Disgraced ex-Prince Andrew had 40 prostitutes brought to Thailand hotel on taxpayer-funded trip, biographer says

New York Post

Disgraced Prince Andrew allegedly once had 40 prostitutes brought to his five-star hotel during a taxpayer-funded trip to Thailand, his biographer has claimed.

Andrew, who was officially stripped of his titles on Thursday and evicted from his royal residence in a humiliating fall from grace, engaged with the bevy of women over a four-day stretch, royal historian and author Andrew Lownie alleged.

“There was a famous trip to Thailand — for the birthday celebrations of the King. Andrew is representing his country and insists on staying in a five-star hotel rather than the embassy, which he always did,” Lownie told the Daily Mail’s “Deep Dive: The Fall of the House of York” podcast.

“Andrew had 40 prostitutes brought in the space of four days. This was all enabled by diplomats and others.”  Lownie said multiple sources, including a member of the Thai royal family, had backed up the allegation.

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‘Sad sight’, ‘disgrace’ to see French minister caught throwing lavish parties on taxpayer money

Comment: Hardly shocking. This happens across the length and breadth of the European Union elite. It's merely business as usual. No wonder Britain wants to separate. Lying about it is also par for the (main) course.

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RT

A senior official in France finds himself embroiled in controversy after claims he used public funds to throw lavish parties with vintage wine and exquisite meals. His attitude leaves a stain on French politics, analysts told RT. 

Ecology Minister Francois de Rugy often campaigns for government transparency and has criticized other politicians involved in financial scandals. He got a taste of his own medicine earlier this week when investigative website Mediapart alleged that he hosted more than 10 luxurious dinner parties in which the guests enjoyed lobster, as well as fine wine and champagne – all paid for with taxpayer money. This reportedly took place when de Rugy was the head of the lower house of the French parliament, the National Assembly.

The scandal prompted calls for de Rugy to resign, which he refused to do. He dismissed the story as a “grotesque” smear, claiming he does not eat lobster due to a “shellfish allergy” and avoids champagne because it gives him “a headache.”

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Money Laundering Scandals Bring Court Charges and Record Job Cuts to Euro Banks

Lubomir Tassev
Activist Post
 
The international financial establishment is known to express concern about the risks of money laundering when the crypto space is mentioned. A string of scandals indicates, however, that traditional banks are not only susceptible to the phenomenon but sometimes complicit, whether knowingly or inadvertently. New chapters have been added to the saga over the last few months that are hurting banks, bankers and their clients.

Deutsche Bank Prepares to Lay Off 20,000 Employees

 

Deutsche Bank, one of the biggest names associated with money laundering accusations, has been dogged by many problems during the past year. The leading German financial institution is now preparing for a major reorganization that may include the sacking of up to 20,000 employees, if the plan is approved at the end of this week.

The changes come after a failed merger with Germany’s Commerzbank a couple of months ago, which was eventually deemed too risky by the teams of both banks. It did not materialize, despite the support of the federal government in Berlin.

Many of the layoffs are expected to affect Deutsche Bank’s investment banking offices in London and New York. According to a BBC report, the German bank has 8,000 employees in the British capital. And the 20,000 jobs that are likely to be cut represent a fifth of the institution’s global staff.

Besides persistent problems with its investment business and unsatisfactory financial results, the banking giant has been suffering from its involvement in money laundering scandals. In November, 2018 its headquarters and other offices in Frankfurt were raided by law enforcement officers and representatives of the German tax authority.

During the operation, government agents, including prosecutors, were trying to establish whether Deutsche Bank employees assisted clients in setting up offshore accounts used to transfer illicit funds. The bank was connected to the big money laundering scandal at Danske Bank last year, which revealed that around €200 billion (around $230 billion) has flowed through its Estonian branch from suspicious accounts from the former Soviet space. 

