EU Politics: I miss Renaults(don't make fun of me)

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > EU Politics: I miss Renaults(don't make fun of me)

Shazback: Jan 26, 2013

steinrokkan posted:

The devil is in details. You have probably never dealt with tax forms if you think it's possible to put together a simple algorithm for collating a report spanning decades and multiple countries. Even collecting and processing tax data for a single year is such a loving endeavor it takes hundreds of people just to sample the data from a single country.

I see now that I misconstrued your previous statement.

I don't think what Varoufakis said he did is remotely possible and/or realistic, and if it was done it was only through so massive simplifications and assumptions that it would be meaningless.

But if we take him at his word and he really did do in a matter of months what other countries have yet to achieve, then his plan is still rubbish, which is the point I wanted to make. Plenty of countries have regular "past tax payment windows" or similar things that grant waivers from prosecution, but they don't wait to have finished compiling an impossible tax database to do these things.

quote:

Especially after being out of office, what would be the point? And since everybody in the Troika hated his guts, wouldn't they want to trumpet any deception by Varoufakis up to the high heavens? That's what gets me about it, the fact that there was absolutely no follow up from nobody. That's the thing that doesn't make any sense.

The point? Portray the Troika in a bad light, and him in a good one? It's likely that it's not an outright lie, that he was creating a database of past bank records. But all the practical problems we've mentioned above probably meant that the data in question was from only a couple banks, woefully incomplete, and his claims that they identified XX billion � in tax evasion have a massive asterisk next to them. The Troika or anyone else doesn't follow up on it because it's a boring technical discussion and there's a limited amount of time and energy that people are prepared to spend to investigate Varoufakis' claims, especially when the result is so grey that it's almost certain he'll be able to say "you see, I didn't lie, all the things I said were factually correct" whilst saying all the caveats or problems in the analysis and the data would have been solved post haste were it not for the Troika.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 00:32

Adbot: ADBOT LOVES YOU

# ? May 19, 2024 17:28

lollontee: Nov 4, 2014; Can't post for 10 years!

Shazback posted:

I see now that I misconstrued your previous statement.

I don't think what Varoufakis said he did is remotely possible and/or realistic, and if it was done it was only through so massive simplifications and assumptions that it would be meaningless.

But if we take him at his word and he really did do in a matter of months what other countries have yet to achieve, then his plan is still rubbish, which is the point I wanted to make. Plenty of countries have regular "past tax payment windows" or similar things that grant waivers from prosecution, but they don't wait to have finished compiling an impossible tax database to do these things.

Yeah, but I don't recall any other case of a state abolishing bank secrecy. If you have to individually request every single person's bank details to be released by court order, you can't really build such a database.

Shazback posted:

The point? Portray the Troika in a bad light, and him in a good one? It's likely that it's not an outright lie, that he was creating a database of past bank records. But all the practical problems we've mentioned above probably meant that the data in question was from only a couple banks, woefully incomplete, and his claims that they identified XX billion € in tax evasion have a massive asterisk next to them. The Troika or anyone else doesn't follow up on it because it's a boring technical discussion and there's a limited amount of time and energy that people are prepared to spend to investigate Varoufakis' claims, especially when the result is so grey that it's almost certain he'll be able to say "you see, I didn't lie, all the things I said were factually correct" whilst saying all the caveats or problems in the analysis and the data would have been solved post haste were it not for the Troika.

Well if you say so, it's nice to get some small concessions at least. Working pretty hard there to convince yourself though.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 00:41

Shazback: Jan 26, 2013

Friendly Humour posted:

Yeah, but I don't recall any other case of a state abolishing bank secrecy. If you have to individually request every single person's bank details to be released by court order, you can't really build such a database.

Yes, bank secrecy is so sacro-sanct that FATCA doesn't exist, and Switzerland, Luxemburg and the Cayman Islands are world renowned for the bank secrecy that exists everywhere else.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 00:46

lollontee: Nov 4, 2014; Can't post for 10 years!

Shazback posted:

Yes, bank secrecy is so sacro-sanct that FATCA doesn't exist, and Switzerland, Luxemburg and the Cayman Islands are world renowned for the bank secrecy that exists everywhere else.

Huh?

# ? Jul 2, 2016 00:54

Yinlock: Oct 22, 2008

GaussianCopula posted:

Reminder: This is an idea from the genius who proposed to equip students and tourists with Google Glasses to fight VAT tax evasion.

He now had a task force that found at least �67 billion of evaded taxes through a "simple algorithm?"

Again, this assumes that the CAPTAINS OF INDUSTRY aren't all hilariously-corrupt morons.

They're not very smart, and they have so much money that they don't have to be. It turns out that for a businessman being a terrible human being is a perfectly viable alternative to being actually good at business.

