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On August 04 2015 06:23 Incognoto wrote:
prevent people from leaving the country by law? social sanctions?
people are free to do what they want.. it's called "liberté". if they want to leave, what's wrong with that?
if you don't want people to leave then make the place nice for them. it's the people who are important, not the government who taxes them..
And the country is also free to make law to link the fact that you pay your tax with your citizenship... That's also liberté.
If you want to leave, then leave, but accept the fact that the society doesn't want you in return. The society is a collective, if you don't take your part in it, I don't see why the society should cherish you.
Let's take an exemple : our tennis national team players are presented as heroes, when none of them pay their taxes in France - but still profit from our public services, education and such. People should just spit on them.
By the way, I think it's already the case more or less in the US : not paying your taxes in the US means you have to forsaken your citizenship. Maybe a US poster can enlight us on this.
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On August 04 2015 06:23 Incognoto wrote:
prevent people from leaving the country by law? social sanctions?
people are free to do what they want.. it's called "liberté". if they want to leave, what's wrong with that?
if you don't want people to leave then make the place nice for them. it's the people who are important, not the government who taxes them..
I think the idea is more of
You can leave if you want to. but if you take your money with you then you are going to pay heavily for it.
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i don't think fiscal evasion is a good thing.
nor do i care about sports or watch any of that
i don't think that the government should be entitled to impede on people's freedom in the name of "society".
if you leave the country then you should be allowed to take your private property with you. that money is yours, do what you want with it. it's not society's. as long as you pay fair taxes then the rest of the cash is yours.
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On August 04 2015 06:34 Incognoto wrote:
i don't think fiscal evasion is a good thing.
nor do i care about sports or watch any of that
i don't think that the government should be entitled to impede on people's freedom in the name of "society".
if you leave the country then you should be allowed to take your private property with you. that money is yours, do what you want with it. it's not society's. as long as you pay fair taxes then the rest of the cash is yours.
We agree, but if you want to leave, you leave. That's it.
You can't pay your tax in switzerland and play for the french national team like they're all doing. You can't pay your taxes in the US and have all the french public media doing publicity for you : we should acknowledge the fact that participating in the society is important and should reward people that are actually doing that.
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On August 04 2015 06:31 Gorsameth wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 06:23 Incognoto wrote:
prevent people from leaving the country by law? social sanctions?
people are free to do what they want.. it's called "liberté". if they want to leave, what's wrong with that?
if you don't want people to leave then make the place nice for them. it's the people who are important, not the government who taxes them.. I think the idea is more of You can leave if you want to. but if you take your money with you then you are going to pay heavily for it.
And I can tell you that it isn't working for Brazil, and a similar (but more severe) policy is turning out to be downright disastrous for Venezuela and Argentina.
The problem is that if you tell someone his money will stay there when he leaves, he will simply not invest. Given that most of the economy in the modern world runs on a global level, that means you miss out on pretty much everything.
I will give Brazil as an example, because I happen to know it fairly well. Brazil has insane import taxes (100% or more on almost all commercial goods), meant to stimulate internal production. It does do that, and that is the good side. The bad side is that it is completely unsustainable. A car here costs about double it does in Mexico, while the car is BUILT in Brazil. Simply because in Brazil it doesn't actually have to compete with foreign cars. Now you'd think that this was great for Brazil, but it is perversely not true: Ford, GM, VW, Honda and a whole host of other car manufacturers have set up factories in Brazil, partially enticed by this lucrative market, and partially by amazing tax deals with the government. However, virtually all the important work is done elsewhere, or foreign engineers are brought in to come and do that (who live here for a little while, and then leave again. I should know, I'm one of those foreign engineers, albeit not in the car industry).
Now don't worry, Brazil also has a policy in place to stop private money from leaving the country (although multinationals are probably exempt; as an expat I have a far easier time shipping money out of the country, and I can assure you that my own company is not wondering how to get the profits back home). It isn't nearly as strict as it is for Argentina, where you are basically screwed if you ever want to leave with your money (an expat friend of mine almost had to leave his money behind).
What does this mean for Argentina? Virtually all foreign investment has stopped. There are no dollars in the country, so if you want to go on holiday to Argentina, take USD with you and exchange them on the street for between double and triple the official exchange rate (yeah, the black market exchange rate fluctuates differently from the official one, being more closely linked to supply and demand). More problematically, this lack of foreign trade has not caused internal job creation, it has simply led to a lack of stuff. There isn't a booming Argentinean luxury goods industry. The only advanced industries in Argentina are heavily subsidized by the government. Hopefully their recent oil boom will help them out in that regard.
