10 Minutes: the Paradise Papers
Press TV (2018)
This short video provides a capsule summary of the Paradise Papers, 13.4 million electronic files leaked in November 2017 about the wealthy tax dodgers who use offshore tax havens to avoid taxes and conceal illegal financial dealings.
Although the Paradise Papers scandal has received less publicity than the Panama Papers did in 2015, its list of culprits is far more comprehensive. At the top are the Queen of England, Madonna, Bono, Apple, Nike, the Queen of Jordan, the ministers of finance of Canada and Brazil, US Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross (who used tax havens to conceal illegal dealings with sanctioned Russian businessmen) and Gary Cohen, who wrote Trump’s new tax law. The EU has slapped a $13 billion fine on Apple for tax evasion, which they refuse to pay.
Analysts who have studied both the Paradise and the Panama Papers estimate that approximately $7.8 trillion is held in offshore tax havens or 10% of global GDP.
The best known tax havens are Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and British-controlled Cayman Islands, Bahama, Jersey and the Isle of Mann. There is growing pressure on the British government to crack down on tax and banking policies in their tax haven colonies.
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Reblogged this on Rangitikei Enviromental Health Watch and commented:
The world of the greedy few ….
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“The EU has slapped a $13 billion fine on Apple for tax evasion, which they refuse to pay.”
I have an extremely simple solution to that. Pull all Apple products off the shelves until they pay up. If Apple is making no money throughout the European Union, they’ll pay up fast enough. And the citizens can just groan until they turn blue in the face. Tell those who miss Apple’s products that they can pool their money together and pay Apple’s fine.
Why in the world are these people not in jail and these companies, closed? Because everyone is doing it, that’s why. Everyone who is rich that is. Every corporation has been hell bent on trying to avoid paying taxes. Walgreens was in the news not too long ago for wanting to take the corporation offshore for tax purposes while maintaining brick and mortar pharmacies in America. So, in essence, Americans would have been paying taxes on Walgreens products, but would not have seen any of that tax revenue remain in the states. How in the world could Walgreens even come up with a scheme such as that whereas they pay no taxes while we still pay taxes on items we buy at their American stores? That makes no sense, whatsoever.
And yet, the IRS is busy going after the guy who owes $200 in back taxes. For real? Really? And then we have the nerve to wonder why we are in deep shit and sinking further in it as the seconds pass. I don’t!
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I think that’s a brilliant idea, Shelby, getting the EU to ban Apple products till they pay their fine. I’ve recently been reading about the history of the Russian revolution, and I find it intriguing that the wealthy elites are still just as greedy and corrupt as they were in 1917 when the Russian people overthrew the Russian czar. One really telling point is that a critical mass of people have to begin to starve to death before they are willing to violently overthrow a government – most forms of violence are instinctively repugnant to most human beings. Although hunger is rapidly increasing in the US, I guess the number of starving people has yet to reach critical mass. I suspect it will get that bad fairly soon if the people in power make no ever to check this unrestrained greed and corruption.
In my view, the election of Donald Trump was clearly a protest vote, with a lot of poor whites who don’t normally vote turning up at the polls. Unrest is clearly increasing – the complacent billionaires who run the US need to take heed.
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The trump-base isn’t so much poor whites, but “non-college-educated whites,” and the general group that hated Hillary Clinton (for reasons that—to me any way—were mainly false and deliberately circulated); those who hated President Obama for reasons that had a lot to do with the color of his skin; in other words prejudicial objects. It is noteworthy that Hillary Clinton actually WON the popular vote by some three million votes, but lost because of our antiquated system of the electoral college.
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You make some excellent points, Gradmama. Thanks for commenting.
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Thank you. This situation here in the US is nearing Alice’s Wonderland…every single day there is at least one major development that sets us topsy turvy. Hopefully the tide is turning…god help us all. 🙂
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