[HN Gopher] The patterns of elites who conceal their assets offs...
___________________________________________________________________
The patterns of elites who conceal their assets offshore
Author : cval26
Score : 191 points
Date : 2025-07-17 19:09 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (home.dartmouth.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (home.dartmouth.edu)
| ok_dad wrote:
| Ok now find their hidden assets and take them. Criminals
| shouldn't be allowed to get away with crime right? These are some
| of the worst, IMO, as they rose on our backs and then turned
| around and stole the fair share they owed to society via tax
| cheating.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This is on the level of "getting money out of politics" --
| great idea, everyone excerpt the people who can do it agree.
| ineedaj0b wrote:
| money is not a finite supply. value is often created without
| taking from others.
| arrosenberg wrote:
| Then why don't the uberwealthy focus on that instead of
| stealing from the public?
| Hasz wrote:
| stealing easier.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Why do predators seek out the weaker animals in a hunt?
| Nobody _wants_ to work harder than they have to: work
| smarter not harder.
| whatever1 wrote:
| If you are hiding them then you did not pay the owed taxes to
| cover for part of the externalities of your business
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| False. Value is finite.
|
| Some geniuses think that value can be created out of thin
| air. Like if an artist paints a painting.
|
| No. This is false. The artist needs food to survive... he
| needs money to buy food. Who paid him money for the art?
| Another artist? So you can have a whole economy of artists
| producing nothing but art (aka value) out of thin air and
| they don't need to eat or buy food? You think that's actual
| value? That's a non functional economy. Someone needs to
| produce food in this economy. Someone needs to produce the
| energy to make the paint to create the art.
|
| When you follow the chain all "value" is connected to
| something concrete. Energy, food, etc. And ALL of these
| things are finite.
|
| When you think of value it can be thought of as entropy. Any
| action that lowers entropy requires an energy input.
|
| That being said. Value is never created. It is always taken.
| There are two root sources. The earth and the sun. All value
| is sourced from mining energy from the earth or mining energy
| from the sun. (Technically it all comes from the sun as
| energy in the earth <oil> comes from the sun).
|
| The issue with both of those sources is that the rate at
| which energy can be taken as an upper limit. The sun can only
| produce so much energy and we can only extract it at a
| specific rate. The earth is the same, although the earth has
| a much more smaller reservoir that can be used up in a
| foreseeable future.
|
| Just had to rant here. Because the idea that value can be
| created out of thin air is just completely and utterly false.
| You can overpay for something, but in the end when you follow
| the chain... the creation of value is taken from limited
| reservoirs of low entropy. Intuitively we are using something
| up, and the scientific reality ALSO reflects this fact. Trust
| your intuition, don't come up with convoluted ways around
| this because it's FALSE.
|
| PS: actually I was wrong about the earth. coal, geothermal
| and nuclear energy are exclusively from the earth and not the
| sun but these also have an upper limit and a limited rate of
| extraction.
| WalterBright wrote:
| You're using a computer. Somebody created that valuable
| computer out of dirt and rocks.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| The energy cost needed to transform the dirt and rock and
| the energy cost needed to create the body of knowledge
| and skillset required to get to that point DID not come
| out of thin air.
|
| I said it once and I'll say it again. Follow the chain of
| resource creation. There's a huge energy cost.
| daedrdev wrote:
| Yes, the sun bombards us with free energy that all energy
| on the earth is sourced from, so dont worry about
| accounting, since we clearly dont have the same amount of
| wealth as 5000 years ago
| WalterBright wrote:
| There is no particular correlation between value creation
| and energy consumption. Your theory is likely unique. I
| could burn a log, releasing a lot of energy, and no value
| would be created. I could carve a figure into a log and
| create value.
| nonchalantsui wrote:
| Your examples disagree with your initial statement
| actually. How did you get the log? How did you carve the
| figure? Both of these require energy consumption, as we
| aren't at the stage where we are magically planting trees
| and teleporting them into our workspaces for
| carving/burning.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| It's not a theory bro. It's fact.
|
| Take away all energy from this world. You get 0 value
| creation. Everything is dead nothing can move.
|
| That's the correlation. I don't understand why you're
| using big words like correlation as if this is something
| that needs to be studied. It's common sense imo.
| markerz wrote:
| But value creation isn't the point of taxes?
| legitster wrote:
| This is especially true if your wealth comes from capital
| markets.
|
| If I buy a bunch of baseball cards at 1c each and later it
| turns out that the market values them at $100 each, I never
| actually "took" money from anyone. Yes it's patently unfair
| that I got that lucky, but it wasn't necessarily at anyone's
| expense.
|
| Now, when I actually go to sell those cards then I do
| actually "take" money from someone else, but while those
| gains are unrealized it's just paper wealth.
|
| In such a case it's also not clear who I am "taking" from.
| The person buying them off of me gave me the money, but you
| could also say the baseball card company was exploited and
| lost out on pricing their cards at $100?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Because the seller left money on the table during a sale
| because they misread the room when they set the price does
| not mean the buyer exploited them.
