[HN Gopher] Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe
___________________________________________________________________
Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe
Author : user20180120
Score : 309 points
Date : 2024-11-05 14:20 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bbc.co.uk)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bbc.co.uk)
| orangepanda wrote:
| Is a mini-series about this already greenlit?
| 23B1 wrote:
| yes but it was cancelled after becoming too popular
| diggan wrote:
| The meat:
|
| > Last year, French media outlet La Lettre reported that until
| 2021, Netflix in France minimised its tax payments by declaring
| its turnover generated in France to the Netherlands.
|
| > investigators are trying to determine whether Netflix continued
| to attempt to minimise its profits after 2021.
|
| Wasn't Uber or some other US company found doing something
| similar? First they were found to be in violation of some
| law/dodging taxes, said they'd fix it and later found to not have
| done anything about it? Is that behavior perhaps more accepted in
| the US than Europe?
| kbolino wrote:
| It's hard to accurately measure secretive crimes like this, but
| the estimates seem to put corporate tax evasion by percentage
| of GDP at either similar levels between the EU and US or
| actually higher in the EU.
| kranke155 wrote:
| The EU is just as corporatist as the US. The corporations
| just aren't as big, but they control their local/national
| politics effectively.
| yunohn wrote:
| Literally _every_ single company that can afford to setup
| things like tax transfer schemes, are actively evading taxes.
|
| It's mind boggling how widespread it is, how accepted (legal)
| it is, and how it will seemingly never be fixed.
|
| https://www.somo.nl/the-netherlands-still-a-tax-haven/
| diggan wrote:
| > Literally every single company that can afford to setup
| these tax transfer schemes, are actively evading taxes.
|
| Yeah, but I think that's different than what happened in this
| case with Netflix. Declaring earnings from one country in
| another country is not just "tax optimizations" but straight
| up illegal. It's not using/abusing legal loopholes like most
| larger companies do, but going against the law.
| yunohn wrote:
| Honestly, I'm not sure. I find the premise of such tax laws
| to be illogical at a basic level. There are apparently
| always multiple ways to create legal loopholes.
|
| If we consider the Irish sandwich mechanism that was
| recently "stopped", somehow that hasn't materially affected
| any of the innumerable companies that were using it. As we
| saw in the Apple vs EU case, most practices might've never
| been actually legal either.
|
| So my personal opinion is that (almost) all tax
| "optimization" is at the minimum immoral, but most likely
| illegal too.
|
| Edit: This reminds me of the idea of temporarily
| embarrassed millionaires. Your personal optimization is not
| what I'm talking about - corporations have legal teams the
| size of SMBs lobbying/creating/looking for secret
| loopholes, and people are talking about public self service
| methods.
| marcinzm wrote:
| If a government says do X and I will cut your takes by Y
| then is doing X immoral?
| yunohn wrote:
| If a government "says"? These large companies actively
| campaign, draft, and lobby for the legal frameworks and
| loopholes that they exploit. The government and the
| companies are the same and are fighting for the same pot
| of tax money.
| DrillShopper wrote:
| It depends on what X is.
|
| If X is "install solar panels" or "provide affordable
| housing" or "reduce greenhouse gas emissions" then X is
| very likely moral.
|
| If X is "lie to us about where your revenue came from"
| then X is very much immoral.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| no government says "lie to us about where your revenue
| came from and we will cut your taxes"
| przemub wrote:
| @bryanrasmussen I wouldn't put it past the Irish one!
| sokoloff wrote:
| I'm sorry for my immoral behavior of generally holding
| investments for more than a year, contributing to my
| 401(k) and HSA accounts, buying an EV, and installing
| energy efficiency upgrades in my house, all of which are
| driven by tax optimization (at least in part).
| salawat wrote:
| It isn't really _accepted_ anywhere, but there is a group of
| people who will make it their goal in life to get up to any
| shady practice to try to shortchange or dodge their local host
| polity to their ultimate advantage. The tax dodge, if you will,
| becomes something of a pass time and point of pride for them.
|
| This becomes more difficult as more tax authorities better
| integrate with one another, which admittedly, is something many
| in in the U.S. fidget over, even if it is realized that the
| need for it is almost entirely a byproduct of these types of
| people's actions that necessitate that happening.
| marcinzm wrote:
| Given Wirecard I wouldn't assume the EU equally prosecutes or
| tracks crimes for EU and non-EU companies.
| DanielHB wrote:
| They obviously target the companies the highest revenues.
| Also you would be suprised. For example Klarna, a Swedish
| company, is often in trouble with the Swedish tax
| authorities.
|
| A few years ago they had to pay huge amounts of money to the
| Swedish government because of some tax-dodging loophole was
| deemed illegal by court-order. So Klarna went into a
| desperate attempt to last-minute cut costs to not tank the
| stock value due to much lower expected returns that quarter.
|
| It was kinda funny because the employees of Klarna are
| unionized they couldn't just fire anyone on short notice like
| that, but they did let go pretty much all consultants in one
| swoop. If this was the US the CEO would have just fired a
| bunch of people because the CFO f-ed up. For a few months
| there was a major glut of former-Klarna consultants around in
| Stockholm, two of them ended up at my company at the time.
|
| I couldn't find details about this tax dodging online (it was
| around 5 years ago), but here is another article about Klarna
| being in trouble over GDPR violations:
|
| https://www.reuters.com/technology/swedens-klarna-
| fined-7330...
| Hamuko wrote:
| Isn't the Wirecard case still pending with execs in jail
| waiting for trial?
| marcinzm wrote:
| Only after it all imploded did the government go after
| them.
|
| Until that moment it did the exact opposite including
| opening criminal investigations into the journalists
| calling it a scam.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| The protagonist was first the apple of Merkel's eye and
| then vanished in Russia.
| lm28469 wrote:
| > Wasn't Uber or some other US company found doing something
| similar?
|
| Airbnb, they had to pay like 70k of tax a few years ago. There
| are employees who pay as much tax as single filers lol
|
| They paid 18% less tax in 2016 than in 2013 while the number of
| flats available on the site went from 30k to 300k
|
| https://www.lesechos.fr/2016/08/airbnb-na-paye-que-69168-eur...
| scotty79 wrote:
| All spending should be taxed instead of income. Income is too
| easy to move and hide. Spending tax could be unified
| framework encompassing all financial activity. If you
| purchase anything, labor, imports, energy, stock,
| politicians, you should be taxed.
|
| Spending is the moment when the money shows its ugly head and
| does harm.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Revenue tax? We had that before the fall of the wall - not
| again please. The VAT system works well and should be used
| more.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Purchase tax would work like reverse VAT. Companies could
| be awarded tax credits for their sales (not 100% though)
| and pay tax on their purchases. This would be harder to
| evade and additionally incentivise companies to do more
| with less which might be good for environmental
| transition.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Why not 100%? How is that even supposed to work in low-
| margin markets like construction, where the profit is
| 100x less than the costs, so even 1% tax would erase it?
| But any markets really, this makes innovation and
| business so risky that I'd probably close down my IT
| company too.
| scotty79 wrote:
| The strength of markets is that they adjust to
| environment. Taxation is a part of the environment.
| Taxation would be just priced in.
|
| Why would it be risky to pay some percentage more on what
| you spend but not pay income tax at all?
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Markets will adjust, sure. It will be priced in, but
| that's the problem. They will become less efficient,
| quality will be worse, everything will be slower, more
| risk averse, and thus more expensive to the customer -
| that is necessary to survive in this new environment.
| That also means that people's income gets lower and grows
| slower.
|
| It'd be risky because I have no idea if I'm actually
| going to make money or not. European states set very
| draconian rules like 1% daily interest on unpaid taxes -
| no way I'm taking this shit on.
|
| Just do the same thing but with VAT...
| scotty79 wrote:
| Two factors are responsible for the bulk ens*ttification
| of the markets: any barriers to competition and
| information asymmetry between purchaser and seller.
| Taxation is not a factor unless it's done with too much
| micromanagement that incentivises doing weird things to
| your product/service to avoid higher tax.
|
| VAT is already a purchase tax, just collected from the
| end consumer. You could just raise VAT and do away with
| income tax. But since the burden is on the end consumer
| only (not along the chain, because of 100% deductions) it
| would have to be raised very high. And VAT is with us
| long enough that many ways to exploit its edge cases were
| discovered. General purchase tax collected at all steps
| of production chain could spread the tax burden away from
| final consumer to the people who exploit them (aka
| businessmen) thus fulfilling the role that income tax
| currently fulfills. It would also have way less edge
| cases and could replace things like import tariffs and
| social security fees, excise taxes and many more.
|
| > It'd be risky because I have no idea if I'm actually
| going to make money or not.
|
| That's the inherent risk of business. You have to decide
| if it's worth it regardless of whether a server costs you
| $x or $x+10% purchase tax.
|
| > European states set very draconian rules like 1% daily
| interest on unpaid taxes - no way I'm taking this shit
| on.
|
| You would never have unpaid taxes because they'd be
| automatically collected by the bank at the moment of
| purchase. If you don't have money to pay for purchase tax
| you don't have money to make a purchase.
|
| > Just do the same thing but with VAT...
|
| We could do some of that if we reduced VAT deductions
| from 100%. But it would be worse because VAT is very
| limited and thus has a lot of edge cases where it comes
| in contact in systems outside it's domain. Those can be
| used to get away from paying by doing superfluous
| operations.
| immibis wrote:
| ... prices would increase to cover the tax?
| Aunche wrote:
| ...or you can just use a VAT, which are also paid at
| purchase. Tech companies have high margins and low
| expenses, so if the point is to tax tech companies,
| taxing purchases and giving a credit to sales is
| literally the exact opposite of what you want to do.
| scotty79 wrote:
| VAT with 100% deduction places entire tax burden on the
| end consumer. Income tax aims to extract additional tax
| from entities that extract money from consumers for
| investors.
|
| VAT could do a lot of the same things that I'm proposing
| (if the deductions weren't 100%) but is limited in scope.
| And because of that it has a lot of interfaces to other
| domains like real estate, import, labor, financial
| intruments. Interfaces that can be exploited to avoid
| paying taxes.
|
| General purchase tax could replace all taxes and fees
| transfered from the markets to governments (and
| effectively goverment managed buckets like social
| security or public healthcare).
