Comment · Mon, July 23, 2012
Super rich hiding up to $32 trillion offshore, which amounts to roughly the US and Japanese GDP combined. Up to $280bn is lost in tax revenues. Some of the world's biggest banks are involved: HSBC, Citigroup, Bank of America, UBS, Credit Suisse
What they were answering
Lighting · 6 points
You can hack anything. A computer, the laws, the tax code, patent law etc. People who do this are hackers. Many people argue
that we should remove all sorts of incentives for hackers to operate in that medium. In this regard you are correct that lowering
taxes WOULD remove part of the profit incentive. However I wish to point out two things:
1) Businesses (hackers) don't just do a incentives/cost analysis but also profit/risk analysis. If you make the risk much higher (e.g. higher fees for being caught) it would also change the equation. The profit would have to be much higher to risk it.
2) Taxes are there to support infrastructure and if you just lower taxes (if it lowers revenue) you remove the ability to support infrastructure. If you lower taxes the businesses who would otherwise cheat the system would pay more, but the businesses who follow the rules would pay less.
3) Unintended consequences. When you lower taxes for one type of entity you get a lot of people/businesses becoming that entity.
Taking 1 & 2 together with an analogy ... look at bank robbing (or online bank hacking). You can say "People will rob banks (both online and in person) ... we need to keep less money in the bank to make it less profitable ... only give each bank $100. "Crime is like water - it finds the path of least resistance to profit. And since there is not much money to be made any more…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb
The big companies have enough money to take the risk. Keeping taxes high and increasing government regulation hurts the small to medium businesses that cannot compete with the legal and monetary means of the big guys; so they get bought up. This is what is happening in the US! The regulations and taxes are not thought out properly, and the big companies get around them, while the small ones don't. The small ones then cannot compete with the economies of scale of the larger ones, then bam! They all go under or get bought. The government just does not understand what they are doing!