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The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire (Documentary)

Independent POV

At the demise of empire, City of London financial interests created a web of secrecy jurisdictions that captured wealth from across the globe and hid it in a web of offshore islands. Today, up to half of global offshore wealth is hidden in British jurisdictions and Britain and its dependencies are the largest global players in the world of international finance. 

 

The Spider's Web was written, directed and produced by Michael Oswald, you can sponsor his future films on Liberapay (supports one time donations) and Patreon: https://liberapay.com/IndependentPOV https://www.patreon.com/independentdo... 

 

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The Spider's Web was substantially inspired by Nicholas Shaxson's book Treasure Islands you can read an extract of it here: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardi... 

 

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For those interested to learn more about tax justice and financial secrecy, read about the Tax Justice Network's campaigning and regular blogs - become part of the movement for change and listen to the Tax Justice Network's monthly podcast/radio show the Taxcast https://www.taxjustice.net/taxcast/ 

 

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Subtitles: French, Spanish, German, Italian, Russian, Arabic, Korean, Hungarian, English, Turkish, Portugese.

Satanic Temple Wins IRS Recognition as an Official House of Worship

bloomberg.com

 

Many Americans regard paying taxes as a necessary evil. If they want to worship Satan, now the IRS has officially given them a tax-exempt place to do so.

 The Internal Revenue Service has granted the same non-profit status given to churches, synagogues and mosques to The Satanic Temple, an organization in Salem, Massachusetts, that calls itself America’s first devil-worshiping church. It is now protected by federal laws governing churches that operate as charities. 

In a statement this week announcing the status, the group called itself “a non-theistic religious organization dedicated to Satanic practice and the promotion of Satanic rights.” Based in the town that hosted the Salem Witch Trials in the 17th century, the statement added that the group “understands the Satanic figure as a symbol of man’s inherent nature, representative of the eternal rebel, enlightened inquiry and personal freedom rather than a supernatural deity or being.” 

Before the ruling, the IRS regarded the group as a “religious organization,” not as a full-fledged church with a place of worship. Churches are generally exempt from filing federal returns under the tax code.

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Media Blackout as Israel’s Largest Banks Pay Over $1 Billion in Fines for US Tax Evasion Schemes

Mint Press News 

WASHINGTON — Israel’s three largest banks — Hapoalim Bank, Leumi Bank and Mizrahi Tefahot Bank — have all been ordered to pay record fines, which collectively are set to total over $1 billion, to the U.S. government after the banks were found to have actively colluded with thousands of wealthy Americans in massive tax-evasion schemes.

The scandal, though it has been reported on in Israeli media, has garnered little attention in the United States. The media black-out has been so surprising it was even directly mentioned by the Times of Israel, given that similar revelations about other banks and offshore tax-evasion schemes — such as those contained within the Panama Papers — led to global protests and even the resignations of some world leaders.

The settlements are the end result of a series of Department of Justice (DOJ) probes that were related to the DOJ’s 2007 investigation targeting UBS AG, Switzerland’s largest bank. The focus of the probe turned to Israel a few years later in 2011, when it was determined that the Swiss subsidiaries of several of Israel’s largest banks had actively aided Americans seeking to launder their money.

As the probes advanced, the DOJ found that the three banks — Israel’s largest when ranked by net income and total assets — had a history of collaborating with wealthy Americans in tax evasion schemes, not just in their Swiss subsidiaries but in Israel as well. Most of those wealthy Americans were Jewish Americans or dual U.S.-Israeli citizens who hid their U.S. citizenship from the Israeli banks.

A year after the probes into Leumi, Hapoalim and Mizrahi Tefahot were made public, the U.S. State Department notably listed Israel as a “major money laundering country… whose financial institutions engage in currency transactions involving significant amounts of proceeds from international narcotics trafficking … or other serious crime.”

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Pity the Nation: War Spending Is Bankrupting America

John W. Whitehead
Information Clearing House

Our nation is being preyed upon by a military industrial complex that is propped up by war profiteers, corrupt politicians and foreign governments.