| ok_dad wrote:
| companies aren't baseball cards, their growth is tied
| directly to work that the humans in the company do, and
| they sure are paid for it, but if they were paid a fair
| share of the company's profits then that increase in share
| price would evaporate, because the workers would be getting
| the rewards from the productivity.
|
| In other words, you owe taxes on the capital gains because
| someone is working to make those gains for you.
| legitster wrote:
| > their growth is tied directly to work that the humans
| in the company do
|
| They're linked but it's not 1:1. The whole point of a
| corporation and a value-add economy is to do a force
| multiplier on the cost of labor. It doesn't matter how
| hard you work when digging with a shovel, a lazy guy with
| an excavator will create value faster than you can.
|
| The guy providing the excavator is currently keeping the
| lion's share of the productivity gains, and that's not
| good. But it's also not quite the same as saying _all_ of
| the wealth comes from exploitation.
| ok_dad wrote:
| The value of the stock is the value of the corporation,
| right? What's the value of it if you don't have humans to
| man the factory? The only reason Capital has capital is
| because they're hoarding it since the beginning of human
| economics. If everyone shared equally then the guy with a
| steam shovel becomes a team who built, bought, or traded
| to get a steam shovel that they share to make their
| collective load easier.
|
| So in my world view, yes, all wealth is exploitative. No
| one person can do enough work to earn millions and
| billions more than others.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| > you could also say the baseball card company was
| exploited and lost out on pricing their cards at $100?
|
| The baseball card company is in the business of selling
| lottery tickets. If there wasn't a secondary market for the
| ones that get really valuable, they'd sell a lot fewer new
| cards to people looking for a winning lottery ticket.
|
| It's a weird business for them because they're selling
| lottery tickets, but don't necessarily know which ones will
| be winners. Although with all the statistics and moneyball
| stuff, they'd sell a probably have a better idea now than
| in the past.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > It's a weird business for them because they're selling
| lottery tickets, but don't necessarily know which ones
| will be winners.
|
| I think it's more like gambling on horse races. They make
| money by making the opportunity, and it's mostly the
| participants who prey upon one another.
| titzer wrote:
| Money has no inherent value; it is just a currency, an
| indirection, a promise. The economy must always bottom out
| at a physical good or service. You can keep trading
| promises of goods and services in various forms, but
| ultimately you end up with the inescapable tyranny of
| physical existence that is a closed system, with the one
| exception that we get energy from the Sun and stored forms
| of energy on this planet.
|
| No wealth was created by "discovering value" or finding
| someone with money to buy something that was already there
| before. If this new person decided to spend $100 on a
| baseball card, then they didn't spend money on something
| else, so the market for those other things is naturally
| going to price them lower. So the $100 came from
| somewhere[1].
|
| All of these open system chains of thought that assume any
| "non-zero sum game" either improperly account for
| devaluation of other goods or they assume accumulation of
| labor, and typically add a side helping of assumed
| exponential growth.
|
| [1] Which is not say that _money_ cannot be created from
| nothing. In fact, it is all the time. Debt--loans, stocks,
| bonds, IOUs--is money creation.
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Yes it 's patently unfair that I got that lucky_
|
| it's not unfair since you took the risk of potentially
| losing your original investment; you also put in the time
| to learn about baseball cards, while other people were
| interested in antiques and studied and bought those, also
| with a risk that what they bought would decrease in value.
|
| Can I interest you in some Beanie Babies?
| diob wrote:
| I'm not sure what you mean, do you mean resources aren't
| finite?
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| The pie can always get bigger.
| ok_dad wrote:
| Value can be created from nothing, I am sure you can give an
| example or two, but in general nothing large and valuable is
| created without the effort of a lot of people together,
| relying on the societal systems that are funded by taxes.
|
| I suggest that you could count on one hand the number of
| people in the entire history of humanity who could and would
| hide this kind of wealth who didn't earn it through somehow
| relying on others and/or society's structure.
| grimblee wrote:
| The planet's ressources are finite though. When you print
| money, you don't create value, since there's still the same
| amount of matter being traded around, you just reduce the
| value of everybody's money. And so you rob everybody.
| jsbg wrote:
| You are conflating money and value. Value is infinite, e.g.
| compare the world today to 200 years ago. Even relatively
| poor people live better today than kings did then. Creating
| value is not the same as printing money.
| ccortes wrote:
| Would we live with the same standards today if we had
| never printed any money?
| jsbg wrote:
| arguably we would have better standards because it would
| mean less spent on wars, which are pure destructions of
| value
| jpadkins wrote:
| What natural resource are we running short of? Land might
| be at the top of the list, but we are only utilizing 70% of
| that. And if we get low on that, we just switch to aqua-
| farming or floating cities. No one is hoarding all the
| natural resources.
|
| No argument that printing money devalues everyone else
| (this is the definition of inflation). End the Fed.
