Senate Why don't people love capitalism?

But you have to look at the rules as well. Foreign income isn't subject to US tax. Income earned by a US company that just happens to be in a foreign country is.

 

Your response is more precisely why people resent capitalism. People were promised rates would not increase. They planned their finances accordingly. The promise was subsequently broken. Rather than at least acknowledging the inconvenience--if not outright unfairness--of this sequence of events, you pivot to a discussion of whether they"deserved" such rates. Maybe they didn't. But if that was the case, it is the owner's responsibility to decide on a rate that he is willing to accept. You might at least recognize this poor form rather than retreating into a mindless defense of the developers. It's this consistently weird, callous, stilted and inhuman response that turns people off.

Just say it was unfortunate but necessary. You needn't pretend like every single thing that happens is a glorious, laudatory, and imminently fair/desirable outcome.

 

How is this ambiguous?!?

Sure, there is an exclusion for part of my income but I still need to pay... it doesn't matter if it's a US subsidiary or an actual foreign company.

 

Dp, I'm not talking about a subsidiary. A subsidiary is still one company that is majority owned by another. To continue the example of IBM- If IBM has a subsidiary in Hong Kong, then that subsidiary is still subject to US taxes, just as IBM is. Let's back up so we don't keep going back and forth:

1)Do you work for a US company or subsidiary of a US company in Hong Kong? If yes, then the tax rules would be the same as if the company was physically in the US. (minus deductions like foreign income paid, etc...)

2)Or do you work for a completely foreign owned company? If you are a US citizen who works for a foreign company, then none of your income would be taxable back to the US. You don't pay US taxes on foreign income just because you are a citizen.

Back to the original example, FATCA says that all US citizens have to account for their income, no matter where they are. It has to be reported on a specific form. But those citizens who don't have any income attributed to the US deosn't have to pay taxes on it. I was going back to the example of Spanish diplomat's child. The child born in the US would technically be a citizen. If they want to keep their citizenship or live back in the US at some future time, then they report their foreign income. But again, they wouldn't have to pay anything for income that doesn't have any ties to the US.

 

Dp, let me offer some additional examples and see if they illustrate the point, or even if we're saying the same thing.

1)Let's say someone worked for GM for 20 years, retired, and started collecting their pension. Their pension is US sourced, so it is subject to US tax rules. If that person moved to France, their pension would still be subject to US tax laws. The source of the income is tied to the US (paid by the GM pension fund). Even if that person cashed their pension check in France, and deposited a portion of it in a French savings account, the entire amount would still have to be accounted for. The place where the person lives is immaterial, due to the fact that their money is US sourced. This is what the IRS is saying when it says that rules apply regardless of where you live.

2)Let's say someone else gets a call that a rich old uncle in France just died and, in their will, left them a French mansion on the Rivera. If that person sold the mansion, then they are not subject to any tax besides what is levied by the French government itself. The US government doesn't tax foreign income just because the person is a US citizen. Now, technically, under FATCA, the person would have to claim that income (although this is a poor example because, in this case, the IRS wouldn't really ever find out) , but they wouldn't have to pay anything on it. In this example, the uncle's French mansion isn't US sourced, so it's not subject to US laws.

Under the same standard, salaries paid by a US company in France are controlled by the IRS. Salaries paid by a completely French company are not.

Are these the same ideas that you are illustrating?

 

44 the world, due to the enormous arsehat FATCA rules, has to soak up compliance costs to implement ways of record and reporting US indicia. The issue is that the US does not have a non-resident for tax purposes category for people who are domiciled for the financial year and beyond outside the US.

 

The word 'promise' is in the headline but - hey - journalists need to grab your attention. If you were to read the article, you'd discover that the fact of the matter is that the borough councillors (those negotiating for rents to remain subsidised) had reported an informal agreement.

Verbatim: Hackney councillors had said an informal agreement was in place to delay such hikes until 2016.

Yes, it may cause some inconvenience to current tenants, but they are protected by laws that are there for all private sector tenants. Yes, they will need to move, but the circumstances will not be unreasonable.

