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Comment by KingOfCoders | Hacker News Reader

The secret of high net worth individuals is they don't own anything and they don't earn anything.

They pretend they don't.

What?

"Some folks are born silver spoon in hand Lord, don't they help themselves, yeah But when the taxman comes to the door The house look a like a rummage sale" -Fortunate Son, Creedence Clearwater Revival

The trick is to not own things (personally) but control them, e.g. if you want a yacht, you create a holding somewhere that buys the yacht and owns the yacht, and you can use it whenever you like. The holding then has contracts with other companies renting you out. And you work for 0 EUR for the holding and have no income. The holding also owns the house you live in. If you're a high risk person the company can be owned by your wife(example is simplified, the setup is more complex and implemented my EY e.g.).

For example I want a computer. If I pay for the computer as a private citizen, I have to pay income tax, social security on the money before I can spend it and then I have to pay VAT on the item.

Hamilton got too greedy here [1] and the setup wasn't the best, but you get the idea:

"Hamilton set up another Isle of Man company to purchase a €1.7m motorhome that he uses at racetracks. [..] He is contracted to Mercedes, with whom he secured his fourth world championship last month, via a Guernsey company."

See Hamilton doesn't get the money from Mercedes, his "Guernsey company" does. He doesn't own the motorhome, he owns the company that owns the motorhome. No VAT payed, no income tax payed. And the company he owns might be through several shell companies so no IRS knows what he owns. And when it knows, the company only makes losses (see Trump setup), so no taxes payed on owning the company either.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2017/nov/06/lewis-hamilton-...

That semantic/legal quirk stuff will get harder and harder as the government’s need for funds grows:

https://www.loeb.com/en/insights/publications/2021/02/new-tr...

The only protection I would count on is if you were high up politically, like Putin or a Saudi prince.

But these arrangements are clearly fake to avoid tax. There are already laws that see through it, just there is nobody that would dare to do anything about it. In the UK for example, for a long time people paid themselves in loans, to completely avoid tax. This was at first available only to the rich, HMRC knew about it and did nothing. Only when the "pleb" learned about it and started using it, they woke up and applied the tax retrospectively and called it "disguised remuneration". Many people lost everything they had, many committed suicides.

Why HMRC does not do the same with companies using fake charges to hide profits? Those companies got huge competitive advantage over local small companies who cannot afford such creative accounting. So many businesses didn't happen because of that.

I think it's time HMRC doubled down and destroyed this gravy train.

I am sure we have clever people that would build a new Facebook, that is ethical and pays taxes.

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