Swiss Leaks debated in House of Commons today: BBC reports
Published:
February 9, 2015 at 5:59pm
The House of Commons debated ‘Swiss leaks’ today, just a few hours after the data-launch at 10pm (CET) yesterday. Can we expect anything similar in our own parliament?
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http://www.bbc.com/news/live/business-31154049
Just a small note reading report on Malta Today..at the end of their article they mention your son or a relative of yours? Maybe you can read it and clarify as it seems to me they are mentioning him as if he is involved in it. Sorry but I felt I had to mention it. Congrat to you and yr son.
[Daphne – http://daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2015/02/swiss-leaks-in-the-news-right-now/ ]
Ma tarax.
You must be joking.
Interestingly, it is reported that someone connected to Malta has 555 million euros in Switzerland. Whoever this person is, if he/she is living here, he must be pulling the strings of government behind the scenes.
http://www.rai.tv/dl/RaiTV/programmi/media/ContentItem-f3e2a141-f2c7-4509-8ed4-1dbcfbfceb8a.html
1.50.10, an interview with Raitre last year.
The Maltese accounts cannot possibly be of a clean provenance.
Mr Fenech, you are completely wrong.
The tax regime for returning Maltese expatriates is such that they pay a flat rate of income tax (15%) on income remitted into Malta (brought into Malta).
Therefore if you have sold your overseas business, property and other holdings, and decide to retire in your native Malta, you then need an overseas holding facility for your funds, that does not tax your monies in the jurisdiction where they are held. Switzerland is a natural option.
Then, each time you remit funds to Malta you would be required to declare them and pay tax accordingly. This mud-slinging just because someone has an account in Switzerland smacks of envy and ignorance.
About as many as are evading tax by having money there, just as many are simply avoiding tax (which isn’t illegal).
[Daphne – In fact, the ICIJ has not released any names except those where there are public-interest issues, and always with an accompanying statement from the individual concerned.]
“This mud-slinging just because someone has an account in Switzerland smacks of envy and ignorance.”
This has nothing to do with whether the money is in Switzerland/Monaco/Caymans, but with tax avoidance and anonymity which could potentially be a cover up for criminals. I ran a business for over 40 years and never did any ‘creative accounting’ and paid tax in 3 different countries, so envy and ignorance my bloody foot.
Conservative, you’re just following the usual Maltese line of “not illegal, therefore perfectly acceptable”. Not when we were promised social justice it ain’t.
This isn’t capitalism. It’s organised larceny.
Obama knows it. Cameron, for all his sucking up to the City, knows it.
The Nationalists, bless them, don’t. Ghax iktar flus fil-but. Ditto for Labour.
HPB, of course. In the UK (just to cite one example), while the bottom strata of society have had their blood squeezed out – we’re talking ‘middle class’ (small businessman, academics, white collars) downwards – corporations continue to avoid billions in tax per year. Thatcher’s “trickle down wealth” mantra has proved to be the complete opposite with the bottom strata bailing banks and making up for tax owed by corporations.
The world is in a situation where corporations have taken governments hostage : “you augment my tax, I will relocate.” It is a globalisation of “the biggest prostitute attracting most clients”. Globalisation could only make sense and be fair if employment and taxation laws were to be harmonised round the globe. But that is utopia.
H P Baxxter –
Lord Clyde must have been Maltese as well then. Vide Lord Clyde: Ayrshire Pullman Motor Services v Inland Revenue 1929:
“No man in the country is under the smallest obligation, moral or other, so to arrange his legal relations to his business or property as to enable the Inland Revenue to put the largest possible shovel in his stores. The Inland Revenue is not slow, and quite rightly, to take every advantage which is open to it under the Taxing Statutes for the purposes of depleting the taxpayer’s pocket. And the taxpayer is in like manner entitled to be astute to prevent, so far as he honestly can, the depletion of his means by the Inland Revenue”.
I am not following any usual Maltese line – when the political classes plunder the nation’s treasury to curry favour for votes, why should the taxpayer have to meet ever increasing demands for revenue from government?
How can applying 54% to my income tax bill be ethical or acceptable?
In the country I live in, all my yearly earnings until July go to pay the revenue. I will do my utmost at all times to legally and ethically avoid paying tax, because I know that the administrators of tax revenue are incompetent, corrupt and spendthrifts.