You accuse me of saying this outcome is glorious, laudatory and imminently (I think you mean eminently) fair/desirable outcome. On an ideological level, yes. In terms of the individuals who will have their rent raised, no. However, it's largely due to a catalogue of errors on the part of Hackney borough council. An entity run by... well, by people like you.

Defeating Germany in WW2 was an ideologically desirable outcome. This statement does not imply that the deaths of German civilians as a result of allied carpet bombing campaigns was a desirable outcome on a level of individuals.

The cruel truth is that there are huge swathes of disused land in London. The reason they're not being developed, despite the fact that we have a full-on housing crisis here, is that local councils have the power to demand 20% of all new accommodation be 'affordable housing' before granting planning permission. Projects where this has been agreed have not worked well, and the development in Hackney featured in the Evening Standard is an example of this.

The first problem is that renting out a property for a quarter of its market value means making a loss on that property. This has to be made up somewhere. The second problem is that - for whatever reason - antisocial behaviour and subsidised housing go hand in hand. This leads to extra costs due to vandalism, tenant churn (among those paying four times as much as those causing the antisocial behaviour for the pleasure of living with it) and a host of other problems.

The combination of making a loss on 20% of the stock you build and facing further losses down the road due to those living in that 20% of the stock mean that developers simply sit on the land rather than develop it because it's not economically viable to do so. Ironically, this perpetuates the huge imbalance between supply and demand which further drives up prices.

The following poster is from Gumbo-Gumbo land (where everyone will be eating turkey today) but sums up part of the problem of people without a job (not due to disability etc - that's a different matter... although noteably class A drug addiction can be used to class someone as disabled for benefit claim purposes) being effectively given a far nicer environment to live in than people working hard and pulling in a professional salary. The easier something comes, the less care you take of it.

 

You know who will fix the housing situation though, right?

Boris.

 

This cooks up an image of a party of hunting folk with a pack of hounds cleansing London of the Greater London Council as well as urban foxes. All the vermin in one go. He's got a lot of damage to undo and will need co-operation from Westminster, but there's hope. There's hope.

 

You're going to trumpet the fact that the agreement didn't have a formal contract behind it? Really? There was a negotiation and a brokered understanding between two sides. Even if only by word, of mouth, it was something the property owners need have agreed to in the first place. That still qualifies as a "promise" albeit one without as much legal force.

But your response misses the substance of my commentary and duplicates the original cause of my criticism. I was never making a legal argument. It's not my claim that the property owners are inherently wrong, or that the current tenants "deserve" anything. It's my point that when someone points out the tenants' misfortune at having to move so suddenly, any normal human response would probably be to agree that at the least, yes, it's not the best thing one can have happen to them. You, on the other hand, went on a riff about how deserving they were of having this happen, and your disdain for their "entitlement." Only when specifically criticized did you make some belated remark that passingly resembled an expression of empathy.

No one is challenging your economic or legal understanding. There's also no one doubting that this is an awful way to interact with other people, and makes one generally unlikable. Which is the subject of this thread. A lens for framing events that obscures our capacity to sympathize with other people will probably not be well-liked by those who suffer as a result.

 

I'd say yes and no. I understand, the UK has already adopted similar rules, and the EU is close to adopting the same thing for all of its member countries. It's going to be part of the international standard for most countries- at least the countries that are part of the international market. So yes, Australian companies would have to check a box for US citizens, but US companies would have to check the same box for citizens from the EU. It's a relatively minor cost related to doing business on the global market. I mean, look at the accounting principles that are used in international business. There is US GAAP, there is UK GAAP, and there is the IFRS. Technically, a company doing business in all areas has to use all three methods. But the move is toward a single system (which looks like it is going to be a hybrid of US GAAP and IFRS, and UK is going to fall to being a historical curiosity)

This was another item that was given more attention than it needed to be. Your original example related to a Spanish diplobrat. The original point was simply that if she moved back to Spain and worked for Spanish companies, she really wouldn't have to worry about it. At most, if she wanted to keep her dual Spanish/US citizenship, once a year, she would have to send a form back to the US which lists her foreign income, but there would still have to be a US tax event for anything to be done about it. Realistically, if she just wanted to stay in Spain, then she wouldn't even have to do that.

