International exchange of tax information [video] | Hacker News Reader

International exchange of tax information [video]

media.ccc.de

67 pointsbased216 comments

It's amazing that this doesn't run afoul of EU privacy laws. Or rather, it's hypocritical.

Handling of tax records is at least considered (and the presenter mentioned how some EU Member States (Germany) decided not to share tax info with other signatories (such as Turkey), where tax records are not handled carefully enough, and privacy is not respected sufficiently).

We are accumulating more and more instances of the classic security-privacy trade off with regards to "total information". Of course if everything would be tracked tax evasion would be pretty easy to catch, but so does any other behavior deemed inappropriate by the various powers that be.

Each individual state presumably already has an authority with all this information. That they have it is a necessary evil I have already agreed to. Sharing it internationally makes their use of my information more effective, so I'm completely for it.

It's not that I don't mind when my information is used/shared/gathered but for some causes it's the lesser evil.

It's sharing of your information with a government over which you have zero power. A government which could in the future conceivably be an enemy.

I think the feeling towards this might be cultural too - my tax authority is also the census bureau. They know where I live and how much money I make and have, and that's reported directly from my bank and my employer so I don't have to report this (annual tax declaration is normally just signing that the numbers are correct). All this basically means I never considered any of this to be secret or sensitive - it's even public. There used to be a catalog published with people's income and worth! It's like my phone number!

My phone number certainly isn't public information!

I am not sure I agree with the speaker that the data is safe and the tax administration follow best practices:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7103911.stm

tl;dr This applies to individuals, not corporations.

Tax Identification might not be available, and some banks are using telephone numbers for this purposes.

There are also problems with character sets and how names are transcribed...

And the US taxman had trouble working with that data the only two times it has received the info...

USA did not sign this agreement right?

Well FATCA is US law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_Account_Tax_Compliance...

As for CRS, US doesn't appear in the list of signatories: http://www.oecd.org/tax/exchange-of-tax-information/MCAA-Sig...

FATCA only guarantees the transfer of tax information to the US, and not the other way around. Since the US is the biggest tax haven in the world (for non-US citizens/residents), it's higly doubtful they would ever sign any agreement like that that would geopardize their tax haven status. The banking lobby would never permit (especially under someone like Trump).

These agreements are already being signed. The US signed a tax information exchange to the benefit of Argentina this week.

Do you hace a link/source on this? Was it on the papers? I did not catch it.

The UK, Ireland, Swiss? Any progress?

Who's the guy?

I can't stop looking at the cat....

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