America has so much to offer—creativity, ingenuity, vast natural resources, a rich heritage, a beautifully diverse populace, a freedom foundation unrivaled anywhere in the world, and opportunities galore—and yet our birthright is being sold out from under us so that power-hungry politicians, greedy military contractors, and bloodthirsty war hawks can make a hefty profit at our expense.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that your hard-earned tax dollars are being used for national security and urgent military needs.

It’s all a ruse.

You know what happens to tax dollars that are left over at the end of the government’s fiscal year? Government agencies—including the Department of Defense—go on a “use it or lose it” spending spree so they can justify asking for money in the next fiscal year.

We’re not talking chump change, either.

We’re talking $97 billion worth of wasteful spending.

According to an investigative report by Open the Government, among the items purchased during the last month of the fiscal year when government agencies go all out to get rid of these “use it or lose it” funds: Wexford Leather club chair ($9,241), china tableware ($53,004), alcohol ($308,994), golf carts ($673,471), musical equipment including pianos, tubas, and trombones ($1.7 million), lobster tail and crab ($4.6 million), iPhones and iPads ($7.7 million), and workout and recreation equipment ($9.8 million).

So much for draining the swamp.

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How $21 Trillion in U.S. Tax Money Disappeared. “Full Scope Audit” of the Pentagon

David DeGraw
Global Research

This is part of our series on the unaccounted for $21 Trillion in taxpayer money. As unbelievable and absurd as that sounds, the actual total of unaccounted for money at the Pentagon is most likely significantly more than $21 trillion. The First ever “full-scope audit” of the Pentagon is presently underway. Read the first report from this series here. 

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According to the Department of Defense Inspector General and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, $21 Trillion in Taxpayer Funding Is Unaccounted For.

To help people comprehend the scale of this, $1 Trillion is $1000 Billion. This means that $21,000 Billion in taxpayer money has gone missing.

Image: a stack of one trillion dollars. Multiply that by 21

How can this be possible? 

We outlined the “Unaccountable System of Global War Profiteers” in detail here.

For further understanding, we are featuring another mind-blowing Department of Defense Inspector General (DOD IG) report. 

Read more

EU Directive SPELLS DISASTER for Internet Freedom

Black Pidgeon

$10 Trillion Missing from Pentagon and No One — Not Even the DoD — Knows Where It Is

Clare Bernish 
The Free Thought Project

Over a mere two decades, the Pentagon lost track of a mind-numbing $10 trillion — that’s trillion, with a fat, taxpayer-funded “T” — and no one, not even the Department of Defense, really knows where it went or on what it was spent.

Even though audits of all federal agencies became mandatory in 1996, the Pentagon has apparently made itself an exception, and — fully 20 years later — stands obstinately orotund in never having complied.

Because, as defense officials insist — summoning their best impudent adolescent — an audit would take too long and, unironically, cost too much.

“Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon has broken every promise to Congress about when an audit would be completed,” Rafael DeGennaro, director of Audit the Pentagon, told the Guardian recently. “Meanwhile, Congress has more than doubled the Pentagon’s budget.”

Worse, President Trump’s newly-proposed budget seeks to toss an additional $54 billion into the evidently bottomless pit that is the U.S. military  — more for interventionist policy, more for resource-plundering, more for proxy fighting, and, of course, more for jets and drones to drop more bombs suspiciously often on civilians.

Maybe.

Because, without the mandated audit, the DoD could be purchasing damned near anything, at any cost, and use, or give, it — to anyone, for any reason.

Officials with the Government Accountability Office and Office of the Inspector General have catalogued egregious financial disparities at the Pentagon for years — yet the Defense Department grouses the cost and energy necessary to perform an audit in compliance with the law makes it untenable.

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Greece bans cash: Tax-allowance possible only through payments via plastic money

Keep Talking Greece

Greece is banning the use of cash the soft way. As of 1.1. 2017, taxpayers will be granted tax-allowance and tax deduction only when they have made payments via credit or debit cards. The new guidelines refer to employees, pensioners, farmers but also unemployed.