Now I'm not opposed to some protectionism, and I actually think Brazil has hit the right level on a number of their policies (for instance, there's a flat 6% tax on any foreign transaction, which fucks me over, but is actually quite fair). But it has far-reaching consequences that make the sentence "if you make money in country X, it stays there" completely absurd.
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On August 04 2015 06:40 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 06:34 Incognoto wrote:
i don't think fiscal evasion is a good thing.
nor do i care about sports or watch any of that
i don't think that the government should be entitled to impede on people's freedom in the name of "society".
if you leave the country then you should be allowed to take your private property with you. that money is yours, do what you want with it. it's not society's. as long as you pay fair taxes then the rest of the cash is yours. We agree, but if you want to leave, you leave. That's it. You can't pay your tax in switzerland and play for the french national team like they're all doing. You can't pay your taxes in the US and have all the french public media doing publicity for you : we should acknowledge the fact that participating in the society is important and should reward people that are actually doing that.
I left Holland. I am not building up my government pension fund, I am not entitled to Dutch medical care and there are a whole host of services for RESIDENTS that I will have to do without. I don't pay tax in The Netherlands, because I don't earn any money there. But I am still Dutch. If I was any good at football, I would be allowed to play for the national team.
Your mixing up of residency and citizenship is just plain pathetic. You can choose to hate on your national team, but all of them are French citizens.
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On August 04 2015 06:23 WhiteDog wrote:
By the way, I think it's already the case more or less in the US : not paying your taxes in the US means you have to forsaken your citizenship. Maybe a US poster can enlight us on this.
No, you'll just go to prison for fraud.
You can choose to renounce your US citizenship if you really want. All things considered, it isn't really a good idea. US tax law is rather generous these days, especially compared to those in France. The few people who renounce their citizenship go live in tax havens like Singapore or Hong Kong.
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On August 04 2015 08:23 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 06:23 WhiteDog wrote:
By the way, I think it's already the case more or less in the US : not paying your taxes in the US means you have to forsaken your citizenship. Maybe a US poster can enlight us on this. No, you'll just go to prison for fraud. You can choose to renounce your US citizenship if you really want. All things considered, it isn't really a good idea. US tax law is rather generous these days, especially compared to those in France. The few people who renounce their citizenship go live in tax havens like Singapore or Hong Kong.
US tax law is punitive for rich persons living abroad, but for normal persons abroad it is fine. There is a significant amount of people who renounce their citizenship because the US is one of the only countries that taxes income earned abroad by citizens living abroad.
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On August 04 2015 08:47 cLutZ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 08:23 LegalLord wrote:On August 04 2015 06:23 WhiteDog wrote:
By the way, I think it's already the case more or less in the US : not paying your taxes in the US means you have to forsaken your citizenship. Maybe a US poster can enlight us on this. No, you'll just go to prison for fraud. You can choose to renounce your US citizenship if you really want. All things considered, it isn't really a good idea. US tax law is rather generous these days, especially compared to those in France. The few people who renounce their citizenship go live in tax havens like Singapore or Hong Kong. US tax law is punitive for rich persons living abroad, but for normal persons abroad it is fine. There is a significant amount of people who renounce their citizenship because the US is one of the only countries that taxes income earned abroad by citizens living abroad.
And imho this makes no sense at all, unless it has really weird tax treaties. Firstly, without said tax treaties, it has no real way of knowing what someone's income is abroad: in my case, the Brazilian government does not go and tell the Dutch government how much I earned, so even if they wanted to, they couldn´t charge me income tax. Secondly, there has to be some system in place to prevent you from paying double income tax: it would be ridiculous to pay income tax over your salary to both your country of residency and some (all?) countries you are a citizen off. You only earned the money once, so you should only be taxed once.
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Everyone talks about tax evasion but that's not the only problem with high income taxes. The higher the income tax, the lower the incentive to work at the margin.
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If you believe business are a collective of people then doesn't that make business's people?