| jsbg wrote:
| in fact value is created in every transaction: someone sells
| something for more money than it's worth to them and someone
| buys the thing for less money than the thing is worth to them
| (otherwise the transaction would not occur)
| kwk1 wrote:
| > otherwise the transaction would not occur
|
| Doesn't this assume perfect information?
| jsbg wrote:
| no, how is that relevant? someone has something to sell
| for $1 that you value more than the $1 in your pocket so
| you buy it; doesn't matter if someone a block away is
| selling it for $0.50
| snackbroken wrote:
| > value is created in every transaction
|
| Lots of transactions actually destroy value, they just do
| so in a way that externalizes this cost.
|
| A good example is advertising: companies are incentivized
| to dump all available resources into marketing, because
| those who don't get out-competed by those who do. It is a
| winner-takes-all game where the strategy that maximizes
| global value is nowhere close to being a Nash equilibrium.
|
| A more extreme example would be hiring someone to go rob a
| bank. No value is created (lots is destroyed) but both
| parties to the transaction come out ahead.
| ccortes wrote:
| Value "creation" and money supply have nothing to do with
| each other.
| ninetyninenine wrote:
| Well the people who control enforcement are the elite. Right?
| Trump is one of the elites. So you think they're going to
| enforce anything? You think it will be easy?
|
| No.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| The recoil from the Trump graft machine will control the
| army.
|
| None of this stuff is permanent.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Cayman Islands is a tax haven
| sleepybrett wrote:
| It's a tax haven right up until, say, the us navy parks a
| fleet on their doorstep.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The US Navy isn't gonna want to piss off 80% or more of
| Congress that way.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Also the fact the US Navy doesn't just make decisions on
| its own to blockade another nation. It would do so under
| orders. The person giving that order more than likely
| would have accounts there themself. So that's very
| unlikely to be an order ever actually given.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| Forget congress, probably half the first world's
| leadership
| heavyset_go wrote:
| The navy that exists to serve the ruling class that
| certainly have their own wealth hidden in tax havens?
| khurs wrote:
| Cayman Islands, along with British Virgin Islands,
| Jersey, Guernsey etc are all part of the UK.
|
| And as allies of the USA, the navy ain't coming.
| sershe wrote:
| It would be a wonderful world if only people could force
| those running a less dumb economy to abide by their dumber
| rules. Wouldn't it be awesome if NK could park a navy
| somewhere and make sure everyone does things for the
| benefits of The People and not in whatever selfish way they
| do them now?
| pc86 wrote:
| What does this mean? What does it have to do with the comment
| you're replying to?
| lossolo wrote:
| What's interesting about the Cayman Islands is that they are
| the 4th largest holder of U.S. debt, with $441 billion[1].
|
| So USD flows into Cayman banks, and those banks need to do
| something with the massive amounts of money just sitting
| there. So what do they do? They buy U.S. Treasuries. And half
| a trillion dollars is just their holdings in U.S. debt,
| imagine how much more money is hidden in those accounts and
| invested in other assets.
|
| 1. https://ticdata.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-
| cent...
| tejohnso wrote:
| > find their hidden assets and take them
|
| Asset security is exactly one of the reasons people seek
| foreign shelters. If you've got a ton of value to control, you
| want it to be secure, and sometimes your own government is the
| primary threat.
| bboygravity wrote:
| Your reasoning is the exact reason that they left in the first
| place.
| rectang wrote:
| "We don't pay taxes; only the little people pay taxes."
|
| -- Leona Helmsley
| haizhung wrote:
| They can leave, their assets can not.
| kylecazar wrote:
| The study:
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| exabrial wrote:
| All I'm mad about is I don't have access to the same sorts of
| instruments. I pay an _excessive_ amount of taxes that return at
| like a 0.0001% for society. I could make 12% on them and give 5%
| directly at a much better rate.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| If you're making that 12% exploitatively (which _most_
| ludicrously-high-interest "investments" are), that's a net
| harm for society. (A smaller-scale example, to aid with
| intuition: there once was a lung cancer charity which funded
| the promotion of cigarettes, to increase the dividends of
| cigarette stocks, so they had more resources with which to help
| lung cancer victims.)
|
| Money isn't real: it's an abstraction. What it's an abstraction
| _for_ , on the other hand, is _very_ real. Don 't confuse the
| map and the territory.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Higher returns always come with higher risk. This is not
| exploitation, nor do high risk investments harm society.
|
| Musk, for example, invested hundreds of millions into Tesla,
| his entire fortune. Soon afterwards, he was within hours of
| personal and business bankruptcy.
|
| SpaceX also was one explosion away from total bankruptcy.
|
| Say what you will about Musk, the man has a lot of guts.
| Without those guts, there'd be no Tesla and no SpaceX and no
| Starlink.
