Eric Schmidt has applied to become a citizen of Cyprus
vox.com
vox.com
> In 1995, one of the first and most promising MDDS grants went to a computer-science research team at Stanford University with a decade-long history of working with NSF and DARPA grants. The primary objective of this grant was “query optimization of very complex queries that are described using the ‘query flocks’ approach.” A second grant—the DARPA-NSF grant most closely associated with Google’s origin—was part of a coordinated effort to build a massive digital library using the internet as its backbone. Both grants funded research by two graduate students who were making rapid advances in web-page ranking, as well as tracking (and making sense of) user queries: future Google cofounders Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
> The research by Brin and Page under these grants became the heart of Google: people using search functions to find precisely what they wanted inside a very large data set. The intelligence community, however, saw a slightly different benefit in their research: Could the network be organized so efficiently that individual users could be uniquely identified and tracked?
Not to mention In-Q-Tel's investment into one of their key products, Google Maps via Keyhole. And DARPA's Grand Challenge that led to the Stanley car that was acquired and scaled up to make Google's automated car division.
Google has done an admirable job of taking Government sponsored R&D and maturing it into products. They deserve their success. But, in my opinion, the systemic lack of reinvestment into the pipeline that created them and their most successful products is equivalent to sawing off the branch that they're sitting on.
The US Govt couldn't have invented the iPhone or Google's search engine, but they did fund the first Integrated Circuits, the first IC-based computer, the internet, GPS, discrete problems in computer science involving searching large amounts of data, display technologies, battery technologies, MEMS sensors etc etc.
EDIT further information I posted below:
The US has the unique position of being able to actually enforce this due to the fact the USD is the reserve currency of the world and every country needs to stay on the good side of the US Treasury to transact in the global economy. FATCA requires all foreign financial institutions to report on any US citizen assets.
In fact, the laws are so strict, they make living abroad as an honest middle-class expat a total nightmare. I have friends who cannot find a single bank in their country that will work with them because of the reporting requirements of working with US citizens. They cannot save in foreign banks and they cannot invest either due to the US penalizing foreign Mutual fund/ETF purchases by private citizens.
This was possible in the past for Americans, but it doesn't make sense anymore. That's the truth. The secretive Swiss banks and numbered accounts you read about in adventure novels as a kid are all reporting on US citizens now.
It doesn't matter how much resources Eric Schmidt has, the US government has more resources and power than Eric Schmidt. Especially given he's a widely known public figure, he'd be the perfect target of any investigation.
US taxes are already extremely favorable to the rich. Do you seriously think he'd risk his freedom and reputation over something so stupid?
There is no "the US government has more resources" – like it's a big blob. It comes down to something like the IRS enforcement division, which is consistently getting kneecapped with budget cuts. So no, actually it really is between your 15 high priced lawyers and whatever team of 5 people the IRS has working your case with limited time because they're stretched thin.
I only claim two things. One, that by most reasonable definitions, Cyprus is a tax haven -- there is even a recent sordid history there, exposed in The Cyprus Papers. And two, given tax havens are often used as a means to minimize tax in transferring wealth from one generation to the next [0] among other things, I think it's a dubious claim to say "There is no dodge" as you have so unequivocally done.
[0] Via Panama and Jersey, not Cyprus, but for example these schemes were used by David Cameron's father, and by Jimmy Carr before he bowed to public pressure -- all quite legal and non-magical, and I'm sure US citizens could use similar schemes, in spite of their global reach. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/apr/20/cameron-fam...
There absolutely are sophisticated tax structures both domestically and internationally that do require a certain degree of scale to benefit from them, though past a certain point make less sense.
That being said, I think you are right about Schmidt. It can't be for something so simple, being that high profile.
It is possible to use such structures in some cases without needing to give up your US citizenship.
But there are plenty of non-tax reasons to get a second citizenship.
What other reasons are there to seek citizenship in a country like Cyprus?
Well, no way to "legally avoid"; "dodge" is broader, and there are probably many ways of dodging taxes that are easier if the institutions you deal with in your daily life aren't subject to US jurisdiction and regulations designed to expose tax evasion to US authorities.
Also, typically you want to have at least one national citizenship, so if you are planning to legally avoid US taxes by renouncing US citizenship, getting some other citizenship is usually step one.
Of course, there are other reasons it is convenient to have citizenship in an EU member state, even if you are a US citizen, so its not necessarily step 1 of a tax dodge.
Every single financial institution that transacts in US dollars (so, all of them) is subject to the power of the US Treasury.
So many people want to believe all the rich are hiding their money abroad.
For American citizens, this simply isn't true and hasn't been for a decade or more. It's not feasible. Also, American capital gains taxes (the ones rich people mostly pay) are extremely low compared to most places in the EU anyways. Its not worth the risk even if you can find a nefarious organization to help you do it.
