Brand New – Concerns Saving Taxes? So We Abolish the Banking Confidentiality! But…

They decided it on the UE summit: the banking confidentiality has to be abolished all over Europe. By the end of the year! (ARD)
And they justify it with something that, to me, looks like a “very new but basically very old insight”: the huge concerns decentralized their profits (totally legally) in order to reduce their tax debt. The forerunners were the bad guys at Apple and Google, but of course, the enterprises living off the copyright also jumped the bandwagon. This is no surprise, because, after all, they have special experience with using complicated rules and laws as suits them best. And everybody is currently extremely upset about the evil tax-evading enterprises.

But:

  • Was this not something that has been happening ever since 1950, and probably even before? The big German DAX concerns, too, reduced their taxes by dexterously taking advantage of the law. And we all knew it, didn’t we?
  • Isn’t it the legal obligation of managers in joint stock companies to avoid all (also tax-caused) damage to the enterprise given into their custody?
  • The reason for these kinds of optimizations is that different countries have different taxation regulations and rules. Consequently, the logical solution would be to come up with an identical world-wide taxation. But one world-wide government is an idea that gives me even more pause than the EU. To be sure, a nice united world sounds beautifully utopian, but the power of such a system sounds equally fear-inspiring.
  • Incidentally, it is said the Ireland actually benefited hugely from Apple’s behaviour. If Europe had identical taxation in all countries, Ireland, too, would have come up empty-handed.

It is absurd, isn’t it? We talk “data security” but as soon as something as private as your bank account is concerned, the end suddenly justifies the means. And in no time, data security is gone.

I am absolutely in favour of transparency. But: you can only have “transparent citizens” in combination with a “transparent state”. Because transparency is something that always needs symmetry, especially if the power is distributed as unevenly as between citizens and the state. After all, the citizens delegated all their rights to their sovereign, the state.

However, we have a long way to go until we get a “transparent state”. Personally, I have no problem disclosing all my personal data. Even my bank account data. But that is something you can only expect if the transparency is symmetrical.

I still fear the omnipotence of the state more than that of the concerns… After all, it is easier to defend myself against those than against the state – for instance by simply not consuming what they want me to consume.

RMD
(Translated by EG)

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