Should we be highlighting Tax Avoidance too??

sollar

I thought the protests in the UK ( see link) were a breath of fresh air. They are highlighting the Tax Avoidance of big business and individuals. I know this is legal but to my mind is is morally unjust. We could really do with our irish tax avoiders paying their tax in the country they call home (ireland).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8181487/Sir-Philip-Greens-flagship-Topshop-forced-to-close-in-tax-avoidance-protest.html

Do people think this would be a good idea to have similar protests here in this country?

dvpower

...like our CT rate perhaps?

sollar

We coud try something along the lines of what the US has done:

The United States is unlike many other countries in that its citizens and permanent residents are subject to U.S. federal income tax on their worldwide income even if they reside temporarily or permanently outside the United States. U.S. citizens therefore cannot avoid U.S. taxes simply by emigrating. According to Forbes magazine some nationals choose to give up their United States citizenship rather than be subject to the U.S. tax system;[1] however, U.S. citizens who reside (or spend long periods of time) outside the U.S. may be able to exclude some salaried income earned overseas (but not other types of income unless specified in a bilateral tax treaty) from income in computing the U.S. federal income tax. The 2008 limit on the amount that can be excluded was US$87,000.

p1akuw47h5r3it

sollar wrote: »

We coud try something along the lines of what the US has done:

The United States is unlike many other countries in that its citizens and permanent residents are subject to U.S. federal income tax on their worldwide income even if they reside temporarily or permanently outside the United States. U.S. citizens therefore cannot avoid U.S. taxes simply by emigrating. According to Forbes magazine some nationals choose to give up their United States citizenship rather than be subject to the U.S. tax system;[1] however, U.S. citizens who reside (or spend long periods of time) outside the U.S. may be able to exclude some salaried income earned overseas (but not other types of income unless specified in a bilateral tax treaty) from income in computing the U.S. federal income tax. The 2008 limit on the amount that can be excluded was US$87,000.

Would this not be very unfair if a person emigrated for reasons other to avoid tax though?

sollar

DanDan6592 wrote: »

Would this not be very unfair if a person emigrated for reasons other to avoid tax though?

Yeah it could well be, i'm not sure what would be the best way to proceed. But their must be a way of getting irish citizens who mainly live here to pay a fair level of tax much like ordinary workers.

The sort of nonsense of running your tax affairs through holland while living at home in dublin or transfering your irish company into your wife's name and then her claiming residence in monaco or something is just maddening. At the very least these people's names should be up in lights. It stinks to the high heavens imo.

p1akuw47h5r3it

sollar wrote: »

Yeah it could well be, i'm not sure what would be the best way to proceed. But their must be a way of getting irish citizens who mainly live here to pay a fair level of tax much like ordinary workers.

The sort of nonsense of running your tax affairs through holland while living at home in dublin or transfering your irish company into your wife's name and then her claiming residence in monaco or something is just maddening. At the very least these people's names should be up in lights. It stinks to the high heavens imo.

Well ye I guess your right but as I said I don't think taking the american option is a good idea.

I'm just wondering is they're really anything you can do?

I may be wrong about this but isn't it true that if you only live in Ireland for less than 6 months of the year you don't have to pay tax, maybe we could lower the number of months to 3 or 4?

ardmacha

Tax avoidance is legal, if you wish to eliminate it then change the regulation.

ei.sdraob

sollar wrote: »

I thought the protests in the UK

with half of all tax havens being British territories :rolleyes: the hypocrisy

sollar

ei.sdraob wrote: »

with half of all tax havens being British territories :rolleyes: the hypocrisy

What is your opinion on tax avoidance ei.sdraob? Do you think its perfectly acceptable and should continue as is or should it be addressed?

BTW I understand its legal

Rabble Rabble

sollar wrote: »

We coud try something along the lines of what the US has done:

The United States is unlike many other countries in that its citizens and permanent residents are subject to U.S. federal income tax on their worldwide income even if they reside temporarily or permanently outside the United States. U.S. citizens therefore cannot avoid U.S. taxes simply by emigrating. According to Forbes magazine some nationals choose to give up their United States citizenship rather than be subject to the U.S. tax system;[1] however, U.S. citizens who reside (or spend long periods of time) outside the U.S. may be able to exclude some salaried income earned overseas (but not other types of income unless specified in a bilateral tax treaty) from income in computing the U.S. federal income tax. The 2008 limit on the amount that can be excluded was US$87,000.

