Tax Evasion

Those who potentially have to pay the highest taxes are those who use the global possibilities to evade. They give almost nothing back to the countries where they make their profits.

This is not just the business model of a parasite. It’s also an unfair disadvantage for small and midsize companies that don’t have these possibilities and that have to calculate with higher prices.

In the European Union (EU) Some people claim that you cannot introduce any new or different national tax system, as there was a “tax harmony”. The opposite is true. Every nation has its own individual tax systems with different tax rates and weird constructions.

On of the most ridiculous examples of disharmony is the “double irish with a dutch sandwich” that allows corporations to legally evade taxes.

tax evasions, tax havens, tax oasis, loopholes

In the last three decades politicians opened loopholes, refused to close the existing ones and just gave declarations of intent. But they never act against the interests of the upper class that owns the corporations. The only explanation that makes sense is corruption.

Worldwide corporations and the extremely rich upper class evade taxes of approximately 32 trillion $ (32.000.000.000.000) – every year. Meanwhile the rest of the world drowns in debts.

This is just a short list of ridiculous examples of tax jugglers and evaders (corporations in alpabetical order):

A Short List of Tax Evasion Examples

  • Commodity dealers (also called “bloodsuckers of the Third World“) betray the production countries, keep them in poverty and transfer the profits to tax havens.
  • Heirs of fortunes use tax havens like the Cook Islands to avoid heritage and wealth taxes.
  • 50 % of all US corporations that are listed at Wall Street and 63 % of the top 500 US corporations evade taxes by using a letterbox company in the US tax oasis Delaware.
  • In 2015 the top 500 US corporations hoard 2.1 trillion (2.100.000.000.000 $) Dollars in tax heavens, defrauding the USA of 620 billion $ taxes that should have been paid.
  • 98 of the top 100 british corporations evade taxes by using tax havens. BP, Shell, Barclays Bank, Royal Bank of Scotland and  HSBC-Bank each runs more than 400 letterbox companies.
  • 17 of the top 20 corporations in Portugal use the Netherlands as a tax haven.
  • Within 3 years Amazon paid 2.3 million pound taxes für revenues of 7.1 billion pounds and uses the tax laws of Luxemburg to evade taxes.
  • Apple paid 0.005% taxes on its 78 billion $ profits outside of the USA. In countries like Germany, France, Italy, Spain and UK Apple pays almost no taxes. The tax rate of Apple in the USA was below that of a private household with an annual income of 42.500 $. Apple broght politicians to accept that their company “Apple Sales International” (ASI) is located nowhere (!) on earth, avoiding all national tax laws. In 2015 Apple has at least 181 billion $ in tax havens, making Apple the No 1 tax evader in the world. Bringing back this money would mean 59.2 billion $ taxes for the US budget.
  • Coca Cola uses the tax haven Delaware and pays just the Delaware tax minimum of 180.000 (yes: one hundred and eighty thousand) $ taxes in its billions of Dollars profits.
  • Disney uses the tax haven Delaware and pays just the Delaware tax minimum of 180.000 Dollars on its billions of Dollars profits. In Europe Disney pays less than 1% taxes on profits, using a construction of 5 subsidiaries administrated by 1 single person.
  • In 2011 Dolce & Gabbana paid no taxes at all for revenues of more than 1 billion Euros, using Luxemburg tax loopholes.
  • The net profit of Exxon in Spain in 2012 was 9.9 billion $, while employing 1 single employee and paying no taxes at all.
  • Facebook uses irish tax evasion laws. For 175 million pound revenues Facebook paid 238.000 pound taxes.
    Every year Google shifts money to evade taxtes at the Bermudas. In 2013 Google had 25 billion $ tax free assets there.
  • IKEA evades taxes by letting their subsidiaries transfer extremely high “license fees” (for using its own brand name!) to tax evasion constructions in the Carribean, Liechtenstein und Luxemburg. In Germany IKEA paid taxes in the amount of 0,001% of its revenue.
  • Intel uses the tax haven Delaware and pays just the Delaware tax minimum of 180.000 Dollars on its billions of Dollars profits.
  • Profits of the german department store Karstadt were transfered to the Britisch Virgin Islands.
  • McDonald’s uses the tax haven Delaware and pays just the Delaware tax minimum of 180.000 Dollars on its billions of Dollars profits.
  • Microsoft uses the tax haven Delaware and pays just the Delaware tax minimum of 180.000 Dollars on its billions of Dollars profits. In 2015 Microsoft hoards 108.3 billion $ in tax havens.
  • In 2012 the amount of tax evasion money in Singapore, owed just by private persons, was approx. 500 billion $.
  • Starbucks UK shifted all its Profits to tax havens to evade taxes completely for 15 years in a row. In Germany they didn’t pay a single cent of taxes since 2002, in France they didn’t pay any taxes since 2004.
  • TNS Emnid/Infratest (market research) run more than 600 letterbox companies in tax havens.
  • Vodafone evaded taxes for 130 billion Euros of the “Verizon-Deal” by using loopholes in the Netherlands and Luxemburg.
  • Volkswagen uses tax havens e.g. on the Cayman Islands, in Delaware and in Ireland, just like all other german car manufactuters and all of the large german banks.

And so do effectively all of the international corporations and really rich persons (“high net worth individuals”, assisted by big banks). Read more at “Cititens for Tax Justice“.

Bottom line

The taxation of profits is definitely useless. The consequent solution of the problem that no one can avoid legally and that ensures a fair share to societies and democracies is the “fair deal” of sales commissions.