|
| Taxes have this strong moral objection that they are
| punishment for creating value. Purchase tax could help
| with that by ostensibly being punishment for using up
| value not for creating value. It might also compose well
| with transition to stable state economy that will have to
| replace old economy based on unbounded growth.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Correct, and it could be implemented as a power law formula
| that makes it impossible for the super rich to avoid tax
| (since they are the only ones that can spend a lot). It
| also aligns incentives with environmentalism and reducing
| waste and consumption. And poorer people are automatically
| exempted from tax since the power law formula parameters be
| set to slowly ramp up.
|
| This is also easily accomplished now that almost all
| payments are happening digitally, assigned to a taxpayer
| ID#. We can easily replace a W-2 or 1099 with total
| spending instead of taxing working.
|
| Of course, this should also be paired with similarly
| designed land value and estate taxes to disincentivize
| hoarding.
| shermantanktop wrote:
| So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my
| ability to hide my assets?
|
| Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while
| I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole
| contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC
| which I am the sole owner of. For major purchases, I can
| hire a low-income person to do the purchase and then sell
| the item to me, or maybe they lease it to me.
|
| I'm not a tax lawyer but it's pretty easy to see the many
| loopholes in alternative tax proposals.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >So my effective tax rate on consumption is indexed on my
| ability to hide my assets?
|
| Where are you getting this from? Sales tax has nothing to
| do with one's assets. Also, land value taxes make hiding
| assets moot, since all real assets have to be stored on
| land. Of course, copyright protections would need to be
| reformed to be for far shorter durations of time.
|
| >Maybe my household LLC should buy all my groceries while
| I work for the LLC which employs me as the sole
| contractor and live in the house that I rent from the LLC
| which I am the sole owner of.
|
| Why should LLC's be exempt from the tax?
|
| >For major purchases, I can hire a low-income person to
| do the purchase and then sell the item to me,
|
| How does this help? You are still purchasing the item. If
| you are referring to purchasing it with cash and
| committing tax evasion, the same is possible with income
| tax today.
|
| >or maybe they lease it to me.
|
| Renting something is still considered a sale. You get
| charged sales tax at hotels. Renting apartments is not
| usually subject to sales tax, but that is a policy
| choice.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > Where are you getting this from? Sales tax has nothing
| to do with one's assets
|
| Earlier you said
|
| > And poorer people are automatically exempted from tax
| since the power law formula parameters be set to slowly
| ramp up
|
| I too am very confused on how you envision this sales tax
| working where it's variable in some way that poor people
| don't get the tax but rich people do so I understand why
| OP is asking about asset tracking. If you're talking
| about it as a tax that increases the more you spend
| you've still got problems of hiding how much I'm spending
| through various legal entities. It also has a macro
| economic problem, at least how the consumer economy is
| structured, that could slow down the gears of business
| until society realigns (if it does) because people will
| be incentivized to consume less. You've got alternative
| models where you go after specific products and tax more
| for conspicuous consumption like yachts but that feels
| like it has all the inefficiencies of central planning a
| market.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| >that poor people don't get the tax but rich people do
|
| Because poor people can't spend money (since they don't
| have it), hence they pay much less (or even no tax). The
| curve of a power law formula can be modified to whatever
| is socially acceptable. Otherwise, rich people who are
| hoarding assets will get taxed via land value taxes
| utilizing the same framework.
|
| >you've still got problems of hiding how much I'm
| spending through various legal entities.
|
| Same with income tax. Completely stamping out tax evasion
| is not a realistic goal with any system. Also, various
| legal entities are all tied to beneficial owners with
| taxpayer ID numbers. Databases would make quick work of
| sorting this kind of stuff out.
|
| >It also has a macro economic problem, at least how the
| consumer economy is structured, that could slow down the
| gears of business until society realigns (if it does)
| because people will be incentivized to consume less.
|
| Yes, that is why it is a pipe dream. But it would
| actually accomplish environmental goals as opposed to
| just pay lip service and pretend.
|
| >You've got alternative models where you go after
| specific products and tax more for conspicuous
| consumption like yachts but that feels like it has all
| the inefficiencies of central planning a market.
|
| Completely unnecessary to complicate things which also
| opens up avenues for corruption. A yacht is super
| expensive, it's obviously going to be hit with a ton of
| tax. Just come up with a tax curve (like we already do
| with the various income tax deductions/brackets) that
| provides the tax revenue and still allows people to spend
| enough money to provide for their basic needs.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| > Because poor people can't spend money (since they don't
| have it), hence they pay much less (or even no tax)
|
| Poor people can buy a car. Middle class families can buy
| 2 cars. Neither can buy 100 exotic cars. Is the purchase
| of each additional car going to increase the tax paid?
| Are exotic cars taxed more? You keep stating to use a
| power law formula but you're critically omitting what the
| inputs are to determine your tax rate. And now you've
| also admitted that assets determine your sales tax
| whereas you seemed to be arguing earlier that that wasn't
| the case when asked if the sales tax rate is dependent on
| your ability to hide assets.
|
| > Otherwise, rich people who are hoarding assets will get
| taxed via land value taxes utilizing the same framework
|
| Rich people hoard assets in all sorts of ways including
| collecting physical items which you can store where land
| is cheap if you wanted. That's why the income tax is
| effective - it's taxation at the moment the money changes
| hands / you've realized a gain.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| > Is the purchase of each additional car going to
| increase the tax paid?
|
| Yes, tax liability = total spending during the year
| plugged into the power law tax formula.
|
| >Are exotic cars taxed more?
|
| Depends how much the taxpayer spends in a year. There is
| no tax rate for each specific item. The tax rate is for a
| total level of spending, which eliminates all loopholes.
|
| > You keep stating to use a power law formula but you're
| critically omitting what the inputs are to determine your
| tax rate.
|
| The input is total spend in a year. Just like right now,
| the input is income in a year.
|
| > And now you've also admitted that assets determine your
| sales tax
|
| No, I did not. The formula to calculate sales tax
| liability only requires inputting total spending. Land
| value taxes are a separate thing. We currently have land
| value taxes, except they are flat rate and too low
| because property taxes inefficiently tax improvements on
| the land more than the land itself.
|
| > That's why the income tax is effective - it's taxation
| at the moment the money changes hands / you've realized a
| gain.
|
| Sales tax can also be at the moment the money changes
| hands. It currently is. Even with the complication of a
| power law tax formula, I can't see why the government
| can't email you a monthly invoice.
| scotty79 wrote:
| Do you have any keywords for me that I could read up on?
|
| I came up with the idea of puchase tax and progressive
| real estate tax myself, but I'm sure other people had
| same ideas before me.
| vlovich123 wrote:
| Isn't that a hugely regressive tax?
| scotty79 wrote:
| I don't think so. Rich people buy vastly more. Not just
| food, shelter and entertainment but also real estate,
| entire companies and financial instruments. They'd end up
| paying vastly more tax.
| betaby wrote:
| > Rich people buy vastly more
|
| Not enough, especially since everything is business
| expense for them.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| If you add financial instruments into the tax (what is a
| tax on investing, not spending), it will become
| proportional. What is still not very good.
|
| This blind kind of tax also has horrible impact on the
| production of goods with high added value.
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| > They paid 18% less tax in 2016 than in 2013 while the
| number of flats available on the site went from 30k to 300k
|
| Completely meaningless without also saying what their costs
| and investments were.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Well no that's not really what happens, what happens is
| that legally the french entity is just a service provider
| for the irish HQ. They pretend it's a simple marketing
| agency and that the real value is provided by the irish
| entity
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| Doesn't matter - you can't make any judgement without
| knowing these numbers. They may have actually paid a
| higher tax rate than previously - we don't know.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Funny how it works, they lose money everywhere but one of
| the smallest country they operate in banks 50% of their
| worldwide revenues, it probably is just a coincidence
| that this is a tax heaven... we just don't know I guess
|
| The French branch made 160k of profit while the Irish
| branch made more than all the other EU countries combined
|
| FYI: france is the second market for airbnb after the
| US... do you really think they would even bother if they
| did make 160k there when they make 300m+ per year
| globally ? Do you really think their second market nets
| them < 0.1% of their total net income ? Do you really
| think the most touristic country in the world in absolute
| numbers brings 160k euros per year to airbnb ?
|
| I dont't know much but I'm not a fool
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings
|
| https://www.searchlogistics.com/learn/statistics/airbnb-
| stat...
|
| https://www.rte.ie/news/business/2023/1127/1418779-revenu
| es-...
|
| https://www.breakingnews.ie/business/airbnb-ireland-
| records-...
| thrw42A8N wrote:
| I don't know why you're telling me this, I know it - and
| it's not relevant at all without knowing the numbers.
| ClassyJacket wrote:
| I guess it's just a crazy coincidence that most huge
| multinational corporations base their European operations
| in Ireland then? They just like drinking Guinness I
| suppose?
| lm28469 wrote:
| Well you said it doesn't matter because we don't know the
| numbers, yet the numbers we do know about don't match any
| scenario that doesn't involve large scale tax
| """optimisation"""
| Muromec wrote:
| At some point governments will catch up and start taxing
| based on percentage of global revenue or even turnover.
| betaby wrote:
| I hope so. And that's not only USA-copanies phenomenon. I
| worked for a french company in Montreal which payed close
| to zero tax amount even though they are doing more than
| OK financially world-wide, including Canada.
| seanhunter wrote:
| Yeah there's the so called "Dutch Sandwich"[1] which is a well-
| known tax "planning" methodology that corporates use with the
| so called "Double Irish" being another one. There's also a
| slightly less-well known one involving Mauritius and India.
| They're all ways of moving profits between companies in order
| to exploit tax treaties that countries put in place. In the
| case of the Dutch sandwich I think the Netherlands has a treaty
| with the Netherlands Antilles or something so people have a
| company in the Netherlands which then shifts things off-shore
| to the Antilles and avoids tax that way.
|
| It's nonsense of course. Companies should (in my opinion)
| shoulder their fair share of tax because otherwise that burden
| falls disproportionately on individual income tax.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Sandwich
| s_dev wrote:
| Your information is outdated -- Double Irish is no longer
| applicable according to your own source since 2010.