It was Dp who came in and said that he works in Hong Kong and still has to pay taxes, but this makes sense if he works for a US company, and isn't similar to the above example at all. It's not that he works in Hong Kong that matters, it's that there is US sourced income.

On a side note, why would a non-resident category reduce these costs to companies? I'll admit, the US doesn't have this, so I don't know the particulars, but under this, do companies not record anything? A non-resident would still have to declare themselves as such, so to me, it looks like it's just trading one form of paperwork for another?

 

No, I work for an international company now, with a US subsidiary. If I went to work in HK, it wouldn't be on books in the US at all -- I'd still need to pay the IRS after a 1y grace period...

 

I still don't know what you're trying to say, but it doesn't matter. If you work for a US subsidiary of a different company, then that's the controlling factor. Does it have operations on US soil? Where is its headquarters? It doesn't matter where you work, it matters what the source of income it is paying you comes from. If you really wanted to examine this, I suppose we would have to look at the specifics. But let's move away from your example and use a completely unrelated one:

Beretta USA, which is located in Maryland, is a US subsidiary of its parent company, Beretta International. Beretta USA supplies the standard handgun used by the US military. If someone works for Beretta's US subsidiary, they are considered to have US income. Even if Beretta sent that person to work in Hong Kong, they would still be considered to have US sourced income, because the US subsidiary is paying them. If someone works for a US subsidiary, then it doesn't matter where the office is, they still have US income. A good rule of thumb is that if someone is getting social security and medicare still taken out of their check, then they work for a US-sourced company, even if they are a foreign resident of another country. (there are treaties that may apply though)

If someone just goes off and gets a job in Hong Kong to work for a foreign company that doesn't have any ties to the US, there would have to be a tax event that would cause them to be taxed back in the US.

(Note-I would double check on that grace period as well.. I'm pretty sure there is no grace period for being assessed tax due. Yes, there is a grace period for filing, but this is to give people time to get their paperwork in order. Any taxes due would still be owed. )

E_S's original example revolved around the child of a Spanish diplomat, because that child would potentially have US citizenship. ( although it would apply to any foreign connected US citizen, really.) The point is that if that person went back to Spain and only earned Spanish income, they wouldn't be beholden to the IRS. E_S was correct about the potential reporting requirement because FATCA is a reporting tool. But it doesn't require that foreign income be taxed back in the US just because someone is a US citizen.

 

Dude, there was no promise. It's a bargaining technique. If they had made a verbal promise in a minuted meeting it would be legally binding as verbal contract and the Evening Standard journalists would've done a freedom of information request to get hold of the minutes instead of reporting that one party claims there was an informal agreement.

I never said the current tenants deserved anything.

I don't think they, or anyone, should have their housing heavily subsidised but they, as individuals, being forced to move through no fault of their own gives me no joy.

I don't think civil servants should receive final salary pensions and would celebrate a move to end this. I would feel sorry for any individuals who had expected to receive such a pension and had made plans accordingly.

 

What I'm trying to say is I work for a British company -- with operations in 72 different countries. I work at the US version now.

If I go work at the HK version, I still pay US taxes.

 

And that is wrong.

 

First, I can't respond to what you privately thought or felt. Only what you posted. What you said is below.

This was the sum total of your response to a story about a unilateral change in terms that would cause a wave of eviction. You literally just complained that the tenants are too entitled. I both thought and continue to think that this response comes off as callous.

Even now, your presentation is still slanted. I specifically conceded in my last post that nothing legally binding was in place. But if there was never any sort of informal understanding, it would've been easy enough for the other side to deny. None of them did. Further, even the story itself doesn't note the mere assertion of an informal agreement, it states that one definitely exist, and then the property managers backed away from it.

Finally, for the third time, why are you retreating into legalisms? The management company is perfectly within the law to do what it's planning. That doesn't mean anything in terms of the issues I'm trying to address, though. There are plenty of things that are simultaneously legal and awful. Cheating on your spouse, for instance. I'm not sure why you're so eager to downplay this point.

 

As in "factually wrong" or as in "the system shouldn't be that way?"

 

The latter.