| Nasrudith wrote:
| How is 'exploitatively' defined? I have seen it used as
| 'literally anything that makes a profit is exploitation by
| definition' crap used unironically often enough that
| 'exploitation' itself has become a major red flag (no pun
| intended). Those users of such definitions just love those
| sorts of tautologies disguised as logic as it makes for a
| nice and orderly world view to be able to make baseless and
| frankly, batshit insane assumptions. Like 12% returns being
| only possible through net harm to society. It is perfectly
| normal for a successful small business to have a ROI of 25%
| to 40%.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Right: a successful small business where people are doing
| _actual work_ can have a potentially-unbounded ROI. "Money
| makes money" schemes, on the other hand... the situations
| where access to money is _genuinely_ worth 12% returns to
| someone are slim. (If it 's a high-risk venture, then
| that's not 12% returns _in expectation_ : "loan that we'll
| write off if your venture fails" _is_ providing actual
| value, under certain circumstances.)
|
| Scams, cons, grifts, and destructive exploitation of common
| resources, on the other hand? Those can get _massive_
| numbers of monies out for every single number of money in.
| So that 's where my mind goes, when someone talks about
| "make 12% on [a pile of cash]".
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > I could make 12% on them and give 5% directly at a much
| better rate.
|
| You could. Would you, though?
|
| History (milennia of it) says the average answer is "no".
| exabrial wrote:
| I already give 11% of my income away, so yes.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Is 10% of that a church tithe?
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| Charity is not a replacement for a functioning government.
| Assuming you're in the US, it's hard to argue that you're not
| paying _far less_ than you should be, given how quickly we 're
| running up the deficit.
|
| I'm of the opinion that we should have a constitutional
| amendment which limits debt to gdp to 80%. If the CBO indicates
| we will breach that, congress has 8 years to get it back under
| control before the CBO has the authority to ban officials from
| public office if it's determined they voted in favor of the
| legislation responsible for the breach. No doubt there are
| problems around that. Someone smarter than me can fill in the
| holes.
| neilwilson wrote:
| There's a big problem with that. The "deficit" is just the
| liquid financial savings of the private sector.
|
| The correct approach is to require all those people worried
| about the "Debt" to hand over any liquid savings they have in
| bank accounts or retirement funds. Since that is what is
| causing it by accounting identity.
|
| After all if they consider it to be such a problem they
| should put their money where their mouth is.
|
| Read The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton to understand how
| the system actually works.
|
| Amusingly a larger deficit means government has more space to
| spend, not less. People saving means they are not spending
| which means resources are left underemployed.
|
| Debt to GDP is not a relevant concern in a free floating
| currency has Japan has demonstrated for decades.
| hhmc wrote:
| There is no risk free investment that will return you 12%. In a
| year where you are down 30% are you still contributing 5% on
| initial capital? If not, you are just constructing an
| instrument where you only pass through downside risk
| WalterBright wrote:
| > There is no risk free investment
|
| Fixed that for ya!
| hhmc wrote:
| For all practical purposes you can - and the world broadly
| does - consider e.g. TBills to be risk free (or take your
| favourite interbank lending rate etc etc).
| WalterBright wrote:
| The US government has confiscated value from T Bills
| before.
|
| The government used to sell two bond types - dollar bonds
| that paid off in dollars, and gold bonds that paid off in
| gold. The gold bonds were safer and hence paid a lower
| interest rate.
|
| Enter FDR. FDR decided to pay off the gold bond holders
| in dollars, not gold, and since the value of gold vs
| dollars had diverged substantially, FDR confiscated the
| difference.
|
| That was the end of the phrase "sound as a dollar". Gee,
| I wonder why nobody says that anymore!
|
| The largest risk of TBills is that inflation will shrink
| their value, and with catastrophic deficits that is a
| very, very real risk. That's why I don't invest in bonds
| or any investment that is denoted in dollars.
| hhmc wrote:
| This is heterodox opinion to modern financial theory.
| You're welcome to hold it, I'm not interested in trying
| to convince you otherwise -- I think it undermines the
| larger point I'm trying to make in an unhelpful way.
| jrflowers wrote:
| That sucks, sounds like you might have to try to improve the
| system that you live in. It's a shame that most people that
| live in a society have to concern themselves with making things
| better instead of gambling and promising some of the proceeds
| to their pet causes
| datahack wrote:
| Just want to point out that this was all possible because of the
| hard work of people at the icij. They do amazing work (same group
| that did the Panama papers and one of the last real independent
| investigative news organizations in the US) and deserve your
| support!
|
| More info here: https://www.icij.org/
|
| As an aside, I would also ask this question: why not democratize
| this and make billions using the same loopholes so that everyone
| gains access or they are forced to fix it? Surely it's a good
| startup opportunity.
| delusional wrote:
| > same group that did the Panama papers
|
| Isn't the icij "just" a network of people already doing
| investigative journalism who work on this stuff anyway? As in
| it's just a place where investigative journalists can
| meet/discuss investigations that cross borders? My impression
| were that they were just normal journalists and that groups
| then formed and disbanded based on interest within this
| network.
|
| I certainly love their work, and I think a network like that is
| very important (we should probably have something similar for
| software developers/IT people across Europe), calling them a
| group seems wrong with my understanding though.
