Britain's unexplained wealth orders give the state too much power

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/britains-unexplained-wealth-orders-give-the-state-too-much-power

by protomyth • 7 years ago

26 15 7 years ago

muro• 7 years ago

When growing up in post-communist eastern Europe, I was a huge fan of such laws. Ill-gotten gains, many rich people with unexplained wealth. Partially tax evasion, but largely theft and receiving bribes. Especially for corrupt politicians, I think such law is necessary.

The problem is selective enforcement.

esarbe2• 7 years ago

Selective enforcement could indeed be a problem.

fao_4• 7 years ago

    The kicker: The burden of proof falls on you,
    not the government. If you don't prove the funds
    were clean, Her Majesty may be presumed entitled
    to keep the goodies.

That doesn't sound too goo- oh,

    The asset must be worth at least £50,000

Given that the average annual income of someone in the UK is 22,000£, and there are currently 4 million children in the UK that cannot afford to eat (https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/sep/05/four-million...), with a preliminary study from the UN claiming that 8.4 million people in the UK are affected by food shortages, this just falls under 'rich people problems'.

Besides, if you buy something that is over 50,000£, surely you would keep the reciept for insurance reasons, or just plain book-keeping. If you don't, and the taxman shows up and asks where you got it, then that's your fault for not having possession of those records. If you can afford to buy a single thing that is twice the average salary, then you can afford to pay someone to do that book-keeping for you, surely.

nickthemagicman• 7 years ago

That 50k is an arbitrary number and can be lowered at any moment. Rich people's problems may one day be everyone's problems. This is a scary law on my limited understanding.

heraclius• 7 years ago

The problem with slippery slope arguments is that they need to show that the initial step taken somehow leads to the bad outcome mentioned. The obvious solution is to stay at 50k. I think that the political situation still would create a huge uproar if it were lowered significantly.

esarbe2• 7 years ago

There are lots of laws with arbitrary numbers in them. That's because don't get justice from fair laws, you get justice from a fair legal system.

You can have the bestest and fairestest laws in the world, that doesn't give you anything if you are facing a corrupt legal system.

If you've got a ridiculous code of law and a somewhat competent legal system, you should be fine.

So, in my opinion you should be worried to get competent people into the right places.

fao_4• 7 years ago

    Rich people's problems may one day be everyone's problems.

That's a worthy dream. But in the last 1000 years it hasn't become a reality.

chrismcb• 7 years ago

This is why we Yanks have the fourth amendment. So the government can't just arbitrarly take things from the citizens... And just ignore the civil forfeiture...

fao_4• 7 years ago

Rich people are rich because they have stolen from society. You don't think Jeff Bezos became the richest guy in the world by refusing to cut corners or underpay workers? No, amazon routinely does both of those (https://stallman.org/amazon.html). There is always, always, a hidden human cost to large sums of money.

I'm not scared of the government coming in and taking my stuff. What I am scared of is rich people taking my labour and not paying me for it, and rich people using their vast sums of money to pay for coverups that allow them to keep their vast sums of money and avoid paying their taxes.

And, oh, wait. We have ample evidence that rich people all over the world are doing that en masse:

https://www.icij.org/investigations/panama-papers/

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2016/apr/03/what-you-need-t...

    The poorest 10 per cent of households in the UK pay a 
    greater proportion of their income in tax than the 
    richest 10 per cent, new analysis has revealed.
    [...]
    Dr. Wanda Wyporska, Executive Director of The Equality 
    Trust, said: “When the super-rich are paying less in 
    taxes than their cleaners, you know something has gone 
    disastrously wrong with our broken, regressive tax 
    system.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/lowest-earne...

    The companies, which include tech giants such as Amazon 
    and Netflix, should have paid a collective $16.4 billion 
    in federal income taxes based on the Tax Cuts and Jobs 
    Act's 21 percent corporate tax rate, according to the 
    left-leaning Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. 
    Instead, these corporations received a net tax rebate of 
    $4.3 billion. The analysis is based on the corporations' 
    annual financial reports, which were filed earlier this 
    year to report their 2018 results. 
    [...]
    Amazon won't pay a cent in federal income tax this year, 
    despite its profits soaring to $11.2 billion in 2018, 
    nearly double the $5.6 billion it earned the previous 
    year, ITEP said. In fact, Amazon claimed a federal 
    income tax rebate of $129 million, the study found. It 
    would be the second year in a row Amazon paid no federal 
    tax, giving the retail giant an effective tax rate of -1 
    percent.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2018-taxes-some-of-americas-big...

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/12/rich-pe...

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/21/here-are-5-ways-the-super-ri...

tlb• 7 years ago

At some level, this law is a response to how slow the courts are in enforcing other laws. In the case described, the money is surely the proceeds of a crime. But it might take 10 years to prosecute that crime, given multiple jurisdictions and a well-lawyered defendant. Meanwhile, the money causes harm by distorting the economy.

So I understand the desire to do something in the meantime. But let's not lose sight of the proper solution: swift justice for the actual crime.

NeedMoreTea• 7 years ago

Ugh, that seems very biased given the extensive cases of money laundering that led to UWOs coming into law in the first place.

"Walter Olson is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute"

Ah, the Cato institute who would like states to have no power to speak of, on anything much.

This seems a more balanced brief overview of UWOs, which notes they're not being used often enough yet:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/vishalmarria/2018/10/25/how-the...

moneytide1• 7 years ago

I immediately thought of an excerpt from "Empire of Things" by Frank Trentmann. It is somewhat out of context, considering the parent article describes the legal validation of economic gains displayed as luxury assets, whereas the following excerpt describes the states attempt to preserve the economic virtues of the populace:

“In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Venice senate passed more than a dozen laws and regulations against [sumptuous lifestyles]. Lavish weddings and expensive fur-lined coats made visible inequalities in wealth and status that threatened the republic’s ideal of equality and restraint. They also triggered a competitive spending spree which pushed some citizens into debt.”

Britain's unexplained wealth orders give the state too much power

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