Accepted expenditure will be:

purchases for food and supermarket products, electronic and electric devices, household equipment, footwear, clothing, fuel, furniture, cigarettes*, drinks
Restaurants, cafeterias,bars and hotels
Services like by hairdressers and beauty parlors, gyms and dance schools, car repair, plumbers, electricians, painters, carpenters, lawyers and accountants.

For doctors and pharmacy the same practice will be valid as in last year. The tax office will accept the expenditure only if payments are made per credit card or bank transfer. 

Expenditure for utility bills, landlines and mobile phones, heating, rent, loan repayments that in fact swallow the largest amount of monthly expenditure for private households will not be accepted. Also not accepted is expenditure for toll and transport tickets.

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The fact on $10 million per day to Israel

Alison Weir
If Americans Knew 
(March 6, 2016)

Local residents recently partnered with my organization to put up a billboard that informed East Bay residents: "We give Israel $10 million per day. That money could send our kids to college." The billboard has triggered common pro-Israel talking points. Let me address these false claims:

1. Claim: The message is "anti-Semitic." This accusation is used to silence legitimate criticism of the state of Israel and U.S. policies regarding Israel. As an Israeli parliament member said, "It's a trick; we always use it. When from Europe someone is criticizing Israel, then we bring up the Holocaust. When in this country people are criticizing Israel, they are termed 'anti-Semitic.' "

The billboard provides information about U.S. tax money and suggests a better use for it. When Americans believe our politicians are misusing our taxes, it is our civic responsibility to object. Voicing objections to a misguided governmental policy is not "bigotry," it is obligatory.

2. Claim: Israel and the U.S. have "shared values." This is used as an argument that we must support Israel whatever it does, whether occupying land, killing civilians or defying our own president. Israel is founded on elevating one religious-ethnic group over all others. There is systemic discrimination in its national identity, a religious symbol on its flag, and land ownership is severely restricted. It has never created a constitution and has no Bill of Rights.

The U.S., on the other hand, is based on the principle "that all men are created equal, they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Our Bill of Rights states: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." Religious discrimination is outlawed here.

3. Claim: Giving money to Israel promotes U.S. interests; Israel protects Americans from enemies in the region. In reality, as many people have noted, Americans had no enemies in the region before Israel was created on Palestinian land in 1948.

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Britain’s Tax Office, HMRC sold 6oo state owned buildings to offshore property company

 

Graham Vanbergen 
True Publica

There are a number of interesting facts and figures emanating from the various offshore leaks of recent times. One of them involves Britain’s tax office HMRC, where there is a history of double dealing when it comes to tax haven transparency.

Last February HSBC’s Swiss banking arm got caught ‘red-handed’ assisting wealthy customers concealing millions of dollars of assets and then literally and quite unbelievably found to be handing out bricks of untraceable currency to them. HSBC was, at the same time providing these clients the facilities and information needed to circumvent domestic tax authorities, according to a huge cache of leaked secret bank account files.

The leak clearly demonstrated that HSBC was providing account facilities to international criminals, corrupt businessmen and other high-risk individuals from all over the world, Britain included.

The leaked HSBC files, which covered the period 2005-2007, amounted, at the time, to the biggest banking leak in history, shining a very bright light on about 30,000 accounts holding almost $120bn (£78bn) of assets, an average of £2.6 million per account. After the files had been thoroughly checked out, the number of accounts held escalated to 130,000 individuals and organisations.

The revelations amplified calls for government’s  the world over to take action and crackdown on offshore illegal tax havens. Politicians got on the bandwagon in an attempt to demonstrate they were on the side of law abiding citizens. HMRC recently issued a statement straight after the Panama papers scandal “HMRC is committed to exposing and acting on financial wrongdoing and we relentlessly pursue tax evaders to ensure that they pay every penny of taxes and fines they owe“.

The hypocrisy of politicians across Europe and America and HMRC in Britain demonstrates the level of lawlessness both are prepared to accept in every day life.