| yunohn wrote:
| No, it's much more complicated than that. If you scroll a
| bit further:
|
| > After pressure from the EU,[22] the Double Irish BEPS
| tool was closed to new users in 2015,[citation needed]
| however, new Irish BEPS tools were created to replace
| it:[23][24]
|
| Not only do the original evaders get to continue doing it,
| they've also found new loopholes already.
| Muromec wrote:
| It's like eruv. The loophole was planted there for us
| mortals to find and use it
| seanhunter wrote:
| Right. Also I wasn't trying (nor am I equipped) to give
| some kind of current guide to tax dodging. I was
| explaining the basic sort of thing people do. The
| specifics change all the time because there is a sort of
| whack-a-mole that tax authorities try to play to get
| people to pay and people pay ever more and more inflated
| fees to various accountants and tax "planning" experts
| for ever more byzantine and artificial schemes of one
| kind or another.
|
| My own experience with tax experts has left me pretty
| jaded about tax advice. It seems to me that often these
| companies have maybe 1 dude who actually understands tax
| and an army of people with powerpoint going out selling
| the "solution". I had a complex tax situation when
| setting up a business in the UK and US and got tax advice
| from one of the big four firms not to dodge tax but to
| make sure I understood the US system correctly and was
| paying everything I should. I paid _so much_ tax that I
| got investigated in both the UK and US because they
| thought there must be some sort of fiddle because I
| seemed to be paying way more than I sholud be (this was
| what I told the accountants). I ended up getting rebates
| from the IRS and from the UK HMRC after the
| investigations but it took a couple of years to get it
| all sorted out.
| tiahura wrote:
| What's the rationale for double taxing corporate profits vs
| other types?
| seanhunter wrote:
| No rationale for that, but likewise no rational reason that
| corporates sholud be able to use multinational structures
| to completely avoid tax, which is what these planning
| structures are all about. Typically there are inter-company
| transfer pricing arrangements that mean that the companies
| in the taxed jurisdictions pay fees to each other so their
| profits are minimised and as much profit as possible is
| expatriated to low- or no-tax jurisdictions.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| None of these tax "planning" schemes are available anymore.
|
| Moreover, tax authorities have increasingly taken the
| position that the use of these planning methods constitutes
| tax evasion. The Dutch Sandwich and Double Irish were
| grandfathered in (meaning, not treated as criminal tax
| evasion) but a company utilizing similar schemes today would
| ultimately result in one or more of their executives spending
| time in jail.
|
| Critically, most of tax law is actually _regulation_ that
| implements statutes. Tax planning schemes that satisfy the
| technical letter of regulations but which violate the plain
| intent of the written statute can, and have, been deemed
| illegal years or even decades later (see, for example, the
| Bermudan tax loss harvesting scheme), and this has repeatedly
| passed constitutional muster.
| scotty79 wrote:
| That's rich coming from French. Long time ago France Telecom
| bought Polish top phone network. Immediately rebranded it to
| Orange (despite the fact that the company had one of the
| strongest brands on market where it operated).
|
| Unsurprisingly the licensing fees for using Orange brand that
| the Polish company had to pay to France Telecom amounted to
| large percentage of taxable profits that the Polish company
| had. Overt theft from Polish company and Polish taxpayers.
| mort96 wrote:
| Nation state acts in its own interest, news at 11
|
| No but seriously, this doesn't sound surprising? Why should
| France be against a French company buying up other companies
| and bringing revenue back to France
| scotty79 wrote:
| Do you want euroscepticism? Because that's how you get
| euroscepticism.
| mort96 wrote:
| I don't understand the problem honestly. I'd understand
| it if Poland stepped in and didn't let the company be
| bought out, but this just seems like bog standard normal
| globalized free market stuff? It would be extremely weird
| for _France_ to step in and prevent a French company from
| buying a Polish company due to fears of stoking
| Euroscepticism among the polish population wouldn 't it?
| And I don't even know what this has to do with the EU,
| companies have been buying up companies from other
| countries both in and out of the EU forever?
| scotty79 wrote:
| I also don't expect nothing other from thief then
| continuing to steal.
|
| I also expect thieves to be protective of their own
| assets.
|
| I'm just saying they are still thieves and any outrage in
| their name is misplaced.
|
| Screw the French when they are robbed for the benefit of
| other countries, because they steal from other countries
| using their public companies as well.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Ohhh the memory of their atrocious and extortive services
| still raises my adrenaline. The French bought the position of
| monopolist in the telecom market. That's (and similar
| privatization frauds) how the only true Russian-style
| oligarch in Poland was created - Jan Kulczyk. Thanks, French!
| greyw wrote:
| Is that related to the privatization wave after 1989? If so,
| the culprit here is the corrupt political caste that sold
| companies below their true value for kickbacks. Corruption
| has been an endemic problem in the east.
| _ink_ wrote:
| Is it illegal, tho?
| seiferteric wrote:
| I wonder how these "office raids" would work for remote first
| companies that don't have much of an office presence and with
| little or no physical documents and everything being stored in
| the cloud somewhere.
| nerdponx wrote:
| If you can get access to someone's laptop with SSO login access
| to the cloud storage (or their email inbox and Slack messages),
| then you have what you need.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| IIUC email messages on cloud services older than 180 days
| don't even require a US warrant(!) anyway.
|
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/update-email-
| privacy-l...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Priv.
| ..
| Etheryte wrote:
| I mean, that would be way easier for the government agencies,
| no? Just send a subpoena to the service providers, they hand
| over all the data and you're done?
| crest wrote:
| If everything is synchronised to third party could storage an
| "office raid" can be as easy as getting a court order telling
| the cloud provider to make a snapshot of everything stored
| available to the police.
| spwa4 wrote:
| Is there a product allowing for client-side encrypted mounts?
| Or just use a SAAS outside of the country that doesn't allow
| for exporting any data under any circumstances?
| playingalong wrote:
| The whole point (or at least the main point) of the tax
| paperwork is to be able to produce them to tax
| investigators. If you don't want to share anything, then
| it's easier not to do the accounting. Which I guess is
| severally illegal globally.
| HelloNurse wrote:
| Being unable/unwilling to produce mandatory records is
| fraud. Technical measures to be unable to produce records
| (e.g. offshore and encrypted archival) are evidence of
| criminal intent and possibly separate crimes.
| spwa4 wrote:
| So why did every company in the world start auto-deleting
| emails ~10 years ago? I don't believe many people were
| sued for fraud. These days cloud services have auto-
| delete based on time functionality?
|
| It's called "object lifecycle management", because I
| guess fraud was too catchy.
| gruez wrote:
| Usually tax laws have a cut-off date. You don't need to
| keep records forever, but you do need to keep them around
| for a few years.
| spwa4 wrote:
| Strange, because that sounds reasonable but the reasoning
| doesn't actually work, does it?
|
| Either "the law" can be trusted, and there's no point to
| deleting data after a cut-off date, or the reverse is
| true and you're no worse off getting caught deleting
| data.
|
| I believe the law actually provides a middle ground.
| You're liable for tax fraud for X years, but you're
| allowed to delete the data after Y years. Since X > Y you
| make it much harder for the tax office to sue you if you
| delete data. Plus make it pointless for them to use their
| other investigative powers against you, which is in
| reality more important, especially for smaller firms.
| izacus wrote:
| You mean the auto-deletion that DOJ considered as
| deliberate destruction of evidence in Google case? [0]
|
| Or are you talking about deliberate destruction of
| accounting records, which are required to be held by the
| relevant law of the governments?
|
| [0]:https://www.legaldive.com/news/doj-google-spoliation-
| hangout...
| Muromec wrote:
| It's not the game you can win against the government
| s_dev wrote:
| I'd imagine you'd get done for not being tax compliant. At
| least in Ireland you have to able to show all tax accounting
| for the last four years on request by Revenue. If you can't
| produce this and all the files 'have gone missing' or 'we can't
| find the cloud keys' I'd would expect to be fined out of
| existence and ordered to cease trading immediately. So that
| would be worse that getting dragged through the courts while
| you pay lawyers to figure out to mitigate any fines or
| sentences passed down. I think it can even result in prison
| time for the CEO and other company officers.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'd expect it to something along the lines of "sorry Mario,
| but the princess is in a different castle" bit of shell game.
| "no no mister Revenue man, we have that information you want,
| but it's in a different office".
| s_dev wrote:
| There is only so much you can play whack a mole --
| virtually nobody 'cheats' the taxman. There are plenty of
| legal loopholes etc. if you are smart enough to use them.
|
| If you aren't -- you'll find the enforcement end of the tax
| authorities in ANY country are pretty efficient. Even in
| third world countries where many services are falling down
| the tax authorities will be a well oiled machine as the
| stability of the entire country rests on the government
| even corrupt ones to collect taxes.
| avianlyric wrote:
| This is why companies are required to have registered
| addresses. As far as the law is considered, that address is
| where all your records can be accessed, and requested from.
|
| If the state turns up at that address, and you tell them
| they're at the wrong address, then the directors start
| becoming liable for fraudulent behaviour.
| beeboobaa3 wrote:
| sure but politely demanding some documents is not the same as
| raiding an office
| eastbound wrote:
| Accounting audits are done by the FISC agency in France. But
| those are just audits, not raids. This raid was ordered by a
| judge, which can probably be seized by FISC if they believe
| that the documents they have are falsified.
| diggan wrote:
| > everything being stored in the cloud somewhere
|
| Sounds like it would make it easier for law enforcement. They
| no longer need a warrant against/for the company they're
| investigating, just the place where their data is stored. Get
| the warrant, raid the place and grab the drives, then continue
| the investigation. Done the right way, the company under
| investigation wouldn't even notice it.
| seiferteric wrote:
| That's why I wonder if these raids are really more for show,
| can't they do this pretty much already?
| belter wrote:
| Completely for show since they even make press releases
| about it.
|
| And its sad to see the atrocious quality of the BBC
| article. Even high school students learn that a
| journalistic piece, should make sure it touches the Five Ws
| of good journalism...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws
|
| The Hollywood Reporter has much better quality reporting
| including context:
| https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-
| news/net...
| oceanplexian wrote:
| The data is stored on a server in another country where the
| warrant isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Now what?
