be wrapped in a shell company.
  • stale2002 8y ago
    What you are suggesting would result in all renters being kicked out of the city. Now, if you want to live in a city, you have to Shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars. Berlin would only be for the rich, as no renting company would be willing to rent anything to people.
• scotty79 8y ago
  Who cares. You can still tax them progressively on what property descendant companies own.