<story><title>Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-tax-avoidance-50-dutch-shell-companies-5-billion-revenue-2021-5</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dstick</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m getting more and more frustrated by my own country&amp;#x27;s willingness to facilitate this. It just doesn&amp;#x27;t make any sense. From what I can tell it&amp;#x27;s all based on old-fashioned debunked economic theories in the same vain as &amp;quot;trickle-down-economy&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a growing resistance to the Netherlands as a &amp;quot;Doorsluisland&amp;quot;, and our current administration&amp;#x27;s political turmoil will hopefully provide the momentum for actual change - so hopefully things will change.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a nice (Dutch) article on it. The big take-away with other tax &amp;quot;havens&amp;quot; is that the money doesn&amp;#x27;t reside &amp;#x2F; stay in the Netherlands, it&amp;#x27;s just passed through it. Like Uber did.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.groene.nl&amp;#x2F;artikel&amp;#x2F;doorsluisland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.groene.nl&amp;#x2F;artikel&amp;#x2F;doorsluisland&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>speleding</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m also Dutch, but I&amp;#x27;m mainly frustrated that the press does a very poor job of explaining what is going on.&lt;p&gt;Uber has its corporate head quarters for the EU in Amsterdam. For a company the size of Uber to have 50 different entities is not particularly special, you will find several other multinationals there with the same number. It makes sense to have one for each jurisdiction they operate in, for example. The term &amp;quot;shell companies&amp;quot; seems to imply something nefarious, and that may very well be the case, but in itself having 50 entities in The Netherlands is not really a sign of that.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also important to point out that they do not choose The Netherlands for low corporate tax rates, they are not the lowest in the EU by far, but because of &amp;quot;tax rulings&amp;quot;. Those are agreements they can make with the tax authorities that ascertain them how much tax they will pay this year as long as revenue, costs, etc, stay within a certain bandwidth. In the US it can take over a year for them to get any certainty on what their tax bill would be for the previous year, and shareholders hate that uncertainty.&lt;p&gt;No one thinks it&amp;#x27;s a good idea to compete in a &amp;quot;race to the bottom&amp;quot; of attractive tax laws, but as far as I&amp;#x27;m concerned competing on better service is fair game. Many politicians screaming at The Netherlands tend to conveniently forget the part where their own country just delivers very poor service tax-wise.</text></comment>
<story><title>Uber used 50 Dutch shell companies to dodge taxes</title><url>https://www.businessinsider.com/uber-tax-avoidance-50-dutch-shell-companies-5-billion-revenue-2021-5</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dstick</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m getting more and more frustrated by my own country&amp;#x27;s willingness to facilitate this. It just doesn&amp;#x27;t make any sense. From what I can tell it&amp;#x27;s all based on old-fashioned debunked economic theories in the same vain as &amp;quot;trickle-down-economy&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s a growing resistance to the Netherlands as a &amp;quot;Doorsluisland&amp;quot;, and our current administration&amp;#x27;s political turmoil will hopefully provide the momentum for actual change - so hopefully things will change.&lt;p&gt;Here&amp;#x27;s a nice (Dutch) article on it. The big take-away with other tax &amp;quot;havens&amp;quot; is that the money doesn&amp;#x27;t reside &amp;#x2F; stay in the Netherlands, it&amp;#x27;s just passed through it. Like Uber did.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.groene.nl&amp;#x2F;artikel&amp;#x2F;doorsluisland&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.groene.nl&amp;#x2F;artikel&amp;#x2F;doorsluisland&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dalbasal</author><text>It&amp;#x27;s a mistake to think of it as based on ideas or economic theory, debunked or otherwise. &amp;quot;Trickle-down-economy&amp;quot; is a marketing term, intended for rhetoric.&lt;p&gt;Tax policies, and other corporate friendly loophole machines are all about detail. At the detail level, both rhetorical slogans and technical theories have no meaning. Any given legislation can only be understood as accounting spreadsheets and scenario plans. There&amp;#x27;s no way to &amp;quot;narrate&amp;quot; it.&lt;p&gt;One side thinks in terms of objects that have independent moral implications, like shell companies. The other thinks in terms of objects that are a collection of accounting details, like pass-through entities.&lt;p&gt;There&amp;#x27;s an old business adage: &amp;quot;you name the price, I&amp;#x27;ll name the terms.&amp;quot; In a startup context, that could mean investing in a company at valuation X, but with terms (eg liquidations preferences, performance goals, etc.) that make a mockery of X as a valuation. Many a vein founder has been scheisted this way. Proudly boasting their impressive, $X valuation and paper-wealth, while giving away the farm.&lt;p&gt;In corporate law and tax codes, one side has been consistently been winning this game.</text></comment>