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| That is why countries are increasingly demanding (and
| mandating) those data (of citizens and business done there
| or that involves that nation or its citizens) to be stored
| inside their borders.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| First the data is stored in another country. Second are they
| really going to raid and take the drives at an AWS data
| center that has other customer's information? How will they
| know which drive to take?
| gruez wrote:
| >First the data is stored in another country.
|
| Plus you can engage in some jurisdiction arbitrage where
| all the documents pertaining to country A is stored in
| country B, and all the documents pertaining to country B is
| stored in country A.
|
| > Second are they really going to raid and take the drives
| at an AWS data center that has other customer's
| information?
|
| You can also ask AWS to produce the files/documents for
| you.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And those files are hopefully encrypted at rest and
| probably using a customer managed key...
| gruez wrote:
| >using a customer managed key...
|
| Not an AWS expert but how does that even work? Does AWS
| connect to your HSM remotely? Or is a cloud HSM that's
| also hosted by AWS?
| scarface_74 wrote:
| (Source: I am a current high level employee at a third
| party AWS consulting company and former employee at AWS
| working in the Professional Services department)
|
| I actually was imprecise with my wording.
|
| A customer managed KMS key is any key that you make
| instead of using an AWS provided key. AWS still has the
| means to theoretically decrypt the data.
|
| I am actually referring to a customer managed KMS key
| where you import your own key material
|
| https://docs.aws.amazon.com/kms/latest/developerguide/imp
| ort...
|
| There is also CloudHSM
|
| https://aws.amazon.com/cloudhsm/faqs/#:~:text=AWS%20Cloud
| HSM....
|
| I don't know how far "AWS doesn't have access to your
| keys go" when it comes to a government subpoena.
|
| I do know that if anyone accesses anything on your
| account from AWS, all sorts of internal alarm bells go
| off at AWS and it would still show up in your CloudTrail
| logs.
|
| I'm sure there is _something_ that allows internal AWS
| employees to access your account in unauthorized ways.
| But I never heard about it in 3.5 years working there in
| the Professional Services department.
| SirMaster wrote:
| Grab the drives from the cloud?
|
| Isn't most data in the cloud heavily distributed and broken
| into shards across many racks and drives and such? And
| encrypted so is useless outside of the custom block storage
| system employed by the cloud provider?
|
| They would need to decrypt and assemble the shards to get
| usable data out.
|
| I have no clue how they would even know which drives out the
| tens of thousands to grab, and they would also have other
| customer's data on them.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| It's simple, just grab all of S3.
| kube-system wrote:
| They'll just get a warrant to search the live system as it
| is powered on rather than take a cold drive.
|
| https://leb.fbi.gov/articles/featured-articles/executing-
| sea...
|
| Or in China, just take the entire data center. https://www.
| theregister.com/2018/01/11/icloud_china_goes_to_...
| rty32 wrote:
| I don't know how it works in other countries, but in the US you
| likely still need to provide a real address for many purposes
| (tax, immigration if applicable, etc)
|
| The police could just find the correct targets and raid their
| home instead.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| I have a virtualmailbox.com address - all my banks, the IRS,
| state voting commission and USCIS (immigration authorities)
| are all perfectly fine with it.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Wouldn't your identity documents required to open a bank
| account show a residential address?
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Can't say for sure. I opened all my bank accounts while
| still having a proper residential address, but after
| relocating to another country changed the address to a
| virtual one, no one said a word.
| isodev wrote:
| It depends on the type of business. In the EU, VAT registered
| companies are usually mandated to have a physical location and
| local representative within the country of operation. So you
| can be remote all you want, as long as your company and fiscal
| representative can be reached at a physical location.
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| Yes, but you can hire anyone as an administrator and promise
| them a whole of money if they end up having issues with the
| law.
|
| I would hire homeless people to "run" the company.
| betaby wrote:
| In Canada hire indigenous people as owner to save on taxes
| / get preferential treatment. See ArriveCAN (non-)scandal.
| isodev wrote:
| A homeless person wouldn't qualify as they don't have a
| fixed address which is mandatory.
|
| Ultimately, if you really have bad intentions, you find a
| way. It's a question of risk and responsibility if you want
| to put yourself in such a position or not.
| _ink_ wrote:
| There was an interview with Anne Brorhilker, who used to be
| state's attorney and was investigating in CumEx cases. She
| stated that it is a huge pain, because you always need to ask
| the foreign agencies for assistance, which you sometimes simply
| won't get.
|
| It was a good listen. At first she needed to go empty handed,
| but then teamed up with competent tech guys. After that the
| smug faces stating, that the amount of data would be to much to
| handle for her little department quickly turned into concerned
| faces.
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| That sounds fascinating, do you happen to have a link? (I'm
| getting a lot of German results, which unfortunately I don't
| have the fluency to parse to find the 'right' one.)
| _ink_ wrote:
| Here you go: https://logbuch-
| netzpolitik.de/lnp500-zombiecalypse-im-grune... (it's in
| German, tho)
| tenacious_tuna wrote:
| that's fine! I can handle translating an individual page
| (or interview) if I've high confidence it's the
| right/relevant one, just parsing search results is harder
| cross-language (for me, anyway).
|
| thanks much!
| chmod775 wrote:
| Here's a direct link to the transcript if you haven't
| found it yet: https://logbuch-
| netzpolitik.de/lnp500-zombiecalypse-im-grune...
| _ink_ wrote:
| Nice!
|
| > Tim Pritlove: Okay, zweiter Bildungsweg. Welches
| Instrument haben Sie denn gespielt?
|
| > Anne Brohrhilker: Klavierung, Pferdflote.
|
| Oh, AI transcribed. Nevermind.
| junto wrote:
| Holy crap that's an interesting interview. Genuinely
| hilarious comment from that CIO as well. I knew nothing about
| this case before. Thanks for sharing.
| asveikau wrote:
| What do you think "the cloud" is? I'm reminded of an old meme,
| "the cloud is just someone else's computer". They could raid a
| data center and seize machines. They could also subpoena data
| they are looking for.
| lowkey_ wrote:
| You'd likely be seizing a bunch of other innocent people's
| data too, then, no?
|
| As an American, I'd be really surprised if we let that
| happen. I looked and found it apparently happened once, in
| 2009 in Texas: https://www.cio.com/article/278564/data-
| center-when-the-fbi-...
|
| It resulted in another company essentially being shut down,
| and suing for their data back. Crazy. There has to be a
| better way of doing that digitally (I assume there is, these
| days, and we won't see something like this again).
| asveikau wrote:
| The idea that running stuff in the cloud will protect you
| from a criminal investigation is totally absurd.
| grecy wrote:
| What if those machines are on another continent?
| oceanplexian wrote:
| It doesn't. Especially with multinationals, and doubly so as
| crypto gains adoption. Hence why the governments of the world
| are in a panic. Decentralization is a huge threat to
| bureaucracy since their tools of intimidation and control are
| less effective.
| immibis wrote:
| Multinationals yes, crypto not really. The problems with
| crypto are just an extension of the existing "war on drugs"
| that has never really succeeded at anything besides
| justifying why lots of tax money should be spent murdering
| citizens.
| Algent wrote:
| That's basically what happened when they tried (twice I think
| ?) to raid Uber offices in France, their boss pressed a kill
| switch and everything went down in seconds. It completely
| blocked the investigation.
|
| Afterward Uber helped Macron campaign who then ordered National
| Financial Prosecutor's office to "stop bothering them" so I
| don't think anything new happened since.
|
| Edit: Some sources in below replies for infos on both. Turn out
| I'm wrong for 2nd part it started earlier than his campaign.
| Muromec wrote:
| Sounds like obstruction of justice or what not
| nicce wrote:
| > Afterward Uber helped Macron campaign who then ordered
| National Financial Prosecutor's office to "stop bothering
| them" so I don't think anything new happened since.
|
| Isn't that kinda definiton of corruption?
| hulitu wrote:
| No. Corruption is when the others are doing it. /s
| Algent wrote:
| I do need to correct myself, look like "friendship" started
| before his election:
| https://www.euronews.com/2023/07/18/a-privileged-
| relationshi...
|
| Pretty crazy to support a business designed to never pay
| tax. This bring nothing beside "precarious employment".
| grecy wrote:
| Woah, slow down there citizen.
|
| It's been rebranded to "lobbying" and "campaign
| contributions". Much cleaner. Better optics.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Ahahahah you fool, don't be ridiculous, in civilized
| western countries we call it lobbying
| stuaxo wrote:
| That sounds so illegal, it's crazy there aren't consequences
| for that.
|
| EDIT: Article on the kills switch
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jul/10/uber-bosses-
| tol...
| lokar wrote:
| Nothing uber does is crazy anymore
| NBJack wrote:
| Not by comparison to Uber at least. 'Historical'
| documentaries about it are going to be wild. And probably
| on Netflix.
| lokar wrote:
| I meant they have redefined the bar for crazy to be so
| high no one will ever cross it. They are the GOAT for
| crazy.
| fragmede wrote:
| If you haven't seen superpumped or read the book and are
| interested in Uber's story, it's worth a read/watch,
| though it's dramatized for tv.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| History is written by the winners sadly enough.
| golemotron wrote:
| The alternative, giving them a password that gives them
| read/write access to sensitive systems, would be insane.
| Subpoena for particular data.
| dh2022 wrote:
| You can give them read access tokens that expire every
| couple of hours....
| golemotron wrote:
| The problem is deeper than that. When a physical space is
| raided, its scope is obvious. Digital spaces don't have
| that characteristic. There can always be hidden indexes.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Yeah it's hard to see how any French official would have
| authority to conduct searches 10 meters beyond French
| borders, let alone over all of Uber's computers located
| in dozens of other countries.
| wang_li wrote:
| Hard to see how a company can imagine it can do business
| in a country and not follow that country's record keeping
| laws and be subject to criminal and civil statutes in
| that country.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| How is this relevant to Uber's files and computers
| located in other jurisdictions?
| jraph wrote:
| If you do business in France, you are accountable in
| France. Your problem to provide the asked documents if
| it's the law to provide them. That you are using
| computers elsewhere to store stuff should not be any
| relevant.
|
| You shouldn't really be able to have it both ways, should
| you?