The whole point of revenue is that government can provide its people with security and justice and be fons honorae and jus honorae. Revenue was never intended to provide wholesale freebies for everyone – free schooling, free healthcare, subsidies on fuel, child benefit allowances and so on. It is simply wrong and all these benefits should be means-tested.
That is social justice, ensuring that the most needy don’t fall out of the net, not taxing the living daylight out of the successful and enterprising minority, for the benefit of the lousy majority.
Mr Fenech, you may not be envious (you do have a business track record), but your statement exhuded ignorance: “The Maltese accounts cannot possibly be of a clean provenance” – that is simply incorrect, not factual and untrue.
Conservative, give me one reason why poor citizens like myself shouldn’t wish for more taxes on rich people like you.
Please don’t insult your own intelligence by giving me the line about how you provide work for us. Taxes have been going down since the late 1970s. And yet we have a global economic crisis.
Call it wealth envy if you wish. But do try and understand things from our perspective. If I were financially comfortable, I’d probably be on your side. But right now, I’m all for squeezing every penny out of the rich and redistributing the money to the creators of wealth, not its hoarders.
It’s personal, Conservative. I’m sorry, but that’s the way things have always been.
My dear Baxxter, you are on the wrong blog. Your opinion encases the essence of socialism, pure and simple: “bring everyone down to a common level” instead of “bringing everyone up to a common level”.
Forget the rubbish they taught you in history, about the French revolution heralding in equality. We are not born equal and never will be. Full stop. There are some who have high performing intelligence and others who have low IQ. What do you do – force the intelligent ones to share their knowledge with the ones with low IQ (with little or no success), or do you let the intelligent ones get on with it, for the greater benefit of society, through their input, innovations, inventions, services, and so forth?
I was not born in the purple and neither was I born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I worked incredibly hard to get what I have, and I set myself very high targets and goals, and still work 16 to 18 hours a day.
If you want money, work for it – do everything and anything (as long as it’s right and ethical and not simply legal), and not expect to get it in hand-outs from those who have worked hard and striven hard to earn what they have.
Conservative, you assume a level playing field when it’s anything but. In fact, it got worse over the last 200 years. And I’m not about to take lessons in morality from you. It’s not for want of trying that I’m poor. I made the wrong choices and it cannot be undone.
What can be undone is the accumulation of wealth at the top. A few more percentage points of tax on your vast wealth will hardly bring you down to my level. But it might help me get up to yours. You call it socialism as if that were a dirty word. What’s the alternative? No taxes at all?
I will not get into why the whole concept of socialism is flawed, wrong and unworkable (as has been demonstrated time and time again for the past 100 years). It is a very dirty and execrable word as far as I am concerned.
It is wrong to assume that wealth redistribution generally works – it generally doesn’t because those who made wrong financial choices and ended ‘belly up’ financially in the first place will nearly inevitably make the mistake again if they are bailed out.
You clearly are not thinking too deeply about how climbing tax burdens (even 5 to 10%) dismantle a business in one fell swoop. When VAT goes up by say 2%, corporation tax by say 4%, income tax by say 10%, for a SME with 5 employees, that is a total attrition of profit of 56%. Ask French businesses under Hollande if you don’t believe me, and the mass migration of wealth from France as socialism’s grubby paws came in.
It has been proven time and time again, that flat tax rates across the board, e.g. everyone pays a flat 20% income tax, capital gains tax, VAT, and so on, encourages people to avoid planning against paying that tax (and therefore increases revenues) and also makes the taxpayers feel that it’s a just tax rate and encourages relocation of foreign or external businesses and individuals to that jurisdiction.
It has also been proven in continental Europe and the UK that decreasing tax burdens increase corporate social responsibility (CSR). When tax rates in the UK went down, our business immediately gave up 10% of gross profits (before tax) to charities, as we could afford it – we had already put it aside to pay tax. Many businesses do the same for two reasons:
(a) the ‘feel good factor’
(b) it really looks good with clients and encourages people to do business with you as you ‘have a heart’.
QED.
So your reason for less taxes is that people would otherwise cheat?
I don’t think we can really have a debate as you and I seem to come from very different points of view. You are a successful businessman. I am a struggling professional.