| RamblingCTO wrote:
| > we should probably have something similar for software
| developers/IT people across Europe
|
| what do you mean by that? support by doing data journalism?
| more like hacktivism?
| delusional wrote:
| I'm thinking something much more boring than that.
| Basically I think we could have a conference where a
| participant could share some problem they are having that
| they believe generalizes across other participants (maybe
| some regulatory reporting requirement, or maybe some
| question about implementing AI in sharepoint or whatever)
| and the other participants could then sign up for further
| discussion and participation in creating some software
| systems that would solve the problem.
|
| I'm thinking something akin to FRONTEX JAD's or that
| conference the EU has where lawyers show up to discuss
| cases they need EU assistance with.
|
| Concretely, my company recently did a migration into Azure,
| if we were at a meeting like that and somebody said they
| were planning to do the same, we would have a bunch of
| experience to share with them.
|
| I imagine that could maybe help foster some shared European
| understanding about what our big tech problems are. Maybe
| we could even let the solutions end up as open source or
| something.
| phtrivier wrote:
| True, but they also tend to be papers that can't consistently
| rely on advertising, precisely because of their
| investigations (publishing the deeds of corporate
| billionaires is a great way to not get ads placed for
| whatever the billionaire sells.)
|
| So, at least subscribe to one of the papers !
|
| (I know, sorry HN, I asked people to pay for a service that
| could be financed by ads to gather more data - aka more food
| for the algo. Sorry.)
| input_sh wrote:
| It's not one or the other, it's both. They both do original
| reporting on their own and act as a loose network of smaller
| investigative journalism organizations. It truly depends on
| the task at hand, but it's usually very useful to get some of
| the local investigative journalists involved, as they're the
| ones that both understand the language and are able to put
| the leaked data into context. Usually ICIJ is the one that
| publishes the English version of the story and their local
| partner(s) publish the same thing in the local language.
|
| Actually, I'd say there's three such networks: ICIJ, GIJN and
| OCCRP. They're not really competitors, each serving slightly
| different purposes, and there's plenty of collaboration and
| overlap between their members.
|
| Source: I'm not in that world anymore, but I knew about
| Panama Papers long before it was public and have my name in
| the credits in some of the collaborations with ICIJ.
| freed0mdox wrote:
| The way I understand these schemes is that they require minimum
| balance way above what an average person has to be effective,
| but not sure. Would love a professional tax engineer/CPA
| opinion.
| rapnie wrote:
| There was a documentary on Dutch TV a couple of years ago,
| about 'DYI tax haven management' for common people. Can't
| remember which public channel it was on, and what the name
| was. Might have been part of "Tegenlicht" series.
|
| Update: Maybe it was the program Rambam where the makers set
| up their own tax haven based on the methods of the big
| corporations. Information in Dutch:
|
| https://pers.bnnvara.nl/rambam-ontduikt-belasting-met-
| medewe...
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| Meanwhile the Netherlands is taxing the common people like
| crazy, and politicians are talking about raising taxes even
| more.
| conception wrote:
| The Netherlands also has the number two quality of life
| in the world so maybe don't worry about it so much?
|
| https://www.numbeo.com/quality-of-
| life/rankings_by_country.j...
| cyanydeez wrote:
| it's weird when Americans day dream of giving tax breaks
| to billionaires because they might be rich one day; it's
| a another thing for people who ostensibly have the best
| social system in the world looking at America and say "we
| should do that".
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| There are plans for making mortgages more expensive by
| removing tax deductions and for taxing inheritance a
| whopping 75%. That is hardly giving tax breaks to
| billionaire, more so screwing over anyone who isn't dirt
| poor. Oh, and I'm already paying pretty much half my
| income in various taxes.
|
| Anyone who has a significant amount of money can avoid
| these taxes, as always.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > Might have been part of "Tegenlicht" series.
|
| Consistently the best thing on TV.-
| khurs wrote:
| No. Anyone can register a LLC in any of these places. They
| have minimal filing requirements going forward too.
|
| You may be required to have a local agent, and they will add
| their address and names as the nominee shareholders so you
| remain anonymous. Then with an LLC, the company can open bank
| accounts and you can move money. Any money made offshore is
| non-taxed locally.
|
| No different to Delaware.
| znpy wrote:
| > Surely it's a good startup opportunity.
|
| I don't think there are many VCs willing to invest into this.
| calgoo wrote:
| Technically, if the VC and the startup is located in the
| blacklisted country i don't see why not. Basically we will
| start the torrent site like DNS witch hunt, but still
| possible. I assume the "elites" would not be too happy and do
| everything in their power to stop it?
| AriedK wrote:
| There's a fun documentary that explores this concept:
|
| The Town That Took On The Tax Man https://youtu.be/ipV_GU7YaQg
|
| It's about a Welsh town that set out to do just this.
| Recommended watch.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| dont forget the hard work of congress nicely putting threading
| loopholes, and the supreme court!