Read more

Swiss Bank Whistleblower Claims Panama Papers Was A CIA Operation

Liberty Blitzkrieg
Mike Krieger

Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, so you might think he’d be cheering on the disclosures in the new Panama Papers leaks. But today, Birkenfeld is raising questions about the source of the information that is shaking political regimes around the world.

“The CIA I’m sure is behind this, in my opinion,” Birkenfeld said.

– From the CNBC article: Swiss Banker Whistleblower: CIA Behind Panama Papers

Last Friday, I published a post titled, Was the Panama Papers “Leak” a Russian Intelligence Operation? Here’s some of what I wrote:

Initially, this seemed to be a theory worth exploring, but in the following days I’ve come to a far different conclusion. The primary divergence between what I currently believe and what Mr. Murray proposed is that I do not think the leaker was a genuine whistleblower motived by the public interest. I think the leaker was working on behalf of a sophisticated intelligence agency.

The fact that we seem to know nothing about “John Doe” concerns me. Say what you will about Edward Snowden, but he came out publicly shortly after his whistleblowing and offered himself up for the world to judge. His life, career and personality have been put on full display, and each and every one of us has had the opportunity to decide for ourselves whether his motivations were noble and pure or not.

With the Panama Papers’ “John Doe” we are given no such opportunity, and in fact, the whole thing reads very much like a script concocted by some big budget intelligence agency. Once I started coming around to this conclusion, the obvious choice was U.S. intelligence; given the lack of implications to powerful Americans, the clownishly desperate attempts to smear Putin, and the appearance of Soros, USAID, Ford Foundation, etc, linked organizations to the reporting.

So for someone who already thinks the whole Panama Papers story stinks to high heaven, a CIA link to the release seems obvious; but is it too obvious? Perhaps.

At this point, I want to make something perfectly clear. I do not profess to know the “real story” behind the Panama Papers. The truth is, nobody knows, except for John Doe and the people he was working for (or with). The only thing I feel fairly confident about is that the story we are being fed is not the real story. The more I read and reflect upon the very minor consequences of the leak thus far, the more I become convinced this was a geopolitical play by a powerful intelligence agency. At first, I assumed it was U.S. intelligence, but Mr. Gaddy puts forth a compelling theory. If this was the work of the CIA, it was an extremely sloppy and obvious hit job. On the other hand, if this was the work of Putin for the purposes of blackmail, it’s one of the most ingenious chess moves I’ve ever seen played on the global stage.

The main point I was trying to hammer home with that post was the fact that I did not believe the Panama Papers was an altruistic act of heroic whistleblowing, but that it was an intelligence operation. I went on to say that I thought the notion it was a Russian job was plausible merely because if it was indeed a CIA operation (as I initially suspected), we would have to accept that the agency is mind-bogglingly sloppy and clownish. Nevertheless, according to notorious swiss bank whistleblower, Bradley Birkenfeld, this is the work of the CIA.

CNBC reports:

Bradley Birkenfeld is the most significant financial whistleblower of all time, so you might think he’d be cheering on the disclosures in the new Panama Papers leaks. But today, Birkenfeld is raising questions about the source of the information that is shaking political regimes around the world.

Birkenfeld, an American citizen, was a banker working at UBS in Switzerland when he approached the U.S. government with information on massive amounts of tax evasion by Americans with secret accounts in Switzerland. By the end of his whistleblowing career, Birkenfeld had served more than two years in a U.S. federal prison, been awarded $104 million by the IRS for his information and shattered the foundations of more than a century of Swiss banking secrecy.

In an exclusive interview Tuesday from Munich, Birkenfeld said he doesn’t think the source of the 11 million documents stolen from a Panamanian law firm should automatically be considered a whistleblower like himself. Instead, he said, the hacking of the Panama City-based firm, called Mossack Fonseca, could have been done by a U.S. intelligence agency.  

“The CIA I’m sure is behind this, in my opinion,” Birkenfeld said. 