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On August 04 2015 08:23 LegalLord wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 06:23 WhiteDog wrote:
By the way, I think it's already the case more or less in the US : not paying your taxes in the US means you have to forsaken your citizenship. Maybe a US poster can enlight us on this. No, you'll just go to prison for fraud. You can choose to renounce your US citizenship if you really want. All things considered, it isn't really a good idea. US tax law is rather generous these days, especially compared to those in France. The few people who renounce their citizenship go live in tax havens like Singapore or Hong Kong.
Rofl.. I have a friend who did that (he grew up here and allways lived here, i think he was once on a 2 week trip in the US and thats about it).
Denouncing US-Citizenship or getting away from the IRS was mindblowingly difficult and annoying to do.
Many people don't do it because doing it is actually not easy.
And saying it is fine is just stupid. I get Whiteknights Argument about Tennis Players (which were trained and built by the French Tennis association) but having to pay taxes in 2 countries just because for some random reason you got 2 passports/nationalities is a bit "strange"..
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On August 04 2015 09:09 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 08:47 cLutZ wrote:On August 04 2015 08:23 LegalLord wrote:On August 04 2015 06:23 WhiteDog wrote:
By the way, I think it's already the case more or less in the US : not paying your taxes in the US means you have to forsaken your citizenship. Maybe a US poster can enlight us on this. No, you'll just go to prison for fraud. You can choose to renounce your US citizenship if you really want. All things considered, it isn't really a good idea. US tax law is rather generous these days, especially compared to those in France. The few people who renounce their citizenship go live in tax havens like Singapore or Hong Kong. US tax law is punitive for rich persons living abroad, but for normal persons abroad it is fine. There is a significant amount of people who renounce their citizenship because the US is one of the only countries that taxes income earned abroad by citizens living abroad. And imho this makes no sense at all, unless it has really weird tax treaties. Firstly, without said tax treaties, it has no real way of knowing what someone's income is abroad: in my case, the Brazilian government does not go and tell the Dutch government how much I earned, so even if they wanted to, they couldn´t charge me income tax. Secondly, there has to be some system in place to prevent you from paying double income tax: it would be ridiculous to pay income tax over your salary to both your country of residency and some (all?) countries you are a citizen off. You only earned the money once, so you should only be taxed once.
On August 04 2015 09:16 warding wrote:
Everyone talks about tax evasion but that's not the only problem with high income taxes. The higher the income tax, the lower the incentive to work at the margin.
Indeed; that's why it's frightful to see that France is so confiscatory with the way it imposes taxes on the working class.
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The major problem with being a US Citizen outside of the USA, right now, isn't the tax situation. That only hits a chunk of expats. No, the serious problem is simply getting a bank account in the first place. The US Government passed a law called FACTA and it's caused expats nothing but headaches. Having a single US Citizen as a bank client will pretty much force the bank to turn over all of its books to the US Government. The US broke the Swiss bank secrecy via this law, mostly as they'd have simply shut the Swiss banks completely out of the US Market if they didn't.
It really didn't produce much money for the Feds, but it made a lot of people's lives harder and gave them a lot of information about people that they really had no need to have.
And the Double Taxation is more of a problem by the country you're working in. In some, once the high write off is met, you're looking at near 100% tax levels. But that issue has been around for a good long while.
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On August 04 2015 07:47 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 06:40 WhiteDog wrote:On August 04 2015 06:34 Incognoto wrote:
i don't think fiscal evasion is a good thing.
nor do i care about sports or watch any of that
i don't think that the government should be entitled to impede on people's freedom in the name of "society".
if you leave the country then you should be allowed to take your private property with you. that money is yours, do what you want with it. it's not society's. as long as you pay fair taxes then the rest of the cash is yours. We agree, but if you want to leave, you leave. That's it. You can't pay your tax in switzerland and play for the french national team like they're all doing. You can't pay your taxes in the US and have all the french public media doing publicity for you : we should acknowledge the fact that participating in the society is important and should reward people that are actually doing that. I left Holland. I am not building up my government pension fund, I am not entitled to Dutch medical care and there are a whole host of services for RESIDENTS that I will have to do without. I don't pay tax in The Netherlands, because I don't earn any money there. But I am still Dutch. If I was any good at football, I would be allowed to play for the national team. Your mixing up of residency and citizenship is just plain pathetic. You can choose to hate on your national team, but all of them are French citizens.
Don't cry too much please I'm not talking about you. And I don't consider them french at all. They're parasite.
And saying it is fine is just stupid. I get Whiteknights Argument about Tennis Players (which were trained and built by the French Tennis association) but having to pay taxes in 2 countries just because for some random reason you got 2 passports/nationalities is a bit "strange"..