If I move to the US for a year, I shouldn't be paying tax in Australia. And in fact, I won't and don't.

 

Thank you for quoting my posts while inaccurately paraphrasing them/infering things that just aren't there.

To repeat: I don't think civil servants deserve final salary pensions. I don't understand why they feel entitled to them. If they were removed, I would still feel sorry for individual civil servants who had expected to get such a pension and planned accordingly.

Same thing here: I don't believe that people are entitled to massively discounted accommodation. I don't understand why they feel that entitlement. These particular folk, who had expected to continue living in these properties for around a quarter of market rent I feel sorry for. There's no contradiction.

As for the other point, negotiations take place in minuted meetings. What I think I'm saying quite clearly is that if there had been any agreement, however informal, it would have been minuted.

The company do deny that there was an informal agreement, that's simply omitted from the article. It's not a legal matter, simply a matter of journalism.

If there had been any kind of agreement it would have been minuted.

The joirnalist could obtain those minutes through the freedom of information act.

To spell it out, one side is lying. The minutes of the meetings between the two sides would decide this. The fact that the article cites a claim that could be, but is not, substantiated leads me to believe that the Hackney councillors involved are lying their ridiculous little socks off.

Quite simply, if the company were lying, there would be evidence in the minutes. The only legal point is that if Hackney were not lying about the 'agreement' there would be evidemce that could be used in a court of law. This is not a 'retreat' into legalisms, this is a pretty cogent argument that Hackney are lying and there was no agreement.

 

Where have you seen a denial issued by the company? All the media coverage I can find either has Westbrook declining to comment or stating generically that everyone will be treated fairly, without specifically addressing the existence or non-existence of any agreement. At the same time, they all seem to report the informal agreement as a definite thing that was definitely rescinded, not a disputed claim. It also seems somewhat conspiratorial to suppose that all news media have filed and received records disproving the claim, but are choosing to remain silent on the point. I'm not sure how long the FOIA process takes in the UK, but in the US it can drag on for months or years, so they may simply be waiting to confirm things.

Regardless, though, it wasn't a personal attack. It was an observation about capitalism and the way it's defenders talk about events. Reading in isolation about your disdain for entitlement, that looked very much characteristic of the type of response I was trying to point to, and in absence of other commentary does seem callous. That's all the more point there ever is or was here.

 

I think it's a mistake to assume that capitalism is what's given us accelerated technological progress. You can't identify one single model of capitalism that's behind every great technological advance, nor imo is there an overarching ideological constant behind every form and historical state of what people call capitalism. There's no definitive understanding of what capitalism is, or how economics (which imo is a bogus academic field) work. The idea of free trade is fine, but what America peddles under the name of free trade is ... something else entirely.

War, at least historically speaking, is the great scientific and technological catalyst that I'd identify. I think it would be a mistake to use technological advance as a justification for war and it would be stupid to ask why people don't love war. Perhaps capitalism, as an ideological system that promotes conflict, is a great enabler of war. If capitalism creates the conditions that enable scientific advance, that's one thing, but once war is under way it's not a capitalist system that determines the flow of resources to R&D. Resources would be directed to R&D even if the nation's economic system was suspended in a condition of total war.

I guess most people who dislike capitalism do so because economics is deeply boring, isn't very illuminating and they see those with economic power and authority ****ing the planet up for everyone else. I think it would be interesting to see what a truly capitalist state looks like, to see if it could function in the real world. I expect it would look a lot like Somalia.

 

And you were JUST saying he could be reasoned with.

 

Hold on a second. So, you're saying that if you work for an Australian company, and they send you to the US for a year, the Australian government doesn't tax your income as long as you're outside of the country? If that's accurate, it doesn't make much sense. Is this a voluntary election or does the company automatically stop?

Otherwise, the system is same for the US. If I moved to Walkabout Creek tomorrow, I wouldn't be taxed on any income I earned in Australia. I would still have to file a tax return, if that's what you guys are referring to, but I would subtract any Australian income earned from it.

 

"why don't people love capitilism?"




People don't hate capitalism, they hate the socioeconomic system we have in America that outwardly claims to be free capitalism, but in reality is just an oligarchy that maintains power through oppression.