I wonder if there's "tax evasion as a service". Register for the service, pass all your income to that company, get paid as its employee at a much smaller tax rate than your country.
I think that some countries make that impossible for physical persons, though.
It is not tax evasion; this money has probably already been taxed at least once. But the USA is very unique in making tax claims on world-wide income, so if the tax rate abroad is lower than the tax rate at home, you are supposed to pay the difference when you move the money back (the converse isn't true, however).
Relying on the exceptionally thin cover that an action is technically not illegal because it's in conformance with the laws you've paid to have written and passed with the wealth you're hoarding by way of those very laws is not a very intelligent line of reasoning to pursue.
The art of legal and financial manipulation to socialize losses, privatize profits, to artificially move transactions to jurisdictions with favorable tax laws, and then lobby for eventual tax holidays to allow for tax-free repatriation of those funds may fall within the techncial gloss of "legal". It's not moral, ethical, fair, nor economically or democratically defensible.
Self-reply: Having watched votes on this comment bounce around quite a bit over the past few hours, I'm curious as to just what it is that seems to engender a fairly strong split of opinion on what I've written here.
It might be true for some of it, but all these companies are well known for using european tax codes loopholes[0] and pay little to no tax on this money
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I wonder if there's "tax evasion as a service". Register for the service, pass all your income to that company, get paid as its employee at a much smaller tax rate than your country.
I think that some countries make that impossible for physical persons, though.
It is not tax evasion; this money has probably already been taxed at least once. But the USA is very unique in making tax claims on world-wide income, so if the tax rate abroad is lower than the tax rate at home, you are supposed to pay the difference when you move the money back (the converse isn't true, however).
Relying on the exceptionally thin cover that an action is technically not illegal because it's in conformance with the laws you've paid to have written and passed with the wealth you're hoarding by way of those very laws is not a very intelligent line of reasoning to pursue.
The art of legal and financial manipulation to socialize losses, privatize profits, to artificially move transactions to jurisdictions with favorable tax laws, and then lobby for eventual tax holidays to allow for tax-free repatriation of those funds may fall within the techncial gloss of "legal". It's not moral, ethical, fair, nor economically or democratically defensible.
Self-reply: Having watched votes on this comment bounce around quite a bit over the past few hours, I'm curious as to just what it is that seems to engender a fairly strong split of opinion on what I've written here.
It might be true for some of it, but all these companies are well known for using european tax codes loopholes[0] and pay little to no tax on this money
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Irish_arrangement
iirc there was also something called the Dutch Sandwich that was recently made unavailable.
It's still not tax evasion.
Sorry, s/evasion/minimization/.
It's not tax evasion.