US citizens are slaves to their government regardless of where they live.

Why is it acceptable that a State can loot it's citizens income or wealth if they get no benefits from it.

Rabble Rabble

dvpower wrote: »

...like our CT rate perhaps?

yeah lets change that :rolleyes:

Rabble Rabble

DanDan6592 wrote: »

Well ye I guess your right but as I said I don't think taking the american option is a good idea.

I'm just wondering is they're really anything you can do?

I may be wrong about this but isn't it true that if you only live in Ireland for less than 6 months of the year you don't have to pay tax, maybe we could lower the number of months to 3 or 4?

what if other countries dont? A german businessman who comes here every two weeks for a week is not going to be taxed twice.

heyjude

Everyone engages in tax avoidance to a greater or lesser scale, for example, if I fill my car with petrol today because I think that its tax rate will be increased in the budget, then I am engaging in tax avoidance or if I buy something now to avoid paying any potential VAT increase, same thing.

I take it that you are referring to various forms of large scale income tax avoidance, but I don't think you'll get too far with shutting this down as the income and assets of our politicians and many of their friends/supporters would be just the type of people you might be referring to and I can't see them closing too many loopholes, without opening a few others to keep the wealthier classes happy.

I have noticed in any discussion of tax paid, the top earners always like to refer to the actual amount paid(which may at times seem high), but they steer away from the percentage of income paid in tax(which could be very low), this serves as the perfect red herring in any discussion on the extent to which individuals will go to avoid tax.

ei.sdraob

sollar wrote: »

What is your opinion on tax avoidance ei.sdraob? Do you think its perfectly acceptable and should continue as is or should it be addressed?

BTW I understand its legal

avoidance is perfectly acceptable
the reason our economy has completely not imploded into the stone age is due to companies avoiding taxes in their home countries, making noise about tax avoidance while having a tax avoidance regime would be hypocritical.
taxes shouldn't be so high in first place as to give anyone a reason to avoid them, the money collected is only wasted on overinflated salaries, banking and public welfare instead of being left to companies/people to spend as they choose, its their money after all.

evasion and fraud on the other hand are illegal and should be punished. Tho as everyone now knows you can run a bank into the ground and drag a country and currency with it and out get to walk away :mad:


we really do have bigger crooks to target in this country with legislation, start with the executives obstructing investigations into Anglo by withholding passwords, Seanie and the Golden Circle and Co

dvpower

Rabble Rabble wrote: »

yeah lets change that :rolleyes:

No way. The tax aviodance opportunities that our CT rate promotes is very valuable to us.

Sleepy

I'd propose two very simple means of rectifying many of the current issues with tax avoidance:

1. Roll back tax individualisation of married couples, making them a single legal entity for tax and financial purposes. This stops the wives being resident in Monaco issue whilst also solving the problem with some of the extremely wealthy individuals that take the piss out of the current system by declaring themselves bankrupt after transferring their wealth into their spouses names.

2. Reduce the number of days that an Irish citizen may spend in the country without paying tax here to a level that would only cover legitimate holidays e.g. 28 days per year.

jimmycrackcorm

sollar wrote: »

I thought the protests in the UK ( see link) were a breath of fresh air. They are highlighting the Tax Avoidance of big business and individuals. I know this is legal but to my mind is is morally unjust. We could really do with our irish tax avoiders paying their tax in the country they call home (ireland).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8181487/Sir-Philip-Greens-flagship-Topshop-forced-to-close-in-tax-avoidance-protest.html

Do people think this would be a good idea to have similar protests here in this country?

And yet no one will protest at the the not far off half billion in tax avoidance in N.I. shopping: http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/cross-border-shoppers-spend-euro418m-136377.html

Even that leads on to personal choices where we as individuals choose to buy foreign produce over Irish produce for price or other reasons. How much better would our economy be if we behaved like the Germans and chose our own produce over others....

ei.sdraob

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

And yet no one will protest at the the not far off half billion in tax avoidance in N.I. shopping: http://www.examiner.ie/ireland/cross-border-shoppers-spend-euro418m-136377.html

Even that leads on to personal choices where we as individuals choose to buy foreign produce over Irish produce for price or other reasons. How much better would our economy be if we behaved like the Germans and chose our own produce over others....

