Netflix Europe offices raided in tax fraud probe

Either "the law" can be trusted, and there's no point to deleting data after a cut-off date, or the reverse is true and you're no worse off getting caught deleting data.

I believe the law actually provides a middle ground. You're liable for tax fraud for X years, but you're allowed to delete the data after Y years. Since X > Y you make it much harder for the tax office to sue you if you delete data. Plus make it pointless for them to use their other investigative powers against you, which is in reality more important, especially for smaller firms.

You shouldn't really be able to have it both ways, should you?

Turns out that witholding data as a company executive is outright illegal, so yeah, we're in favor of it and they can get arrested and charged for for it.

This is a very emotional way of saying "you're in favour of enforcing contempt of court rulings against people who try to obstruct the judicial process".

On one hand, if the condemning evidence can’t be provided by someone other than me, should the case be prosecutable?

On the other hand, any sentient human can come up with examples of cases where it might be reasonable to search my belongings for evidence; multiple independent witnesses point to me being guilty of murder and investigations have otherwise stalled. Or anything of the sort.

What if all the independent witnesses are not independent? What if I’m not the guy, but just a lookalike? What if I’m being set up by the authorities?

The easy thing to do here is to say well okay SOMETIMES it’s okay to search one’s belongings but not for like any silly reason or anything like it has to be a real serious one. Then it’s just a matter of where to draw the lines, and who should get to decide.

I like the more absolute stance I made earlier; the government shouldn’t have any business in my personal belongings. Some crimes will go unpunished and that’s a price I’m willing to pay.

[0]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/02/man-who-refused-...

One is, what does the law say? Did they violate it? Is it illegal for a foreign subsidiary to temporarily shut off access to a branch office? How would we like this to work? Policy arguments about law enforcement vs. due process and government overreach.

The other is, politics. If the local government is captured by a cartel of taxi medallion holders who don't like Uber, the government is going to find a way to screw Uber, regardless of whether Uber is complying with existing law. But then it's politics and Uber is a multi-billion dollar corporation, so they have the option to capture the government themselves.

Of course, that leaves the meta argument. Maybe deciding what should happen based on the second method is worse than the first, so how do we prevent that from being what happens?

I know nothing about French law, but this whole thing gives me “organised crime” vibes. In many jurisdictions the punishment dramatically increases when a crime is commited as an organised group whose purpose is to commit said crime. As i said i know nothing about French law so i don’t know if the same concept is present there, let alone if the letter of the law would fit the situation.

But yeah i agree with you they won’t care unless they are sitting in a cell with the chance of sitting a lot more in a cell.

These seem like closer real-world analogies for what exactly a warrant to search someone's computer should entitle the police to do.

Can a French prosecutor use Uber's systems to deliver a malicious payload to my phone to gather evidence? If so, is Uber required to assist them in this task?

Regardless, the government violating an individual's rights doesn't mean we should yell at uber, it means we should yell at the government.

It'd be risky because I have no idea if I'm actually going to make money or not. European states set very draconian rules like 1% daily interest on unpaid taxes - no way I'm taking this shit on.

Just do the same thing but with VAT...

What are the reasons to tax corporate income? The usual reason is so that it doesn't spend the money on executive wages, parties, and so on. The less public reason is so that it doesn't extract all money to a foreign corporation through license/patent fees (dividends are taxed more).

We can do so much more today with the computers we have than the primitive taxation schemes of 1980s Europe. We already have the infrastructure to audit corporate spending and investments - let's just keep using that to avoid the lavish parties and otherwise not serving the shareholders as efficiently as possible. Let's cap wages at 200k - if you want more, get some stock options and share the risk. Any out of country value transfer (money, gold, financial assets...) is taxed 50% (each individual gets an exemption up to 100k/year). Add a 5% inflation rate to discourage cash hoarding.

Now the fun stuff - let's use Land-Value Tax and Progressive Value Added Tax - VAT with progressive rate based on item class and price. Zero rate on basic needs in raw form + everyday items like hygiene. Everything is calculated automatically using the country's E-Cash Register system - absolutely zero bureaucracy, everything is clear upfront and there is no forward risk created by taxation. And it's super hard to avoid taxes when they won't give you the new Lambo unless you pay right there and now.

Most EU countries already have all of the infrastructure in place. Though this scheme would work best in a borderless, continent-wide European state.

Because poor people can't spend money (since they don't have it), hence they pay much less (or even no tax). The curve of a power law formula can be modified to whatever is socially acceptable. Otherwise, rich people who are hoarding assets will get taxed via land value taxes utilizing the same framework.

>you've still got problems of hiding how much I'm spending through various legal entities.

Same with income tax. Completely stamping out tax evasion is not a realistic goal with any system. Also, various legal entities are all tied to beneficial owners with taxpayer ID numbers. Databases would make quick work of sorting this kind of stuff out.

>It also has a macro economic problem, at least how the consumer economy is structured, that could slow down the gears of business until society realigns (if it does) because people will be incentivized to consume less.

Yes, that is why it is a pipe dream. But it would actually accomplish environmental goals as opposed to just pay lip service and pretend.

>You've got alternative models where you go after specific products and tax more for conspicuous consumption like yachts but that feels like it has all the inefficiencies of central planning a market.

Completely unnecessary to complicate things which also opens up avenues for corruption. A yacht is super expensive, it's obviously going to be hit with a ton of tax. Just come up with a tax curve (like we already do with the various income tax deductions/brackets) that provides the tax revenue and still allows people to spend enough money to provide for their basic needs.

I'd go with same tax rates for everybody, but tax credits for useful activities. Since being a poor consumer is useful activity because those pay most attention to what they buy I'd be just giving people tax credit for existing and possibly for working if I wanted to incentivise that. Since purchase tax for individual consumers should be collected and paid by the sellers to save the individuals the burden of it and to ensure compliance then the best form of tax credit for consumers is just cashed given them directly from the government. Some for existing some possibly to supplement their salaries if they work. There's some risk that they won't spend it all to pay for their purchase tax but this can be forgiven as it'll mostly happen for the very poorest.

That's called a "transaction tax". It has lots of well known issues that are incredibly hard to remedy.