Birkenfeld pointed to the fact that the political uproar created by the disclosures have mainly impacted countries with tense relationships with the United States. “The very fact that we see all these names surface that are the direct quote-unquote enemies of the United States, Russia, China, Pakistan, Argentina and we don’t see one U.S. name. Why is that?” Birkenfeld said. “Quite frankly, my feeling is that this is certainly an intelligence agency operation.”

Asked why the U.S. would leak information that has also been damaging to U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron, a major American ally, Birkenfeld said the British leader was likely collateral damage in a larger intelligence operation.

“If you’ve got NSA and CIA spying on foreign governments they can certainly get into a law firm like this,” Birkenfeld said. “But they selectively bring the information to the public domain that doesn’t hurt the U.S. in any shape or form. That’s wrong. And there’s something seriously sinister here behind this.”

This just further confirms my belief that this whole “leak” isn’t what we are being told. This is the work of an intelligence agency working on behalf of a particular government, not on behalf of the public. Don’t be duped.

Time to Stop Funding Israel - Here's Why

The state raked in some NIS 600 million more than expected in April, on top of the NIS 3 billion surplus accumulated from January to March, most of it from taxes.

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Desert Peace via Ynet News

Israel has billions of shekels in its coffers

Incoming Finance Minister Moshe Kahlon has a pleasant surprise in store for him at the treasury: Since the beginning of the year – Yedioth Ahronoth, Ynet’s sister publication, has learned – the state coffers are overflowing with a tax surplus totaling NIS 3.6 billion.

The Tax Authority’s collection efforts are paying off, with the state raking in some NIS 600 million more than expected in April. This follows the NIS 3 billion surplus accumulated from January to March. The surplus is made up almost entirely of direct taxes – income tax and, primarily, real-estate taxes.

The tax surplus is certainly a source of satisfaction for the treasury officials. The tax collection forecast for 2015, following adjustments stemming from canceled legislation due to the early election, stood at NIS 261.8 billion.

The Tax Authority’s revenues during the period January-April 2015 totaled NIS 88.8 billion, compared with NIS 84.5 billion in the corresponding period of 2014 – a real increase of 6.4 percent. 

The increase in revenues stems from income tax from companies and individuals, deductions and a rise in income from real-estate taxes.

On the other hand, while revenues from VAT and import taxes did indeed increase somewhat, the rise did not extend beyond the estimated range.

This indicates that the increase in tax revenues does not stem from increased economic activity. Instead, the spike in revenues is down to increased enforcement on the part of the tax authorities.

Where's the outrage? Congress changes savings accounts and retirement funds, and America sleeps

The Guardian

Congress has passed, and President Obama has said he would sign, a budget bill that allows banks to use your savings when they make giant financial bets called derivatives. Again. And because those savings are insured by the federal government, you, the taxpayer, would be on the hook if those bets go south. Again. This isn’t arcane financial stuff we can ignore. These are the exact financial mechanisms that led to the global crisis just six (short!) years ago. 

The Dodd-Frank reform law that was passed in the wake of that crisis forbade this from ever happening. People in the personal finance field love to talk about how if we could just get more Americans to save, if we could just get more Americans to learn the basics of the stock market, if we could just convince Americans to forego that latte at Starbucks, if we could just put Americans on a budget, then things would be OK. But how is any of that supposed to work when banks can use people’s savings to play the roulette wheel that is the stock market – and then when they lose, they just order another cup of coffee and use the federal budget to make sure that the losses fall not on them but on the people who just tried to save a little money in the first place? This one is only on workers if they say nothing and fail to educate themselves on what is being plundered from their futures. The powers that be are counting on you not to pay attention, or to feel so impotent that you just give up.

Read more
 

The Bank of England is preparing the next crash

Richard Murphy
Tax Research UK

The FT worries me this morning. First it said this:

The UK can have a growing banking sector without condemning itself to more frequent and costly financial crises, the Bank of England has said.