Thats not tax avoidance :rolleyes:

but consumer choice, and free movement of goods and people

the very cornerstone of EU single market


maybe we should build a big wall to keep people in, that worked great for the Germans before :rolleyes:

DoesNotCompute

sollar wrote: »

We coud try something along the lines of what the US has done:

The United States is unlike many other countries in that its citizens and permanent residents are subject to U.S. federal income tax on their worldwide income even if they reside temporarily or permanently outside the United States. U.S. citizens therefore cannot avoid U.S. taxes simply by emigrating. According to Forbes magazine some nationals choose to give up their United States citizenship rather than be subject to the U.S. tax system;[1] however, U.S. citizens who reside (or spend long periods of time) outside the U.S. may be able to exclude some salaried income earned overseas (but not other types of income unless specified in a bilateral tax treaty) from income in computing the U.S. federal income tax. The 2008 limit on the amount that can be excluded was US$87,000.

I have suggested this before on another thread. There are potentially millions of Irish citizens (some of whom have never even set foot in Ireland or have no allegience or interest in the country whatsoever), and have only claimed Irish citizenship (i.e. through a parent or grandparent) so that they can have automatic right of abode in the UK, or so that they can reside in the EU without immigration worries.

If we were to tax all Irish citizens throughout the world regardless of their place of permanent residence (like the US do), we would solve all of our financial problems relatively quickly.

sollar

I wish the same pressure being applied by the media and discussion forums to public service pay was applied to these tax avoiders. If they had that level of attention for a year or two maybe some of them might consider paying their tax here rather than in holland or monaco.

jimmycrackcorm

ei.sdraob wrote: »

Thats not tax avoidance :rolleyes:

but consumer choice, and free movement of goods and people

the very cornerstone of EU single market


maybe we should build a big wall to keep people in, that worked great for the Germans before :rolleyes:

The point being that the government is losing tax revenue from cross border sales. We all know that taxes pay for our services but we choose to avoid it in this case by shopping across the border.

ei.sdraob

jimmycrackcorm wrote: »

The point being that the government is losing tax revenue from cross border sales. We all know that taxes pay for our services but we choose to avoid it in this case by shopping across the border.

You completely ignored and avoided my point that we are both EU members and movement of people, goods and capital are the foundation of EU, theres **** all that you can do about it short of leaving EU and building a wall to hold people back. A united Ireland yeh...

it is not tax avoidance, to call it that is being very disingenuous with your words

face it NI out-competed us, the retailers and the government should learn from it and compete, instead of knee-jerking/moaning and coming up with nonsense like your post

RDM_83 again

DoesNotCompute wrote: »

I have suggested this before on another thread. There are potentially millions of Irish citizens (some of whom have never even set foot in Ireland or have no allegience or interest in the country whatsoever), and have only claimed Irish citizenship (i.e. through a parent or grandparent) so that they can have automatic right of abode in the UK, or so that they can reside in the EU without immigration worries.

If we were to tax all Irish citizens throughout the world regardless of their place of permanent residence (like the US do), we would solve all of our financial problems relatively quickly.

I personally agree about the need to remove tax avoidance, but as somebody born and raised in NI I ask the question how can u implement what you are calling for especially in terms of the GFA,

T runner

sollar wrote: »

I thought the protests in the UK ( see link) were a breath of fresh air. They are highlighting the Tax Avoidance of big business and individuals. I know this is legal but to my mind is is morally unjust. We could really do with our irish tax avoiders paying their tax in the country they call home (ireland).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8181487/Sir-Philip-Greens-flagship-Topshop-forced-to-close-in-tax-avoidance-protest.html

Do people think this would be a good idea to have similar protests here in this country?

Capital gains tax, the Cinderalla Law, DIRT avoidance, Capital transfer scams.... in the last 3 years of the Celtic Tiger the top 450 earners in Ireland cleared 71 billion profit paying on average 15% tax. This amounts to the tax payer being fleeced. Yet there are still those who claim that this class of people should be given free reign as the "wealth creators". FF ideology is alive and well.

Tax loopholes need to be closed and this country needs to function as a Republic for all our citizens. We also need to demand that our wealthiest people start showing a bit of patriotisn towards the country that has provided them with such wealth.