| phtrivier wrote:
| Is there a good primer on how this kind of offshoring works, for
| people ? I have notions of how tax evasion / optimization works
| (things like the irish-dutch sandwich, where you manage to
| pretend that Google does not make any money in France because it
| has to pay a very expensive license to Google Ireland , etc..)
|
| But for offshoring, I'm clueless as to how manage to "reshore"
| the money, so to speak, so that you can eventually... Spend it to
| buy stuff. (Or isn't that the purpose of hiding the money ?)
| stult wrote:
| Brooke Harrington (one of the professors from the OP article)
| has an excellent book on the topic, called Offshore.
| agumonkey wrote:
| Naive take, they never reshore, but take loans with assets as
| collateral.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| That's my understanding of how modern money laundering works.
| Can't move your money out of a particular bank due to
| regulations? Use it as collateral to loan money to any other
| entity you wish. Fancy.
|
| I talked to someone recently who claimed to know someone
| personally with 16,000 metric tons of gold. He claims that
| there is waaay more gold than is officially on the books.
| Hard to believe... but maybe not. He claims that there is
| unbelievable wealth out there--many more hundred-billionaires
| than official stats hold. Ok. Who knows?
| cyberax wrote:
| > 16,000 metric tons of gold
|
| There are approximately 200,000 tons of gold ever mined in
| total.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| That's what he disputes...
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| It it isnt being used, it basically doesn't matters. The
| only interpersonally relevant aspect is spending and
| consumption.
|
| If the guy living under the bridge has 1 million metric
| tons of tons of gold they don't spend, it is functionally
| equivalent to if they had none.
| Havoc wrote:
| >Is there a good primer on how this kind of offshoring works,
| for people ?
|
| There isn't. People with deep knowledge of this don't invest
| their time writing blogs. Bit like OpenAI employees don't write
| blogs about how to train world class models. It's just not a
| thing.
|
| There is an abundance of shrill articles by journalists writing
| about it that derive their knowledge from other articles
| written by journalists who in turn...
|
| The big tech stuff flowing through Ireland is indeed lets call
| it convenient for both ireland and big tech, but what people
| don't realise is that chances are very high that their own
| pension likely flows through offshore structuring too. These
| places act as a central neutral clearing house of sorts that is
| acceptable to a lot of jurisdictions so even actors not after
| tax evasion use them.
| cyberax wrote:
| > But for offshoring, I'm clueless as to how manage to
| "reshore" the money, so to speak, so that you can eventually...
| Spend it to buy stuff. (Or isn't that the purpose of hiding the
| money ?)
|
| Why would you reshore the bulk of funds? We're talking about
| people for whom a couple of million is just spare money.
|
| If you want to buy a company, you just use the offshore funds
| directly. If you want to buy a major luxury good (a yacht or a
| jet), you do the same and then just lease/rent it to yourself.
|
| If you _absolutely_ need cash in the US, you can pay yourself
| dividends and take a hit paying taxes on this amount only.
| pc86 wrote:
| At the multinational level you never have to actually reshore
| anything. The corporation buys things, or you take loans at
| incredibly low interest rates using corporate assets as
| collateral. Using made up numbers, imagine you take out a $1M
| loan, you get charged 1% interest, you put up $2M in corporate
| assets as collateral, and the corporation pays the bill
| directly.
| dh2022 wrote:
| The way money is re-shored is whenever a US President (so far
| only republican Presidents) decide to give companies a tax
| holiday. So far Bush and Trump gave such holidays. Which means
| that corporate treasuries only have to wait for the next
| Republican president to re-patriate their off-shore cash.
| During this time corporations usually use debt to service
| dividend payments, share repurchases, and operating expenses in
| the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repatriation_tax_holiday
| layman51 wrote:
| This is so surprising to see research on. It's also very brave.
| It's the kind of investigation that could get a drone or a hitman
| sent after the investigator.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| The elites know they're untouchable so they do nothing.
| philipkglass wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daphne_Caruana_Galizia
|
| _Daphne Anne Caruana Galizia (nee Vella; 26 August 1964 - 16
| October 2017) was a Maltese writer, journalist, blogger and
| anti-corruption activist, who reported on political events in
| Malta. She was known internationally for her investigation of
| the Panama Papers and subsequent assassination by a car bomb.
| Caruana Galizia focused on investigative journalism,
| reporting on government corruption, nepotism, patronage, and
| allegations of money laundering, links between Malta 's
| online gambling industry and organized crime, Malta's
| citizenship-by-investment scheme, and payments from the
| government of Azerbaijan. Caruana Galizia's national and
| international reputation was built on her regular reporting
| of misconduct by Maltese politicians and politically exposed
| persons._
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Shit, forgot about that. Thanks for the reminder.
| v5v3 wrote:
| It's why the Panama papers etc was done by a consortium of
| journalists. Much safer as killing one journalist or two
| doesn't make any difference to the end publication.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Really? I seem to recall a certain journo that went in a
| whole person but came out in many smaller pieces. Journos are
| _NOT_ untouchable.
| itsdrewmiller wrote:
| I don't think they meant "journalists" when they said
| "elites".
| khurs wrote:
| It's not an investigation naming individuals, it's high level
| pattern analysis.
|
| No one is going to get killed for this one!