The sector is on course to double from its current size to more than 950 per cent of UK gross domestic product by 2050, far outstripping projected increases in other Group of 20 nations, the BoE said in a report published on Monday.

Then there was this:

The Bank of England says the vast majority of mortgage borrowers could handle interest rate rises of up to 2 percentage points, marking a significant shift in its stance on how higher borrowing costs will hit household finances.

The shift signals that the BoE is getting closer to changing policy and wants to reassure the public and financial markets that Britain’s borrowers can cope.

Both of which have to be read in the context of the FT noting last week that:

The new [Office for Budget Responsibility] forecasts show UK household debt rising even faster than previously thought in the next parliament (2015-20) to a record high of more than 180 per cent of gross domestic product.

And this has to also be noted in the light of the Resolution Foundation’s quite reasonable warning that maybe one million UK households would be plunged into debt crisis by the mortgage rate rises the Bank of England is now envisioning.

So, what is happening here? I suggest there are three things.

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Spain says to charge tax of 0.03 percent on bank deposits

Reuters


Reuters) - Spain on Friday said it would introduce a blanket taxation rate of 0.03 percent on all bank account deposits, in a move aimed at harmonising regional tax regimes and generating revenues for the country's cash-strapped autonomous communities.

The regulation, which could bring around 400 million euros ($546 million) to the state coffers based on total deposits worth 1.4 trillion euros, had been tipped as a possible sweetener for the regions days after tough deficit limits for this year and next were set by the central government.

Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria announced the move at a news conference following a weekly cabinet meeting.

Spain is aiming for an end-of-year deficit of 5.5 percent after ending 2013 with a deficit of 6.6 percent of gross domestic product, just short of its 6.5 percent target. The regions have been set a deficit limit of 1 percent of GDP.

The government had last year fixed a zero percent tax rate on deposits across the 17 autonomous communities to prevent some of them charging their own rates, but never ruled out raising the taxation level.

The country has one of the lowest tax takes in the European Union after a burst property bubble crippled the construction sector, one of the largest contributors to government coffers.

Madrid passed in June a blueprint for tax reform which aims to cut income and corporate taxes to stimulate consumer demand and investment in the midst of a nascent economic recovery. ($1 = 0.7331 Euros) (Reporting by Paul Day; Editing by Julien Toyer and Hugh Lawson)

Extreme Acts of Greed

"Trading volume on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) reached an incomprehensible $1 quadrillion in notional value in 2012. That's a thousand trillion dollars. In comparison, the entire U.S. GDP is $17 trillion. But not a penny in sales tax for the taxpayers who provide publicly-funded infrastructure, technology, systems of law, and security to help them process billions of financial transactions. Instead, CME complained that its taxes were too high. They demanded and received an $85 million tax break from the State of Illinois."

Common Dreams 
Paul Buchheit, June 17, 2014

Examples of extreme inequality are becoming easier to find. Americans – especially young Americans – need to know the facts, and they need to know how they're getting cheated, and they need what we can do. The following should help.

1. $1,000,000,000,000,000 in Sales. Not One Cent for Sales Tax

Trading volume on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) reached an incomprehensible $1 quadrillion in notional value in 2012. That's a thousand trillion dollars. In comparison, the entire U.S. GDP is $17 trillion.

On that quadrillion dollars of sales CME imposes transfer fees, contract fees, brokerage fees, Globex fees, clearing fees, and contract surcharges, many of them on both the buyer's and seller's side. As a result, the company had a profit margin higher than any of the top 100 companies in the U.S. from 2008 to 2010, and it's gotten even higher since then.

But not a penny in sales tax for the taxpayers who provide publicly-funded infrastructure, technology, systems of law, and security to help them process billions of financial transactions.

Instead — incredibly — CME complained that its taxes were too high, and they demanded and received an $85 million tax break from the State of Illinois.

2. A Single Tax-Avoider Made More Money in 2013 Than ALL the Emergency Responders in the US

Warren Buffett watched his net worth grow by $12 billion in one year, much more than the $8.3 billion our country spends on almost a quarter-million Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics.