For some random reasons ? What's the random reason that forces you to live in Switzerland and get Switzerland's passports when with the french citizenship you can already go there and live there since it's in the Schenghen treaty ? Let's be clear, there is no random reasons, they are there to pay less taxes, not because they like Geneve.
On August 04 2015 09:32 Sermokala wrote:
If you believe business are a collective of people then doesn't that make business's people?
When a group of people pass the ball together and end up making a goal, we don't call the goal a "people". I never said collective of people, I said collective, of behaviors, of labor, of desires, etc.
On August 04 2015 09:16 warding wrote:
Everyone talks about tax evasion but that's not the only problem with high income taxes. The higher the income tax, the lower the incentive to work at the margin.
Thankfully the richest barely work at all to earn their money. More realistically, this argument is also flawed and has been proved wrong by empirical studies. The incentive to work more or less just disappear after a certain level of revenue.
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On August 04 2015 09:32 Sermokala wrote:
If you believe business are a collective of people then doesn't that make business's people?
When a business is convinced of a crime who go's to jail?
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For some random reasons ? What's the random reason that forces you to live in Switzerland and get Switzerland's passports when with the french citizenship you can already go there and live there since it's in the Schenghen treaty ? Let's be clear, there is no random reasons, they are there to pay less taxes, not because they like Geneve.
Its pretty obvious that you didn't even read my post and therefore your answer is totally missing what i said. Congratulations.
Fun fact: I actually agreed with you.
but having to pay taxes in 2 countries just because for some random reason you got 2 passports/nationalities is a bit "strange"..
This had obviously nothing to do with France, because it doesn't apply to France.
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On August 04 2015 01:08 WhiteDog wrote:
RvB in France our income taxes also tax capital revenu too - it´s the famous ISF (impot sur la fortune).
From what I understand from wiipedia companies are excluded though? Companies is where most wealthy people actually have their wealth not their personal bank account. Capital gains also has a different tax rate based on profit which is basically most of their income.
Show nested quote +On August 04 2015 01:49 cLutZ wrote:
Or...tax at reasonable rates so that the costs of noncompliance are equal to or lower than compliance. If your implementing all the things you are talking about you aren't getting much, if any, of the benefits of capitalism anyways. Or punish more heavily non compliance and fight against fiscal heaven, like Luxemburg, Switzerland, etc.
Most rich people (the ones who have like €1m or something not the super rich) don't move their money to tax havens at all. It's expensive, you have to comply to all kinds of laws and rules to do it without commiting a crime and most of them just don't feel comfortable with it.
Having €500k - €1m also doesn't automatically make you rich btw. What happens a lot is that someone had a company, sold it for a big amount and has to use the money as a pension for when he/she retires. Let's say you live 20 years after that it means you have 25k-50k a year to live on. Yes it's a good middle class income but it's not actually rich.
Anyway this is just my experience having worked in private banking for a while in The Netherlands.
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On August 04 2015 19:26 WhiteDog wrote:Show nested quote +And saying it is fine is just stupid. I get Whiteknights Argument about Tennis Players (which were trained and built by the French Tennis association) but having to pay taxes in 2 countries just because for some random reason you got 2 passports/nationalities is a bit "strange".. For some random reasons ? What's the random reason that forces you to live in Switzerland and get Switzerland's passports when with the french citizenship you can already go there and live there since it's in the Schenghen treaty ? Let's be clear, there is no random reasons, they are there to pay less taxes, not because they like Geneve.
Getting Switzerland's passport and abandonning French citizenship is a second step. The selected few that do it for fiscal reasons aim mainly at avoiding succession taxes in France. Of course, you cannot keep playing in national teams then. For tax purposes during your active carreer, it's residency that is taken into account; French tennis players do not have Swiss citizenship.
For tennis, remaining French is mostly a choice on their part because they "feel" French: they don't gain much by being French. In football, it's more interesting for your carreer to remain French.
If the law changes, the best plan will probably be to stay French for the first years, then change nationality once your income is sufficient. I guess the media would still portray them as French regardless of the change. Boosting viewer/reader's pride sells.
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I doubt 500k-1M property makes anyone even "qualify" for serious tax evasion (let alone actually moving the Country)... As yearly income probably but even then its most likely on the low side (for moving).
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EPT