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I need to think about starting a Panama private interest
| foundation.
| cval26 wrote:
| Previous related work by the same group:
| https://home.dartmouth.edu/news/2023/02/targeting-wealth-man...
| vslira wrote:
| > Yet, elites who come from countries where their assets are
| likely to be seized due _either to a lack of civil rights_ or a
| government with effective regulations tend to use a "concealment
| strategy" to remain anonymous.
|
| Not to be a defender of criminal money laundering, but this is an
| important caveat. When all money is traceable, digital and
| controlled, good luck funding anything against the government in
| an authoritarian setting.
|
| Unfortunately that's a catch-22
|
| I'm well aware of the impact of corruption and organized crime
| and how it affects billions worldwide, I've read more than one
| book on the subject. but it's analogous to the issue with
| cryptography, privacy and protecting people, especially minors,
| on the internet for example
| searine wrote:
| Funded by US taxpayers via a grants from the National Science
| Foundation and Dartmouth College.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It's kind of sad that whenever there's an article about the very
| rich using alternate, shadow financial systems to avoid paying
| taxes and (often illegally) hide their wealth, most of the
| comments are "Why can't I do that, too?" instead of "Why can't we
| find and punish the people doing that?"
| rjknight wrote:
| "I want an end to corruption, or a chance to participate in
| it!"
| alisonatwork wrote:
| It's not worth getting upset about. I am sure there are
| leftists who read HN, but the popular tone of the political
| commentary here tends to slant pro-capitalism, libertarian,
| anti-woke, meritocracy, dark enlightenment etc. It makes sense
| if you understand the website as a market research slash hype
| incubator for an American venture capital firm. Many of the
| people posting here are actively employed in the get rich quick
| startup scene and even those who aren't are still likely to be
| amongst the wealthiest segment of society due to their work.
| Almost certainly the vast majority are men. It is what it is.
|
| The comments here are not representative of broader society,
| but they can sometimes be interesting to gain a sense of where
| an influential chunk of the global tech elite is at. I have
| heard HN political or social talking points echoed in the
| mouths of leadership at company all-hands, and non-HN reading
| friends at other tech companies have mentioned similar themes
| at theirs, so there is some value in having this window into
| the culture as an early warning system.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| it's sad that people want freedom? I think it's way more sad to
| imagine a world where the state reigns supreme, it should
| always be possible to go solo if you can pull it off, it's way
| more human, the state is just other people, often using bully
| tactics, they shouldn't be able to rule over you, there should
| at always be places to escape to
| fsckboy wrote:
| > _Billionaires, oligarchs, and other members of the uber rich,
| known as "elites"_
|
| it's a small point but, "elites" usually refers to those with
| good educational credentials who hold down white collar jobs at
| universities, newsmedia, law and finance firms, political
| campaigns, non-profits, etc., jobs they got because their parents
| know how to help them network and who can afford to pay their
| rent in major cities while they "pay their dues" as interns in
| these same organizations. Yes, they do have higher than average
| incomes, but I heard a great word for them (from a left-leaning
| source fwiw) who called them "the 19%". They are not the 1%, but
| they make up the rest of the 20% and they work for the 1%, and
| though they often have left leaning political ideals, it's human
| nature to want to defend what you have and feel you earned it,
| and also to pass it along and take care of your own children's
| futures. According to this guy, they control 2x the wealth that
| the 1% controls and flex a lot of political muscle.
|
| Billionaires, oligarchs, and other members of the uber rich are
| generally referred to as just those things. The people behind
| this study I would guess are in the 19%, and by labelling the
| billionaires and oligarchs as elites, unconsciously they shed the
| shame of being elites themselves (Dartmouth? pure ivy league).
| mihaitodor wrote:
| Brooke Harrington (one of the co-authors of the paper) was
| interviewed by Sean Carroll for the Mindscape podcast:
| https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2023/05/22/237-....
| I was sure this study must've come from her group when I saw the
| title.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| >>>"cases like Singapore where the government is free of
| corruption but low on civic participation"
|
| What is 'civic participation' in this context ?
| kccqzy wrote:
| Fewer than expected number of protests and demonstrations.
| Uvix wrote:
| Surely the expected number of protests and demonstrations in
| a country where you get whipped for doing so is zero?
| kccqzy wrote:
| No caning is not a punishment for protests and
| demonstrations; that would be ridiculous as they would lose
| even the perception of free speech as a fundamental
| liberty. But generally, such protests and demonstrations
| have a lot of restrictions in place: they need to take
| place in a specific location (Hong Lim Park), they need to
| be pre-arranged, they cannot be religiously sensitive, they
| cannot be about the political issues of a foreign country,
| and speeches against politicians are often met with libel
| lawsuits. The only large-scale protests that happened in
| recent memory are all about same-sex marriage and LGBT
| rights.