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Uber's files and computers located in French territory
| are of course accountable to French authorities, but
| that's simply not the case for those located in other
| jurisdictions...
|
| Unless there is some international law or treaty
| mandating that?
| wang_li wrote:
| It's not a matter of what's located in France. It's a
| matter of what documentation about your company requires
| you to keep. Regardless of where the computers you use
| are physically located if you can't produce the required
| documents you get to be fined, be shut down, and/or go to
| prison. No company gets to play the game of "we're doing
| business in Uzbekistan but our accounting servers are in
| Sealand so we don't have to file any taxes or provide any
| other records." Not only is the idea absurd, anyone who
| thinks that is congenitally stupid or stupid by choice.
| jraph wrote:
| The ableist part of your comment is not necessary, no
| need to insult people, the rest of your comment (with
| which I agree) is solid enough without it ;-)
|
| I believe the parent comment is faithful and honest, it
| merits a respectful answer. I think it actually focuses
| on a specific aspect of the question that you missed. It
| actually made me look up how audits in France work more
| deeply than what I knew.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Attempted insults only decrease the credibility of the
| writer... anyways I didn't claim Uber is supplying less
| than the legally required amount of paperwork?
|
| Nor is it likely.
|
| All the accounting, insurance, banking, regulatory,
| etc... paperwork legally necessary for even a large
| company in France can easily fit in a set of binders that
| fit in a single bookcase.
|
| So it's literally possible for all of it to be ready and
| available for inspection before anyone even touches a
| keyboard. And in fact that was the case for every company
| in France pre 1960s.
| jraph wrote:
| Authorities might not be able to seize computers and
| files in another country, although I think interpol can
| get involved in tax fraud or tax evasion matters.
|
| Preventing access to your accounts during an audit is
| quite fishy, especially for an onsite audit without
| warning which, in France, is supposed to happen only if
| the authorities have doubts that you could make some
| evidences disappear. During an audit, the CEO is supposed
| to provide the documents, the inspectors are not supposed
| to access your files themselves I think.
|
| (So blocking access for security reasons is bullshit, to
| answer someone else, the right thing to do is to have all
| the pieces in order for when an audit happens anyway)
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Unless it's legally mandatory in such a way that superior
| authorities can't overrule it, then it doesn't seem to
| matter? (such as the President, appellate courts, etc...)
|
| Clearly in this case Uber got a superior authority to do
| so, and in any future case that will still be a
| possibility.
| tokinonagare wrote:
| If a company is doing business here, the actual location
| of file is irrelevant.
|
| Also when the government is really motivated, he can
| arrested the founders or executives directly (Pavel
| Durov). Which is what they should do to Netflix execs if
| they are doing business illegally.
| gruez wrote:
| >Also when the government is really motivated, he can
| arrested the founders or executives directly (Pavel
| Durov). Which is what they should do to Netflix execs if
| they are doing business illegally.
|
| You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand
| access to data? If they actually did something illegal,
| they can be arrested/tried for that, but arresting
| executives as a means to coerce companies into doing
| stuff is a total perversion of the rule of law.
| izacus wrote:
| > You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand
| access to data? If they actually did something illegal,
| they can be arrested/tried for that, but arresting
| executives as a means to coerce companies into doing
| stuff is a total perversion of the rule of law.
|
| Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is
| outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they
| can get arrested and charged for for it.
| nerdbert wrote:
| What if it is illegal to withhold the data during an
| investigation? Isn't the executive then committing a
| crime?
| multjoy wrote:
| The executives _are_ the company.
| sealeck wrote:
| > You're in favor of holding executives hostage to demand
| access to data?
|
| This is a very emotional way of saying "you're in favour
| of enforcing contempt of court rulings against people who
| try to obstruct the judicial process".
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Irrelevant according to who?
| aaronax wrote:
| Thinking the systems that a company has are so sensitive
| that the company is basically above the law is the insane
| thing.
|
| It is just a company--a group of people granted certain
| rights. They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just
| because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their
| filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal
| processes are used and not abused).
| gruez wrote:
| > They have databases...fancy filing cabinets. Just
| because the company is famous shouldn't preclude their
| filing cabinets from being searched (presuming legal
| processes are used and not abused).
|
| That analogy doesn't work, because the "filing cabinets"
| are actually sitting somewhere else, possibly in another
| country/continent. It's not obvious that authorities in
| one country has authority over documents stored in
| another country.
| valval wrote:
| I and many others think the government should have 0
| business in my filing cabinet. That difference in world
| view might be what makes this topic more complex than you
| seem to think.
| Terr_ wrote:
| [Not parent poster] So even the most heinous act of
| violence become unprosecutable when the
| suspects/accomplices have moved all remaining evidence
| into a magically inviolable filing cabinet?
|
| No? Then the world is a lot more complex than property
| rights trumping everything else.
| atoav wrote:
| You are aware of the fact that tax evasion means these
| companies are freeloading on the tax money the rest of us
| (including: you) are paying? Especially in the case of
| uber which is essentially using public infrastructure to
| make their money having them pay taxes should be normal.
|
| I agree that customer data needs to be protected, but it
| is bold to assume that is the case at all with these
| powerful corporate entities: if they lie to the state
| when filing taxes what makes you believe they are ernest
| when it comes to the protection of their users privacy?
|
| Maybe it is a weird ideology I am holding here, but the
| more powerful an entity is, the more transparent it
| should become -- nowaday we got this completely reversed
| with poor people being naked in front of the state and
| big corps literally fooling everyone.
|
| Edit: some also seem to think the state is the behemoth
| that jumps on the poor little companies here. To that I
| just have to think about the account of the German public
| prosecutor Baumler-Hosl (of wirecard fame) where she told
| about a raid on a bank where she and 4 collegues were
| opposed by 130 (!) company lawyers.
| haccount wrote:
| The law was always there to step on the little man, the
| VIPs always had it easier. Stop thinking too much about
| it.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > if they lie to the state when filing taxes
|
| In general this is not what they do. What they do is read
| the tax code carefully and structure their operations in
| such a way as to minimize taxes, e.g. because tax is paid
| on "profits" (revenues minus expenses) so they shift more
| expenses into jurisdictions with high tax rates etc.,
| causing "profits" to go down in those jurisdictions and
| up somewhere else.
|
| Then they don't pay any taxes in the jurisdictions with
| higher tax rates and politicians go on TV and complain
| about the companies following the laws that the
| politicians enacted. Because if they actually fixed the
| laws, the taxes would be paid based on the extent to
| which the company does business in that jurisdiction, and
| then companies could only avoid taxes by not doing
| business there (costing the country jobs) or, for taxes
| associated with local sales, by raising prices there.
| Neither of which the politicians actually want to do, so
| instead they pass laws that allow companies to avoid
| taxes and then complain about it when the companies do
| it.
| pyrale wrote:
| Uber has a history of serving falsified data to the
| justice, though. Their offices are raided because they
| can't be trusted with a subpoena.
| golemotron wrote:
| The real issue is that technology has rendered office
| raiding useless. People are welcome to explore
| alternatives.
| pyrale wrote:
| > People are welcome to explore alternatives.
|
| For companies that deliberately obstruct justice work?
| Have the board and a healthy amount of executives serve
| 20 years in a high security prison, seize the assets and
| investigate their investors' due dilligence process.
| Gather proof with infiltrated workers.
|
| Tech leaders need to learn that criminal conspiracy is
| not part of a good business plan. If they start using
| mafia tactics, so can Justice.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| If you are a little person in the USA, I believe that would
| be spoliation of evidence.
| spellbaker wrote:
| Ok I'll bite... wtf
| telotortium wrote:
| I don't think any of these kill switches involved
| deleting data, just temporarily removing access of
| systems in the affected office.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Not a lawyer, but let's say the cops were searching my
| house. If I threw the keys to my unbreakable safe out the
| window, such that they could never be found, I doubt a
| judge would care for the distinction. That the evidence
| exists but cannot be accessed is still going to find you
| in contempt.
| fossislife wrote:
| As long as no police has confiscated (in most countries
| this involves the police man touching it, I bet) the
| equipment you can break it or make it inaccessibility
| however you like. It's your stuff, after all.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| That metaphor doesn't seem directly applicable to cutting
| off cloud access.
|
| If we're trying for a metaphor that would be a similar
| situation pre-digitization, the cloud servers containing
| business documents could be considered head office, and
| the office being raided would be the branch office. The
| branch office would continually be communicating with
| head office for their operations, and that communication
| would be shut down during the raid.
|
| This isn't a great metaphor because the "head office" has
| become sort of stateless and ephemeral with digitization,
| but that's part of the interesting question the OP was
| posing, how does law enforcement collect evidence when
| that evidence is hosted on cloud servers in nebulous
| datacenters?
| eastbound wrote:
| By creating a law for seizing the IT system of a company.
| "Provide everything", and if we later find that any other
| document existed back at that time, then it's contempt of
| court.
| gruez wrote:
| >By creating a law for seizing the IT system of a company
|
| There's already "a law for seizing the IT system of a
| company", it's called discovery or a subpoena.
| telotortium wrote:
| In the US such a law would likely be declared
| unconstitutional by the fifth amendment due to being
| overly broad:
|
| """
|
| United States v. Bridges, 344 F.3d 1010 (9th Cir. 2003)
|
| There was probable cause to search the defendant's office
| based on the information in the application that
| documented his efforts to provide illegal tax advice to
| various clients, including undercover agents. The search
| warrant in this case, however, was overly broad. It
| listed, among the items to be seized, "All records . . .
| documents . . . computer hardware and software . . ."
| Though this list was detailed, it was too expansive.
| There was simply no boundary to what could be seized. In
| addition, the warrant did not specify the crimes that
| were the subject of the search (nor did the warrant
| incorporate the application) so there was no limitation
| in that manner. Though the application was detailed, the
| warrant was not. All evidence should have been
| suppressed. (No discussion of Leon).
|
| """
|
| https://casetext.com/analysis/search-and-seizure-
| particulari...
| stevekemp wrote:
| What about if you're within 100 miles of a border?
| svieira wrote:
| Now let's say that instead you threw the keys to your
| unbreakable safe to your friend across the Atlantic
| Ocean. And you say that you didn't know that the people
| entering were cops. And your friend won't give the keys
| back. The evidence may exist, you cannot access it,
| neither can the police. The court has no jurisdiction
| over your friend and you have no authority to _force_
| your friend to give you the keys back.