Meanwhile, his company, Berkshire Hathaway, hasn't been paying its taxes. According to the New York Post, "the company openly admits that it owes back taxes since as long ago as 2002." A review of Berkshire Hathaway's annual report confirms that despite profits of almost $29 billion in 2013, a $395 million refund was claimed, while $57 billion in federal taxes remain deferred on the company's balance sheet.

Berkshire Hathaway does report an income tax expense. But all of it, in the company's own words, is hypothetical.

3. Walmart: $13,000 per U.S. Employee Taken in Profits, $4,000 per US Employee Taken from Taxpayers

It gets worse. In addition to Walmart's $19 billion in U.S. profits last year, the four Walton siblings together made about $29 billion from their personal investments. That's over $33,000 per U.S. employee in profits and family stock gains. Yet they pay their 1.4 million American employees so little that the average Walmart worker depends on about $4,000 per year in taxpayer assistance, for food stamps and other safety net programs.

How does Walmart spend its profits? Instead of providing a living wage for its workers, company management spent $7.6 billion, or about $5,000 per U.S. employee, on stock buybacks, in order to further boost the value of their stock holdings.

4. US Wealth Grew by $25 Trillion in the Recovery, but 90 Percent of Us Got NONE of It

U.S. wealth grew from $47 trillion to $72 trillion in the four years after the recession, largely as a reflection of continued American productivity. In other words, a full one-third of the total wealth in the U.S. in 2013 was generated since 2009. But the richest 10% took all of it.
That's $6 trillion per year in new wealth for the rich. In contrast, the total annual cost of 'entitlements' and the safety net is less than $2 trillion.

One consequence of this redistribution of wealth is that more money has been transferred from minorities to prosperous white Americans. The richest 1% took 95 percent of the gain. Less than two out of every hundred individuals in the richest 1% are black.

5. Extreme Fees: Nickeled and Dimed until the Retirement Fund is Almost Gone

The one- to two-percent fees don't seem like much, but savvy financial minds know better. It has been estimated that the average underserved household spends $2,412 each year just on interest and fees for alternative financial services. Food stamp recipients have to pay companies like JP Morgan to process their benefits. The unemployed are getting their benefits through banks who issue fee-laden debit cards instead of cash. And it's not just low-income households paying the fees. A two-earner household with median incomes will pay an average of over $150,000 in 401(k) fees over their lifetimes.

The fees are not only draining us individually, but also at the levels of local and state government. Los Angeles last year spent more on Wall Street fees than it did on its streets. In Detroit, financial expenses might approach a half billion dollars, in a city where homeowners can barely afford the water services. Chicago may end up paying Morgan Stanley $9.58 billion for a $1.15 billion parking meter deal. And in Rhode Island, it has been projected that the state will pay $2.1 billion in fees to hedge funds, private-equity funds and venture-capital funds over twenty years, the same amount the state will be taking from workers by freezing their cost of living adjustments.

Solutions?

All these issues have solutions: a wealth tax for (1) and (4) above; a minimum wage increase for (2); a speculation tax for (3); public banks and Post Office banks for (5).
But the best solution may be another American Revolution.

Note: The above is a lightly edited copy of the original article at Huffington Post. 

MPs raise concerns over new tax powers in Budget

Comment: State-mandated robbery. This is a pathocrat's dream...

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BBC News

Plans to allow the tax authority to settle unpaid demands by taking money from people's bank accounts have been criticised by a group of MPs.

The Treasury Committee says it is very concerned because tax officials have a history of making mistakes.
Chancellor George Osborne unveiled the plan at this year's Budget.

But in a wide-ranging report, the committee did welcome another Budget plan - to allow greater flexibility on how pension savings can be used.

In the Budget, Mr Osborne outlined plans for new powers for HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) to recover tax debts from anyone who owes more than £1,000 in tax or in tax credits.

This would allow the tax authority to seize the tax owed directly from debtors' bank accounts.

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