| lemoncucumber wrote:
| Basically this paragraph from
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Singapore:
|
| "Singapore has consistently been rated as the least-corrupt
| country in Asia and amongst the top ten cleanest in the world
| by Transparency International. The World Bank's governance
| indicators have also rated Singapore highly on rule of law,
| control of corruption and government effectiveness. However, it
| is widely perceived that some aspects of the political process,
| civil liberties, and political, labour and human rights are
| lacking. The Economist Intelligence Unit rated Singapore a
| "flawed democracy" in 2024. Freedom House deemed Singapore
| "partly free" in 2025, at 48/100 -- 19/40 for political rights,
| 29/60 for civil liberties."
| khurs wrote:
| If you are an activist of any kind, it's a good idea to be
| offshore. A UK Palestinian support group had their account frozen
| and access to the funds blocked just this week
|
| https://x.com/declassifiedUK/status/1945077503996895319
|
| If you are an activist, have stuff offshore in a country other
| than the one you campaign in. And Crypto.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| I've just concluded that the ultra wealthy are in some aspect
| stateless people. Sure, they have a passport - or multiple - but
| they'll emigrate to another country without blinking, if it means
| slightly less taxes and less transparency. And that's on top of
| their offshore assets, managed by other people.
|
| Using your assets/wealth as political power seems to have become
| more popular here in northern Europe. Taxes too high? Fuck you,
| I'll take my money and companies to Switzerland. If politicians
| buckle, they'll move back home. Seems like a race to the bottom,
| where the tax havens will just compete for the best terms to the
| ultra wealthy.
| analog31 wrote:
| What I wonder is: Will they be missed? They're taking money
| away that the government won't have access to anyway, and by
| hoarding it, effectively reducing the money supply. If they
| live somewhere else, they might have less influence over our
| society.
| pavlov wrote:
| The ultra-wealthy have been stateless for centuries.
|
| For example, Britain's famous "non-domiciled" tax exception was
| first created in 1799. It allows UK-resident foreigners not to
| pay tax on their foreign income except for funds they bring
| into the UK.
|
| Wealthy families have been able to live their lives enjoying
| the stability of a Western democracy without paying taxes,
| keeping their assets scattered safely around the world and
| their citizenships wherever they can get the best deal.
|
| The USA is also joining this game with Trump's "gold card" that
| offers a path to citizenship for a $5M fee. But I don't think
| the very rich will bite because US law and the IRS expect
| citizens to report their global income (at least for now, maybe
| Trump will eliminate this too with a stroke of a pen).
| v5v3 wrote:
| >Sure, they have a passport - or multiple - but they'll
| emigrate to another country without blinking,
|
| You forgot one variable. Women have a mind of their own.
|
| Switzerland tried to take London's Hedge Fund Industry. The
| wives and kids hated the lack of things to do compared to
| London.
|
| Same with Footballers. If a football player or manager signs
| for a club in a unattractive location, the wives may stay in
| the previous City.
| gabesullice wrote:
| The authors write that it's "counterintuitive " that in states
| with low crime and efficient beaurocracies, the uberrich tend to
| conceal or relocate their wealth more. See: "This
| suggests a counterintuitive result: use of offshore finance is
| driven not only by negative political conditions such as
| corruption and lack of civil justice, but by positive conditions,
| such as regulatory enforcement and civil justice."
|
| But it's not counterintuitive at all. Those people aren't
| concerned about getting mugged and they're definitely not
| concerned about how long it takes to get a construction permit in
| a corrupt country. They're concerned about state-sponsored
| expropriation.
|
| Given so many of the comments here about tracking the offshore
| accounts down and confiscating the contents, it's no surprise.
|
| Irrespective of whether their practices are immoral, unethical,
| unfair, or unjust, they're definitely not counterintuitive.
|
| It's genuinely hard for me to understand how the authors could
| believe otherwise.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| "State-sponsored expropriation"
|
| So... Taxes?
|
| I'm intrigued as to the framing of your post. You seem to be
| positing that it's entirely expected and understandable that
| wealthy individuals in well functioning systems should commit
| fraud to the detriment of the system that brought them their
| wealth. That seems counterintuitive to me, at least.
| jokoon wrote:
| What is weird is how countries still have enough money to
| function despite this
|
| I wonder what sort of political event would change that, probably
| when EU countries realize they need money to rebuild their
| military.
| Terr_ wrote:
| I have to say that as an American in 2025, this kind of news hits
| a little different than it used-to.
|
| In prior years, I didn't have nagging anxieties about people's
| life savings being arbitrarily frozen/seized as a form of
| political retribution, or the imposition of China-style capital
| controls to ensure "patriotic investing."
|
| Before anybody decries that as (still) far-fetched, consider that
| the federal government forced banks to drain millions from the
| accounts of states (NY), announced $365,000/yr "fines" on
| undocumented immigrants, and imposed arbitrary (illegal) import
| taxes while threatening companies against showing it on the bill.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-17 23:01 UTC)