|
| At that point, whether you are in contempt or not depends
| on the answer to the question "did you know that the cops
| were entering to look for evidence before you threw the
| keys?" Whether the judge _holds_ you in contempt or not
| is a function of the free choice of the judge and is not
| related to the answer to the first question (though
| whether or not the judge _should_ hold you in contempt is
| a function of what the judge believes about what you
| believed).
| jjallen wrote:
| This is like not giving them the password to your phone
| which I thought was protected at least in the US. They're
| both literally keys.
| onlypassingthru wrote:
| Your password is sort of protected. A judge can hold you
| in prison for contempt for refusing to provide a password
| but there is an 18 month jail limit, at least in federal
| court.[0]
|
| [0]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-
| refused-...
| telotortium wrote:
| The keys still exist and are accessible. What the kill
| switches does is make a fishing expedition harder. If the
| police knew of the existence of a specific document, or
| even all documents pertaining to certain terms, they
| could issue a targeted subpoena which Uber would have to
| comply with (at least in the US).
| tonygiorgio wrote:
| If it were keys to a safe that existed outside of the
| warrant requirements (in another country in fact), then
| it would likely not be illegal. The regulators would
| unlikely be able to legally access that safe anyways
| without extra due process, so it's mostly about
| protecting against unwarranted access.
| Onavo wrote:
| Do the folks at Brussels have the concept of "fruit of
| the poisoned tree" and parallel construction?
| izacus wrote:
| Stop mixing up law which governs corporate entities and
| criminal law that touches individuals.
| Onavo wrote:
| Same crap, different flavor.
| atmosx wrote:
| > I doubt a judge would care for the distinction.
|
| If the judge receives a call from the ministry of
| justice, they will care a great deal about the
| distinction.
| izacus wrote:
| This theorycrafting is cute, but in reality you've mixed
| up corporate entities and yourself as a person in a
| criminal case.
|
| And if a corporate entity finds a way to openly defy a
| national government, it tends to happen that those
| governments find a way to change the law (they're the
| ones making it, right? :P) for that defiance to become
| punishable by other parts of those governments which can
| sanction the corporation, prevent their operations within
| the country or even throw people in jail.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| You're conflating two different things here.
|
| One is, what does the law say? Did they violate it? Is it
| illegal for a foreign subsidiary to temporarily shut off
| access to a branch office? How would we like this to
| work? Policy arguments about law enforcement vs. due
| process and government overreach.
|
| The other is, politics. If the local government is
| captured by a cartel of taxi medallion holders who don't
| like Uber, the government is going to find a way to screw
| Uber, regardless of whether Uber is complying with
| existing law. But then it's politics and Uber is a multi-
| billion dollar corporation, so they have the option to
| capture the government themselves.
|
| Of course, that leaves the meta argument. Maybe deciding
| what should happen based on the second method is worse
| than the first, so how do we prevent that from being what
| happens?
| throwawaymobule wrote:
| Even if you do it before you could have known you were
| being served a warrant?
|
| IIRC, they did it in the US too.
| exe34 wrote:
| you'd think a judge could order you to provide the
| documents and then jail you for contempt of court until you
| do?
| sensanaty wrote:
| How the hell can any of what you just described be legal?
|
| Do you have any articles about this? Because this is _insane_
| if true.
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| Why should it be illegal? Isn't it akin to "right to remain
| silent"? Why the need to present any information to police
| unless it is asked by court. Assuming that they didn't
| delete the data, just moved it to somewhere safe where it
| couldn't directly be taken away.
|
| We had a raid in one of my previous company due to
| copyright violation due to a user uploaded content.
| Authorities came in to take in all the codebase, reports
| and even employee devices. Basically once given court
| permission, police would try to collect all the unrelated
| things which could be taken in the permission, so that they
| could extort you later.
| LunaSea wrote:
| It can be destruction of evidence, which is illegal.
| staticautomatic wrote:
| Unless it wasn't destroyed, in which case it might be
| interring with an investigation, which is probably also
| illegal in France.
| Algent wrote:
| It's definitely interference/obstruction at least of the
| raid itself yeah, but looking at the text and not being a
| lawyer I have a feeling it may be extremely hard to
| prosecute for something more substantial than a fine low
| enough for a french exec have it a as a guaranteed
| expense (bnEUR in tax fraud vs a few kEUR in fine). The
| law does also mention prison but it's not the kind of
| stuff that ever end up being applied for fiscal related
| cases.
| krisoft wrote:
| > I have a feeling it may be extremely hard to prosecute
| for something more substantial than a fine low enough for
| a french exec have it a as a guaranteed expense
|
| I know nothing about French law, but this whole thing
| gives me "organised crime" vibes. In many jurisdictions
| the punishment dramatically increases when a crime is
| commited as an organised group whose purpose is to commit
| said crime. As i said i know nothing about French law so
| i don't know if the same concept is present there, let
| alone if the letter of the law would fit the situation.
|
| But yeah i agree with you they won't care unless they are
| sitting in a cell with the chance of sitting a lot more
| in a cell.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Denying access to data that could still be specifically
| subpoenaed isn't destruction of evidence, it's a normal
| security measure. They still have the warrant to search
| everything _in the office_ , but not the right to use
| those computers to access uber's entire worldwide
| infrastructure.
|
| I have no idea what french law says about it but I think
| it's morally fine and don't care that uber did it.
| dh2022 wrote:
| I think this is an example of law lagging technology. A
| warrant gives the police the right to inspect and seize
| contents of a safe inside a house. Similarly, the law
| should be updated so that a warrant gives the police the
| right to inspect and seize contents of local computers.
| Local computers surely have valid certificates that allow
| the computers to connect to the mothership, right?
| dmurray wrote:
| Does a search warrant for your house give the police the
| right to search your car, if they found your car keys in
| your house? What about your neighbour's or your
| employer's car - perhaps on the other side of the world -
| if you happened to have those keys? To compel you not to
| tell your employer to change the locks, so the seized
| keys won't work?
|
| These seem like closer real-world analogies for what
| exactly a warrant to search someone's computer should
| entitle the police to do.
| pjerem wrote:
| Your analogy doesn't work. Your neighbor is not you.
|
| $COMPANY is $COMPANY all around the world and if $COMPANY
| wants to do business in $COUNTRY (which is not an
| obligation, they choose to), then yes, they have to
| entirely cooperate with $COUNTRY.
|
| If they don't want to, they can still do business
| elsewhere.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| I don't think a warrant to search an office should let
| them use the keys they find there on a company truck five
| miles away, either. Despite being the same company. (If
| it's in the parking lot then it's a maybe.)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > $COMPANY is $COMPANY all around the world
|
| This is the thing which is not the case. The subsidiary
| in the US is nearly always a _different company_ than the
| one(s) in Europe. They 'll have different management and
| different lawyers etc. Sometimes they even have different
| owners, e.g. because one of them is a joint venture with
| some other company, or a franchise. And they have to be
| different, because different countries have different
| laws and those laws often conflict with each other. So
| the subsidiary in the US follows US law and the one in
| France follows the law in France.
|
| You could try to make it otherwise, but it's pretty
| obvious what would happen then. Companies couldn't
| formally operate in multiple countries because their laws
| are incompatible, so instead there would be a straw front
| company in any given country that nominally isn't owned
| by the conglomerate, but is effectively just reselling
| their product/service in that country for an additional
| margin that only pays the salary of local management. To
| prevent this you would have to ban companies from having
| foreign suppliers, which is not very practical.
|
| And since countries know that's what would happen, they
| allow foreign subsidiaries to be regarded as separate
| entities even if they have shared ownership, instead of
| demanding the charade.
| pjerem wrote:
| In absolute, I agree with you. But personally if I had to
| chose between tax evasion (permitted by those schemes)
| and having less multinational companies because it'd be
| more difficult... well, my country was doing pretty okay
| before multinationals and is not doing okay since every
| taxes are evaded.
|
| Well Netflix is nice and all but I prefer social security
| and teachers in school.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| Federal revenue as a percent of GDP:
|
| https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFRGDA188S
|
| Basically flat since the end of WWII, significantly
| _lower_ before the war. At the height of the New Deal,
| less than half of what it is now. And that 's in the face
| of significant growth in real GDP per capita. Probably
| not a dissimilar story in most other Western countries.
|
| The problem isn't in the amount of taxes being collected,
| it's in where the money is going.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Not necessarily. Depending on how the org's set up, the
| system may be permissioned to access too much stuff. I
| think justice systems should lean less on a general
| warrant - too much of a fishing expedition - and instead
| focus on subpoenas specifically related to their area of
| investigation. E.g. if they seize the CEO's computer on
| accounting or tax concerns, I sincerely doubt they showed
| a judge probable cause to seize, I don't know, new
| product designs. As such they should not be able to
| access them.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| The point you're making is valid, but also exposes a
| common theme in litigation against big tech. It's pretty
| common to hear something like "company XYZ used data ABC
| to train a model about their users and is court ordered
| to delete it". It's unlikely that anyone in the justice
| system has even the slightest clue how to ascertain if
| this actually happened and certainly no way to prove it
| has been deleted. The court gives the order, the company
| says they have complied, & everyone pretends to go back
| to the way things were before hand.
| sidewndr46 wrote:
| let me just extrapolate this out a bit for you. I live in
| the US (yes I visited France once long ago, it was nice).
| I use Uber. My phone is an Android phone running Uber's
| app.
|
| Can a French prosecutor use Uber's systems to deliver a
| malicious payload to my phone to gather evidence? If so,
| is Uber required to assist them in this task?
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| I just have a hard time believing that any of us could
| get away with that.
| _bin_ wrote:
| Wasn't half of the concern with the arrest of Ross
| Ulbricht figuring when they could get him with his
| computer unlocked, without time to lock/wipe it? They'd
| have a pretty hard time proving destruction of evidence
| if 1. they didn't know for sure evidence was on _that_
| specific computer and 2. it was destroyed rather than
| just that the decryption key was removed from memory.
|
| Regardless, the government violating an individual's
| rights doesn't mean we should yell at uber, it means we
| should yell at the government.
| chollida1 wrote:
| These two issues are very far apart.
|
| Ross could argue he forgot his password to unlock the
| data in a single users case.
|
| In the corporate case it would be hard for Uber to argue
| that the entire company now has no access to any of the
| subpoenaed data.