Just remember this: we can’t all be entrepreneurs.
My dear Baxxter,
I do not wish to be seen to be dismissive (as I am not) of the financial struggles and difficulties of most people. Even good, hard-working and successful businesses go through very fraught and lean times, when not only the earnings of the business owners are at stake, but also of many people they employ, who (often) they have grown to like and respect.
Yes, the over-arching reason for less (i.e. fair) taxation is that taxpayers are more likely to pay their full due and not find ways to wriggle out of their fiscal obligations. The world is composed of people, most of them (but not all) driven by the desire for acquisition, who might be pleased to ‘give away’ but not have anything ‘taken away’. Countries which have kept the tax obligations within 20% and ensured responsible and accountable government spending, have higher, and more consistent revenues per capita.
The whole existence of debate is for people who come from very different points of view to expound their views. I respect your predicament and the desire to resolve your financial difficulties by turning the pyramid upside down – more wealth at the bottom, less at the top.
This does not work – look at all communist countries, or formerly communist countries – because humans are human, and the primeval instinct of acquisition (hoarding for leaner years, &c.) will nearly always overcome the desire for social justice, unless there is an over-arching and over-riding theological ideal.
By the way, I am not a ‘successful businessman’ as you say (I have read through the thread to see if I indirectly suggested this, but cannot find anything that should do), I am a successful professional running a firm which provides professional services.
Capitalism ‘US style’ is repugnant to me. It is not acceptable that healthcare and education should not be available to all, as well as opportunity. But the EU-style ‘nanny state’ is wasteful and unsustainable – France with 35 hour weeks, UK with a benefits system that doesn’t pay to work, and so forth.
A liberal economy with fair taxation systems, less bureaucratic red tape, which is simple and easily understandable, with a social welfare net that ONLY provides for those that truly need it, is the only way to achieve and maintain sustainable economies.
If Mr Baxxter pays less tax, he will be able to spend more, in turn, the shop-keeper selling more will spend more (in wages, employment, or personal expenditure), and in turn the shop-keeper and his employees will end up paying more in revenue to the State (as they earn more, and more are employed). The State in turn will spend more (as it is earning more) and much of the State’s expenditure (usually 50 – 60%) will go into private-run businesses, companies and professionals who provide a service to the State. These in turn will pay Mr Baxxter more (as more money in the system means rising inflation, which in turn leads to wage increases).
It has been proven time and time again that the inverse happens when taxation is increased. That is why austerity implemented on profligate states like Spain, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Ireland ONLY worked where taxation was increased, government spending was cut AND genuine (the emphasis is on ‘genuine’) reform of wasteful and unsustainable practices was implemented. The latter was carried out in Ireland, Portugal and Spain, which is why those 3 are pretty much out of the woods, but not in Greece and Italy, which is why they are still hitting the headlines.
Tax rises and cuts in government spending cause economies to contract, and are completely undesirable, as it leads to a reduction of money in circulation, but if and where genuine reform is undertaken, significant tax cuts can then be brought in (as happened in Spain this year) and government spending can be cautiously increased. This is because there is less waste, and government is now running more akin to a private business with a sharp eye on profits (as it should be, but not at the cost of society) rather than a wasteful rich kid with no care for the future.
Conservative, apart from ignoring history (Weimar etc), you are also stuck in a Thatcherite time capsule . Have a close look at the States and the UK – monuments of neo-liberalism – and how the standards of living have collapsed since the Thatcher/Reagan years. Drop the -isms and your caricatures and look at reality. The reality is that, only fair taxation, decent salaries, and responsible and fair trading (no bailing banks or anyone ; no tax loop-holes for the big boys ; no multinationals ruining the environment and resorting to slavery/cheap labour) guarantee a thriving society.
And, don’t worry about the hours that you’ve worked. Many teachers, nurses, social workers and white-collars work the same hours for pittance.
You have made a lot of assumptions in your comment. You are commenting on economic theory which is divorced from economic reality. You are assuming a ‘ceteris paribus’ condition in your entire statement which will make it exhausting to do justice to the argument.
Hence the recent amnesty on undeclared investments maybe?
I bet that the red trolls will come out in force insinuating that the money is of Nationalist ministers hoarded from the oil scandal.