France asks Panama for Transparency and to turn over all information that pertains to French Citizens

[olga suarez]

http://laestrella.com.pa/panama/nacional/francia-pide-panama-transparencia-datos-contribuyentes-galos/23936199

The minister of France has asked for the Panama government to be transparent and cooperate with the intelligence gathering of all documents of French citizens in the past and in the future.

[El Gato]

The first item is I am in no way offering any guidance in anybody’s financial situation.

“Avoiding” taxes is a situation based on individual circumstances.

If you are simply a paycheck collector complaining about your boss you deserve to pay more taxes. Your employer is getting screwed paying all the BS surrounding your employment and complying with regulations to keep you employed.

You should be thankful for having a job and work tirelessly to make them as much money as you can.

Warren Buffets secretary is a moron. She could have set herself up just like her boss and only paid capital gains tax on most of her income (taxed as ordinary income but without SS and Medicare (15%). He would more than likely welcomed a contract with her company to avoid matching social security, health insurance, retirement funding, FUTA, workers compensation.

She could write off all those expenses and with a well negotiated contract would come out ahead.

One thing I learned from TV news is Corporations are evil.

I became one and paid my employee (me) very little. The shareholders (me) had phenomenal returns!

Employees are nothing more than potential problem more so in Panama.

Only do business with Corporations or LLC’s as contractors. Temp services are great for routing out illegals and eliminating liabilities. Panama needs some of these.  Panama is different even though labor seems cheap it isn’t.

 With a little effort and education anybody can understand the game. The key word is effort.

Here in Panama I have been told by abogados tax “evasion” is a sport. I play legal but it is still a game.

Having offshore corps is not illegal if your country of citizenship (not the land of the free?) doesn’t require you to report them. The choice to comply is up to the individual.

[Brian5]

What irritates me about all this is that each and every government around the world will put added burden on the majority which us low to mid income expats. Money buys legal representation which continues to move wealth and keep it out of reach and difficult to trace. But those of us who can’t afford such luxuries will no doubt be harassed because governments won’t assign the resources to bring the multimillion/billion dollar perpetrators to justice, choosing to take the easy route by looking harder at the little fish believing just as much money can be found from easy target than rigorously pursuing the real offenders that highlighted this problem. 

[El Gato]

Poor baby.

Learn to play the game it isnt that difficult.

Paying taxes is like being a prisoner of war it is your duty to escape. The same with taxes it is your duty to "avoid" as many as possible.

The losers of the world are trying to equate tax avoidance with evasion.

Totally different animals.

[Brian5]

Losers being those of us who don’t have sufficient finances to play the game of avoidance or evasion via hired legal representation or creative accounting? I retired with the mindset of now being able to do what I want, not spend more and more of the valuable time having left to prove what is mine really is mine and I came about it legally. 

[El Gato]

Brian,

Put a little effort in and you dont need hired legal representation.

Why do you need to prove you came about whats yours legally?

[H Gene Lawrence]

The only US tax I may pay is when I shop online.

[olga suarez]

now if you are French, the government of France needs to know too. It will soon become a worldwide matter as more and more countries want to prevent tax evasion. 

[MAC REPS]

It's not only Panama being requested, every country that has signed on to the OECD's TIEAs or U.S.'s FATCA regime is making these requests to bolster their revenue streams and share the wealth.  AML and tax evasion being the main impetus to gather the information.  Once it has been shown that by being fully compliant in the reporting of account balances and "ultimate beneficial ownership" of entities owning those bank accounts the respective governments will enjoy a more robust GDP which improves their credit rating and on and on and on.