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Yeah that doesn't really shift my opinion lol If I
| activated a kill switch to wipe my local computers when
| the FBI entered my house I can't even imagine the hell
| I'd reap, let alone that my data would be safe because
| it's scattered on servers in other countries.
|
| Also we can claim whatever we want but that doesn't mean
| it'll protect us in court.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Presumably the French police aren't randomly deciding on
| a Tuesday for no reason to check the company for proof of
| them being tax cheats without some court somewhere
| requesting it, but even if they were, we're talking about
| a company here, not a person. A person has the right to
| remain silent, it doesn't make sense for a company to
| have that same right.
|
| And the 2nd half just reads like pure corruption to me,
| they paid off some politician (who just so happens to
| wield the most power in the whole country) to pressure
| him to get them to stop their investigation into their
| illegal acts? In what universe could that 2nd sentence be
| construed as anything other than slimy, corrupt behavior?
| YetAnotherNick wrote:
| > And the 2nd half just reads like pure corruption to me
|
| Why did you conclude that?
|
| There were some user uploaded pirated content in our
| platform. As far as I know, some media company won
| approval by some judge for a raid to discover the extent
| of piracy. It's just in the police rulebook to get
| everything during the raid where there could be pirated
| content, including employees laptops.
| electrozav wrote:
| And if raids are court ordered?
| dh2022 wrote:
| I assume when the office was raided there was a warrant
| that would give police the right to inspect and seize
| property...
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| My impression was that they were trying to get remote
| access to ubers US servers/infrastructure/data?
|
| Might be wrong...
| chollida1 wrote:
| Because the government already has a warrant to obtain
| this evidence(they can't raid the office otherwise) and
| you as the company pushing this button are failing to
| turn over that evidence.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| I guess locally encrypted files in my computer is a
| problem as well then
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| In many jurisdictions it actually is a problem
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Key_disclosure_law
| ExoticPearTree wrote:
| It doesn't work like that.
|
| The warrant is based on probable cause, meaning that law
| enforcement is very confident in what they will find. So,
| if they don't find anything, tough luck. You have
| absoluteley no obligation to help the prosecutors in any
| way.
|
| The single notable exception that I am aware is the UK
| where you don't have the right to not incriminate
| yourself and if you don't provide a password to am
| encrypted device you can be jailed until you do.
| echoangle wrote:
| You have a right to not help them, but you can't actively
| destroy evidence. Do you think it would be fine to begin
| burning documents once the police comes to you office?
| barrenko wrote:
| It kinda sounds like you can't raid Uber / Netflix without
| hackers, Ghost in the shell type raid. Which is probably
| the future of raids.
| andylynch wrote:
| This is one of the prime threat models for things like
| encryption of data at rest on servers
| Izikiel43 wrote:
| That's so interesting, probably a good move for them, it's
| not their job to make governments lives easier
| jokoon wrote:
| do you have a source for the "kill switch"?
| badpun wrote:
| The authorities asks for access to these online documents?
| Similarly to how they ask to access to physical documents (they
| don't break down doors and break locks on file cabinets). If
| the personel of the company does not disclose some of the
| online documents, and these documents come up later (e.g.
| because they are referenced in some of the documents that did
| get disclosed), the people who did it get charged with
| tampering with an tax investigation.
| croes wrote:
| They just demand the data per warrant and if you don't deliver
| you go to jail for obstruction of justice
| red_trumpet wrote:
| Is that true? I'm not a lawyer but AFAIU, you don't have to
| provide incriminating evidence against yourself?
| bogeholm wrote:
| It's more or less the dictionary definition of 'subpoena'
| eg. [0]:
|
| > under penalty (you shall bring with you)
|
| [0]: https://www.merriam-
| webster.com/dictionary/subpoena%20duces%...
| croes wrote:
| The IT guys aren't the ones under investigation.
| gruez wrote:
| How does that work if it's a cloud system and you're denied
| access because the IT admin from another continent locked you
| out? Are you going to keep the executive around as a hostage
| in hopes of getting them to release the files?
| arccy wrote:
| yes? that's why countries require human presence
| croes wrote:
| Why should the IT guy lock you out if you want to access
| your data?
| cynicalsecurity wrote:
| What a funny naive thinki. Cloud services don't protect from
| the official authorities. Unless you want to go to jail.
| schnitzelstoat wrote:
| Is this what Emily was doing in Paris?
| drooopy wrote:
| Emily moves from Paris to Rome and then this happens.
| Coincidence?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Does Emily store all of her boxes of important documents in
| the spare bathroom too?
| CodinM wrote:
| did you literally just spoil this for me
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| It's been out for 2 months, you had your chance
| vulcan01 wrote:
| President Macron spoiled this for everyone in an interview
| with Variety.
| dvorack101 wrote:
| Wel,
|
| But things are changing. It seems... These are the developments
| in The Netherlands. Most of it somewhere over the horizon.
| Interested to know if other countries with similar tax evasion
| rules change their rules?
|
| It's in dutch so use your popular translation tool for these
| links:
|
| - https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/brochures/2023/10/11...
| - https://theses.ubn.ru.nl/server/api/core/bitstreams/a384a151...
| - https://open.overheid.nl/documenten/44e45809-c66e-4378-9fc8-...
| - https://www.nu.nl/economie/6286473/nederland-nummer-een-bij-...
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I know I'm likely alone in this opinion, but corporate income tax
| seems like a poorly designed tax to me. Why should companies pay
| taxes in a year with high profits, even if they face losses for
| the next ten years? Why should I pay corporate income tax when
| dividends and income are taxed anyway? Corporate income tax also
| seems to heavily influence business strategies as a consequence,
| which wasn't its intended purpose.
| jaimsam wrote:
| A lot of words to say: taxation is theft.
| tnolet wrote:
| The world of tax is complex. Business exist in many shapes and
| sizes. So...
|
| - because companies heavily use government resources like roads
| and stuff.
|
| - because losses can be offset against profits. These tend to
| be middled out over multiple years. You can port losses to
| other years.
|
| - a lot of companies (holdings etc.) don't pay out income tax
| and are basically just letterbox companies. These companies
| need to pay tax on dividends otherwise they would literally pay
| zero tax.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| > - because losses can be offset against profits. These tend
| to be middled out over multiple years. You can port losses to
| other years.
|
| These losses expire (different from country to country)!!
| Plus, inflation is not taken into account.
|
| > a lot of companies (holdings etc.) don't pay out income tax
| and are basically just letterbox companies. These companies
| need to pay tax on dividends otherwise they would literally
| pay zero tax.
|
| Tax on dividends is not corporate income tax. Dividend tax is
| classified as capital gains tax, which is entirely separate.
| My point is that anyone taking out money must pay taxes
| through personal income tax or dividend tax. So corporate
| income tax is just money that would be taxed anyway - or
| invested/used by the company. So no real purpose other than
| producing another cash inflow for the government.
| closeparen wrote:
| Whether you earn and save a given dollar as a W2 worker or
| through a business you own seems pretty incidental, right? Your
| net worth is going up just the same; society has the same
| interest in containing inequality.
| sensanaty wrote:
| Why shouldn't companies pay taxes? Especially since income is
| taxed already and your average Joe gets screwed way more than
| the poor downtrodden billion dollar companies.
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| Because a company just invests the money. You can't take out
| money from a company as an owner without taxing it anyway
| (because you anyway have to pay capital gains tax / personal
| income tax). My point was that I don't see a point in having
| corporate income tax (that's just an additional tax that
| prevents companies from investing in the business and
| employees).
| immibis wrote:
| "Invests the money" means it sits in their bank account
| until they've convinced enough politicians that the money
| should be taxed as it comes into the company, not when it
| goes out, and then they issue a massive dividend.
| binary_slinger wrote:
| Because governments need money to fund services. They would put
| a tax on making HN comments if they could get away with it.
| betaby wrote:
| Link tax is a thing in some countries. HN is just to small to
| be taxed.
| aithrowawaycomm wrote:
| Any corporation uses roads, mail, police, courts, and other
| public services, and this usage is not offset by individual
| income taxes on that corporation's employees, since the
| employees also use these things. In fact I suspect more
| resources are spent on serving corporations than serving
| individual taxpayers - with the important caveat that I am
| specifically excluding government social insurance programs.
| But those are often a totally separate tax system.
|
| It is baffling to think that for-profit corporations should be
| allowed to use public services without paying for them: before
| a company makes further internal investments with new revenue,
| it should chip in to society for building the infrastructure
| that made the revenue possible. A corporate income tax is
| perfectly natural.
| bubbleRefuge wrote:
| How about just get rid of double taxation in corporate taxes?
| Eventually, taxes will get paid via distributions or sale of
| stock by individuals.
| Retric wrote:
| Or never if the stock is owned by a foreign national, charity,
| sovereign wealth fund, etc.
|
| Reasonable corporate taxes are a net positive for the economy
| of the county that issues them.
| lokar wrote:
| Everything is double, triple, etc taxed. The corp->shareholder
| thing is an arbitrary point to focus on.
|
| Some amount of revenue must be raised. Suggest an alternative.
| Not taxing corp profits will result is less overall tax income
| (it wont be made up in shareholder taxes).
| knallfrosch wrote:
| You do know my income has already been taxed? Why am I paying
| double tax when buying alcohol? Why is my income taxed when the
| companies revenues were already taxed?
|
| There is no double taxation. Transactions are taxed, not money.
| mindslight wrote:
| Why not advocate for taxing only corporations, rather than the
| more oppressive direction of taxing only humans? Corporations
| intrinsically run on accounting report paperwork, meaning tax
| forms are an incremental cost rather than a novel burden. And
| they receive massive benefits from the state - liability
| protection, outsized access to the legal system, and often
| direct subsidies.
| precommunicator wrote:
| Because corporate taxes are paid on profit (revenue-
| expenses). So as a company I can claim a lot of stuff as a
| expenses. Executive salaries? Anything left after that? Lemme
| quickly create a separate company in some low tax
| jurisdiction and pay them for marketing expenses, and
| suddenly I have no profits, and nothing to tax. Regular
| people can't do that.
|
| You also generally can't tax the revenue instead of profits
| (except perhaps few percent of revenue as the minimal tax),
| because different companies have hugely different amounts of
| revenue and expenses.