(not defending that google glass thing though)

# ? Jul 2, 2016 00:57

lollontee: Nov 4, 2014; Can't post for 10 years!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6vV8_uQmxs&t=1348s

Here's Mark Blyth talking about what actually happened with Greece and the rest of Southern Europe. Good lecture overall, highly recommend it.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 01:32

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Jesus after watching that talk and his predictions for the future of European politics I'm really glad the United States has a monopoly on force. :stare:

Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 02:42 on Jul 2, 2016

# ? Jul 2, 2016 01:59

Arglebargle III: Feb 21, 2006

Wow so he's saying the austerity campaign hosed main street so hard that investment had nowhere to go and therefore the central bank had no purchase for inflation to start and that's why we're in this secular stagnation scenario 6 years later? Thanks a lot European leaders.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 02:15

TheDeadlyShoe: Feb 14, 2014

A Buttery Pastry posted:

The political implications of bringing to light massive disproportionate systemic tax evasion among the rich in an EU country seems pretty obvious. Much better to just have the Greeks remain a big undefined blob of cheats, rather than have people exactly like the ones celebrated in the rest of Europe stand out as leeches.

It's not just having them be willing to hand over data, it's getting it in a usable form too, and making it all work together. Particularly old data. Maybe I am overestimating the difficulty in doing this, but it just sounds like a massive loving undertaking.

well, they are just assembling a database. The banks have presumably already done the hard work of getting their data into useable form, since the banks themselves use the data. You don't need the data to work together on the fly or anything, you just need a one time import and collation that amounts to 'how much income did X person get in each year of concern?' Then you compare that to your spreadsheet of declared income and taxes paid. If you do not strap any bells and whistles on (like say the stuff youd actually need to determine if people were delinquent rather than running a query thru ur ramshackle database) then it would be p simple.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 02:51

TheDeadlyShoe: Feb 14, 2014

A Buttery Pastry posted:

The political implications of bringing to light massive disproportionate systemic tax evasion among the rich in an EU country seems pretty obvious. Much better to just have the Greeks remain a big undefined blob of cheats, rather than have people exactly like the ones celebrated in the rest of Europe stand out as leeches.

It's not just having them be willing to hand over data, it's getting it in a usable form too, and making it all work together. Particularly old data. Maybe I am overestimating the difficulty in doing this, but it just sounds like a massive loving undertaking.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 03:26

A Buttery Pastry: Sep 4, 2011; Delicious and Informative!

steinrokkan posted:

You are assuming that just because they are indifferent to the economic contributions of the lower classes, they are upholding some sort of symbiotic relationship of capitalist subjects in general, when in fact the hierarchy of class relations doesn't preclude the disintegrative effects of capitalist contradictions on relations within the capitalist class itself, which would be destructive without the moderating role of the capitalist state. Just because they pursue a predatory strategy in their relations to one class doesn't mean their predatory behaviour has been sated, and doesn't factor into their relationship with other classes.

I'm not saying at all that they can't still compete with each other, I'm saying that on the issue of taxes, they have no reason to as long as they can foist it upon the working class. It's not in their interest to create the precedent of "the state" (successfully) going after tax evaders, even if that state is not their own, and even less so if the people they would be targeting are business partners and friends. Yes, they compete, but not along national lines. There's no reason a Greek and a German couldn't work together to gently caress over another Greek, or German for that matter.

TheDeadlyShoe posted:

well, they are just assembling a database. The banks have presumably already done the hard work of getting their data into useable form, since the banks themselves use the data. You don't need the data to work together on the fly or anything, you just need a one time import and collation that amounts to 'how much income did X person get in each year of concern?' Then you compare that to your spreadsheet of declared income and taxes paid. If you do not strap any bells and whistles on (like say the stuff youd actually need to determine if people were delinquent rather than running a query thru ur ramshackle database) then it would be p simple.

Assuming the banks had already done the hard work, yeah, I suppose it might not be such a major undertaking after all.

# ? Jul 2, 2016 08:16

orange sky: May 7, 2007

For those that think it's pretty far-fetched that tax evasion plays a huge role in the crisis in the southern countries:

http://www.jornaldenegocios.pt/opin...m_impostos.html

TL:DR - The 1000 richest families in Portugal, in a regular economy, should pay 25% of the total IRS income. They pay 0,5%.

Absolutely nothing is being done to fight this. There's no public discussion about this because all the media companies are owned by those same families.

Also, virtually all of the companies in the PSI-20 pay their taxes in Amsterdam. If we keep robbing each other in Europe there's no austerity that can save us and you're simply stupid if you think it can.

E: Also, in that article: