[HN Gopher] Financial Secrecy Index
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Financial Secrecy Index
Author : pseudolus
Score : 82 points
Date : 2021-10-11 12:14 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (fsi.taxjustice.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (fsi.taxjustice.net)
| bojangleslover wrote:
| Private wealth has already been taxed unfortunately
| _uy6i wrote:
| This is pretty stupid if you ask me, the top of the list is just
| stable countries with a strong tradition of rule of law.
| bjt2n3904 wrote:
| Financial secrecy, or financial privacy?
| ksdale wrote:
| Haha I thought the same thing. The more I read it, the more it
| seemed like a list of countries where there's actually due
| process, even for the bad guys.
| howmayiannoyyou wrote:
| Reality check:
|
| - US haven status undermines despotic regimes by denying them
| data on citizens hedging their bets with offshore accounts. This
| provides the US leverage, intelligence, foreign direct investment
| & tax revenue.
|
| - Offshore dollar pools (eg. Eurodollars) are problem enough for
| the US Treasury & FED's monetary policy. Absent US haven status
| this problem would be far worse.
|
| - The secrecy doesn't much apply to US citizen and less so once
| the Democrat's $600 bank account reporting requirement is passed
| into law.
| melony wrote:
| Ah, so it's not money laundering when we are the ones doing it.
| lucideer wrote:
| This is a great starting point, but things like BEPs mean this
| usually more complex than one country's sole secrecy index.
| trident5000 wrote:
| More like a map of where oppressive regimes want total control
| over your finances.
| echelon wrote:
| Russia and China score extremely well, and the US is the second
| worst?
|
| Is it fine when the ruling class can get away with moving money?
|
| Who funded this?
| tetromino_ wrote:
| It's completely logical: the Russian and Chinese ruling classes
| want to hide their ill-gotten money from taxes, from
| journalists, and from being arbitrarily seized by greedy
| officials and well-connected rivals. Thus, they move money from
| the somewhat transparent Russian and Chinese institutions to
| the safety of more murky Western economies.
| collegeburner wrote:
| No we score extremely well and Russia and China are some of the
| worst. Privacy in finance is a great thing, KYC and reporting
| requirements are massive violations of privacy and intolerable.
| dgivney wrote:
| > Russia and China score extremely well, and the US is the
| second worst?
|
| This is a list of countries that benefit from capital flight
| from countries such as Russia and China.
|
| > Who funded this?
|
| https://taxjustice.net/our-funders/
| belval wrote:
| Page 18 of https://taxjustice.net/wp-
| content/uploads/2021/03/Tax-Justic...
|
| It's basically funded by European grants so it does not seem
| fishy.
| dgivney wrote:
| Honestly, I know nothing about them but the largest donor
| on that list is a USA based NGO..
|
| $2 million Ford Foundation Grant:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Foundation
| ksdale wrote:
| Yes, the US is so secret we know exactly how much is hidden and
| where. Meanwhile Russia is so transparent, wealth hoarding
| oligarchs can't even exist. /s
| kibibyte wrote:
| The US has a few states that allow you to set up a shell
| company with very pretty much no proof of identity. It's one
| way that South Dakota is apparently a big tax haven now.
|
| https://www.npr.org/2021/10/03/1042885263/pandora-papers-wea...
|
| Planet Money has done an episode on this sort of thing in the
| past where they found it much easier to open a shell business
| in the US vs the rest of the world.
| https://www.npr.org/2021/10/06/1043746410/we-set-up-an-offsh...
| adventured wrote:
| It's a pathetic joke. The US has very little real financial
| secrecy. The Feds have trivial access to all financial
| transactions inside of the US if they have cause to need to
| look. Beyond that, the majority of US wealth is contained in
| the stock market and land, both of which tend to reveal the
| wealthy due to public records (which is how we know how much
| land Bill Gates has been accumulating and how many shares of
| Tesla Elon Musk owns). The US has a small number of unknown
| super wealthy because of that, whereas China and Russia are
| extraordinarily opaque by comparison. The US also requires its
| politicians to report their wealth within a range. Now try to
| get that kind of information from Putin or Xi.
| stewx wrote:
| The main issue is certain US states, such as Delaware, allow
| you to set up anonymous shell companies. Anonymous shell
| companies are a bit like BitTorrent. Sure, there are legal
| uses, but there are a lot more illegal ones.
|
| Planet Money did an episode in which they registered just
| such a company in Delaware: https://www.npr.org/sections/mone
| y/2016/03/16/470722656/epis...
| ksdale wrote:
| How much money did they manage to launder with their shell
| company?
| satellite2 wrote:
| I think the idea is to hide from other countries. So if you
| are a wealthy Chinese you have a much better time hiding your
| money in Delaware than in Paris for instance.
| ksdale wrote:
| Yeah, I do taxes for a living, and people _seriously_
| underestimate how hard it is for _anyone_ to hide a
| substantial amount of money that was made in the U.S. As soon
| as you want to do anything with it besides hide it under your
| mattress, there 's going to be a record of it that either the
| state or federal government can obtain.
| eutropia wrote:
| I clicked on the US and see that it gets loads of secrecy points
| in all kinds of categories, but 0 points from the category of
| "Consistent Personal Income Tax".
|
| I laughed.
| cookiengineer wrote:
| Honestly this index seems flawed. Where's Monaco, Malta, or
| Liechtenstein?
|
| When we speak of finances, these countries are the top of the top
| and literally where politicians from all over the world hide
| their money.
| fblp wrote:
| Thanks for sharing! I setup a quarterly donation. This is
| important work.
| helloworld11 wrote:
| Excellent ranking for those wishing to have a reasonably well
| researched list of candidate countries for where they could place
| their hidden funds and avoid future taxes. Bravo.
| ccity88 wrote:
| realistically you need a decent level of wealth to participate
| in these tax havens. It's expensive to hire a lawyer who knows
| this stuff, and even more expensive for administration and
| execution. The people who have the level of wealth to pay for
| this are already doing it.
| orlovs wrote:
| Totally agree. Schemes exists, but they are unavailable for
| scmucks. As after 2008 financial crysis it was made much more
| "exclusive" as it was before. For ordinary folks it
| transformed. For example, in Europe now is popular zero Corp
| tax on reinvested money.
| [deleted]
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(page generated 2021-10-13 23:00 UTC)