| mindslight wrote:
| None of that is really a show stopper when talking about an
| overhaul of the tax system and what it targets.
|
| Speaking of taxing revenue instead of profits, that's
| another reason the current tax regime is so galling (at
| least speaking from a USian perspective). Individuals
| essentially _are_ taxed on revenue and can 't deduct things
| that would otherwise be straightforward deductions in a
| business context, as necessary and proper expenses required
| to earn that revenue.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Then you would be in favor of only taxing retained profits.
| Corporations keep piles of money for future use. It would make
| sense to allow deductions for dividends distributed to
| shareholders. But could also fix the stock buyback loophole by
| not allow deduction.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| As a non-European, it seems like these raids happen regularly to
| large companies' offices in Europe (mostly US companies). Maybe
| some Europeans can chime in and answer something that's been
| bothering me: Does this happen to smaller companies, too? Is it a
| serious problem to getting work done, not knowing if regulators
| are going to shut you down and rifle through your filing
| cabinets?
| knallfrosch wrote:
| A raid is a lot of work and only happens when you know you find
| something.
|
| For 99,9% of companies, you get audited every 5--25 years by
| getting a visit from your local tax authority.
|
| Remember: Small/medium companies have comparable companies and
| you can easily spot the tax dodgers. Or tax dodging is
| unofficially tolerated to some degree -- think restaurants only
| accepting cash.
|
| Most companies are not as blatantly illegal as Uber..
| immibis wrote:
| Large multinational companies are accustomed to openly breaking
| the law and getting away with it in the USA; when they try to
| do the same in Europe they are very surprised when the law
| actually comes after them.
|
| They also raid anyone else they don't like, such as people who
| run Tor exit nodes... but random small businesses are not in
| that group.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| Maybe this explains why the US is out ahead in GDP, income,
| and is doing much better pre and post covid than Europe.
|
| It's not so much breaking laws, but unnecessary restrictions
| and harassment by Europeans states.
|
| The US is business friendly. It's industry friendly. We don't
| needlessly harass the business of sovereign individuals, and
| the state apparatus isn't being used as an excuse as to exert
| power or influence over the population. Not to the same
| paternalistic extent of Europe.
|
| In Europe the liberal state apparatus that replaced the
| monarchies are acting an awful lot like the monarchies.
| sapphire42 wrote:
| You call a tax fraud investigation "needlessly harassing
| the business of sovereign individuals?"
|
| You're right, the U.S. is very business and industry
| friendly, which explains why the American people have been
| getting poorer and poorer while corporations and their
| shareholders get richer and richer.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| Who do you think the corporations are? Who do you think
| the small businesses are? Usurping the free enterprise of
| the American people and selling it as "freedom" is a sly
| tactic. Those industries, those corporation, those
| businesses ARE the American people.
|
| The government can never ever actually represent the
| people. It cannot act in the best interest of the people.
|
| You know why?
|
| Because it's made of people, and those people can only
| act in the best interest of themselves. They will never
| ever act in the best interest of other people, because
| people physically cannot.
|
| So why are Americans getting "poorer"
|
| Well they're not. This is absolutely false. The American
| people are getting richer. The American people have a
| widening wealth gap, but that is far from increasing
| poverty.
|
| That increasing wealth gap is due to restrictions imposed
| by enlightened bureaucrats on people getting wealthy, in
| collusion with the old money old industry extremely
| wealthy incumbents.
|
| In other words the State apparatus is hijacked by the
| incumbents that assume their survival is the survival the
| American people, hence they are "public". That state
| apparatus will never ever attempt to dismantle the very
| thing that feeds it.
|
| That's why it hates newcomers and that's why the state
| apparatus must go.
| immibis wrote:
| Take a walk around San Francisco and then say poverty
| isn't a problem.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| You know how much is spent on keeping San Francisco
| looking poor?
|
| "Non-profits" are spending literal billions of dollars on
| the problem... so that it remains a problem rather.
| mianos wrote:
| Americans have been getting richer and richer according
| to most recent studies. At the same time, other socialist
| countries are getting, on average, poorer. I think you
| may be confusing social inequality with overall wealth.
| overstay8930 wrote:
| The Average American is getting richer and richer,
| especially compared to European wage stagnation. I don't
| think non-Americans understand how rich middle class
| americans are.
| lomase wrote:
| Only 50% of Americans have Passports. 80% in Europe.
|
| We understand it, because we travel there on, our paid,
| vacations.
|
| My last time in America I went to San Francisco, lots of
| money, I have not seen a worst place to live in my life.
|
| Americans don't understand the quality of life other
| places have.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| And other places don't understand the sheer amount of
| wealth and freedom other people have. "It costs a lot of
| money to look this cheap" and San Francisco spends
| billions to look that cheap btw.
|
| Especially Europe. Europeans don't even seem to
| understand how large America is, which is why so few have
| passports.
| undersuit wrote:
| As an American surrounded by Superfund sites I would like
| some of these unnecessary restrictions and harassment by
| the state. The US is so beholden to private interests we
| can't even repair the roads or mandate healthcare without
| making it into a market.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| Do you know how we won World War 2? We retooled our
| industrial base because we had strong private sector
| industries. Do you know how the railroad infrastructure
| was built? We incentivized private sector industrial
| scale corporations to build out the railway. Guess how
| the roads in the country were built/who advocated for
| them in the first place.
|
| Do you know who the industrialists are? They are the
| people of the United States. The industry IS the public.
|
| That's why the US has so many millionaires. And that's
| why Europe is such a failure.
|
| The US IS "beholden to private interests", because the
| CITIZENRY is itself the "private interests".
|
| In other words that term "beholden to private interests"
| is in contrast to "beholden to public interest". The
| later "public" does not mean citizens or the people, but
| is a dog whistle for the exact opposite, that is the rule
| by an oligarchic "enlightened bureaucrats" that colludes
| with industries that has a sad case of mistaken
| identities, and narcissistically associates its survival,
| its wellbeing, with the public. When in fact it is the
| abuser of the public.
|
| The reason the "private" is the "private" is to protect
| the American citizen from government.
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| >Do you know how the railroad infrastructure was built?
|
| Abusing the heck out of immigrants and genociding the
| native people, I'm pretty sure. Also this (link is https:
| //www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtID=2&...
| ):
|
| >Construction of the railroad provided many opportunities
| for financial chicanery, corruption, graft, and bribery.
| The greatest financial scandal of the 19th century grew
| out of the railroad's construction. The president of the
| Union Pacific helped found a construction company, called
| Credit Mobilier, which allowed investors, including
| several members of Congress, to grant lucrative
| construction contracts to themselves, while nearly
| bankrupting the railroad.
|
| I don't think the corporation/government good/evil
| dichotomy you have made is so clean cut.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| "several members of Congress, to grant lucrative
| construction contracts"
|
| The difference is that I see that part as the evil. As in
| who is the "corrupt", "graft" and "bribery" here
| referring to? It's the government.
| undersuit wrote:
| >Do you know how we won World War 2?
|
| We as in the Allied forces? The Great Alliance?
|
| I also live within 200 miles of one of our Japanese
| Internment Camps.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| It was America's industrial base that won the war. This
| is an absolute fact. To deny it is like denying that
| American tanks, trucks, guns, bullets, engines, etc. won
| the war or that they were made by the American
| government.
|
| They weren't. America's industrial base, its _people_ ,
| came together and retooled themselves for this singular
| effort.
|
| In other words the labor and industry of the American
| people was co-opted by the government. It turns out it's
| been co-opted for so long the government's begun to think
| of itself as the people. The entire point is that the
| government is not the people and can never ever be the
| people.
|
| That's the basis of the very existence of America.
|
| The Nazis hated America for its industrial base btw. It
| saw the capitalist machine as itself immoral.
| pezezin wrote:
| > Do you know how we won World War 2?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_a_Flag_over_the_Rei
| chs...
|
| I don't see any American flag here.
| lacy_tinpot wrote:
| Who do you think supplied the Russian? Maybe they won by
| throwing pebbles and using horse-drawn chariots?
|
| Lend-Lease. Who do you think they leased from and what do
| you think they leased?
| Etheryte wrote:
| Getting raided can happen to companies of any size, Mullvad
| comes to mind as an example of a company that's small, European
| and got raided, but it is incredibly rare. It's hard to
| overstate how exceptional it is, you need to either be on the
| police radar with a serious issue, or breaking the tax law
| considerably, or etc. I think the main reason you see this
| happen to a lot of American companies is that they expand to
| Europe, but try to do business the same way they did back home.
| Both the legal landscape and the moral landscape wrt it are
| very different in Europe, and trying to willingly evade taxes
| for example is tended to with a very heavy hand. If I'm not
| mistaken, that's what's happened to Netflix here: they already
| got caught evading taxes once, and now there's a suspicion that
| they're doing it again/still.
| johndhi wrote:
| Sounds like the tech companies won't be expanding outside of
| Ireland for a while ....
| alexey-salmin wrote:
| Well they certainly do want the revenues from users outside of
| Ireland
| johndhi wrote:
| People with guns forcibly going through your things with
| threat of prison time tends to erase desire for revenue. See
| international business climate in China.
| pas wrote:
| Around ~2012 we were chilling on the terrace of a fancy
| office in the brisk morning (after a quick server migration
| in the datacenter on the ground floor, which of course
| turned into an all-nighter) as people were coming in to
| work, and then suddenly the folks coming in all looked the
| same, greenish uniform, some had SMGs, oh well.
|
| We worked for a small company, so we knew that they're here
| for the big company that does credit card transactions, but
| it was both surprising and ... absolutely uneventful, they
| didn't even talk to us. (As we were leaving we didn't even
| run into them - at least I don't recall any interaction.)
|
| Later the sysadmins of the big company had amazing stories
| about how the tax authorities wanted copies of every hard
| drive. And when they told them that, sure, sure, but things
| are on a RAID and without the config and the card it'll be
| useless. They didn't care of course :)
| scoofy wrote:
| I mean I think the point of the story is that they are
| pretending not to.
| bgnn wrote:
| Dutch are extremely business friendly with streamlined simple
| bureaucracy but they won't tolerate tax evasion. The correct
| approach would be to negotiate with the tax service.
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