It used to be possible. Ted Arison renounced his US citizenship when the end of his life was visible, thus avoiding estate taxes. This prompted an immediate change (you are a US tax payer for 10 more years after renouncing) and later redone with the current “you are dead to us” treatment.
Eduardo Saverin took a bet with FB: he renounced, which set his tax obligation at X. Then FB went down, which meant he had to pay a larger percentage of his wealth. But then FB shot up significantly, so he ended up saving much on taxes (as to whether he did this to avoid taxation is not settled - he naturalized in Singapore which does not allow dual passports. Arison moved to Israel which does, so it was clearly a taxation avoidance plan)
There was a guy a few days who wrote an article about giving up on his US nationality exactly for that purpose
I bet he is well into only paying capital gains territory. Like Warren Buffet who said he pays less than his secretary [1]
[1] https://money.cnn.com/2013/03/04/news/economy/buffett-secret...
BTW: All tax systems are draconian, at least to the middle class. Not to people who can afford creative lawyers.
When you've got Eric Schmidt money, you probably want to have the ability to live and vacation anywhere you want, whenever you want. Otherwise you're limited to 90 days in the EU at a time as a tourist.
So it’s really hard to see how taxes are draconian for the middle classes. Or draconian at all.
According to this, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_taxation#Taxatio..., Hungary, Myanmar have the same as the US. Spain and Turkey and several others have it for some citizens.
Myanmar, Turkey, etc. do not have the power to force foreign banks to report on all of their expat citizens.
Renouncing citizenship never works as a tax dodge, unless you have some reason to expect large future gains in your assets that aren't reflected in their current market prices.
https://www.gq.com/story/how-puerto-rico-became-tax-haven-fo...
Also, didn't california just pass a CEO tax? Does it apply to him?
That's what Tina Turner did, she is now a Swiss national, she does not pay taxes to the US anymore https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tina_Turner
It’s not to avoid criminal justice either as Cyprus is a lapdog to the US for extradition, same as the UK is.
Even with the possibility of traveling all the time as long as you aren't on the mainland for 6 months, Puerto Rico is just not attractive enough.
Everyone I know that was trying to take advantage of Act 60 (previously Act 20 and Act 22) all left when the COVID pandemic started. It was just too clear that the infrastructure was too poor.
So expatriation can protect you from paying taxes on capital gains from future assets, but it doesn't do much to protect you from capital gains on assets you currently own.
[0] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/expa...
What? This is not true at all. Getting a bank in most other countries is not hard at all and certainly not a "nightmare."
As a U.S. citizen you must still file taxes and an FBAR that merely reports your assets in foreign accounts, but I've never seen a bank have any problems opening an account for an American, in any country.
Most of my US expat friends are lucky in that their local banks will let them have a checking account and sometimes even a savings account, but no other services are available to them. (And no local brokers would touch them with a 10-feet pole).
I don't know about "most" countries, but my American colleagues in Germany and Switzerland complained about the difficulty of doing anything related to finance (banks, brokers, taxes) because of their extra tax liability. I personally had to sign quite a few forms certifying that I am not a US citizen or a greencard holder or in any other way tax liable in the US, so it does seem to be a big deal.
Google itself is still an American company paying taxes, Schmidt hasn't been the CEO of Google for a decade, I don't see why that's related. By that logic you could also say that the US Gov also helped pay for his high school or even kindergarten maybe.
I'm not really taking a side here, but it seems like your argument is a bit too broad.
On top of that, US gov has all kinds of laws and regulations that make it difficult to do certain valuable things. For example, if companies in the same industry come together to do something valuable, they might break antitrust laws. Government might also make it prohibitively expensive to do something and then they step in to do it themselves - you see it with pharma research.
The burden of proof for that is on you. Where did it happen like that in recent history ? Even in Germany and Japan two other powerhouses of research in the world, it's greatly helped by the fact that public research (funded by the state) and corporations are intertwined. I'm French, our best years for innovation were during our glorious 30's when state was directing mainly state corporations (telecom, energy, aerospace) to do long term research. When it was privatized due to antitrust pressure by the EU, all that was killed (see how much telecom technology came from the CNET/Alcatel, even one of the Internet primary idea, packet switching, came from a French researcher of this era).
Sources: [1] https://taxfoundation.org/taxing-high-income-2019/ [2] https://taxfoundation.org/publications/corporate-tax-rates-a... [3] https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/big-six-tech-....
With your assertion in mind: there were plenty of wealthy people in the US in the early 1990s so why didn't they fund the nascent Google project? You'd think anyone would love to be the likely majority owner of Google.
Yes, there are tons of people and companies currently investing in these things because earlier government investment proved those things possible. It would be irrational for a private company to invest time and money in something with knightian uncertainty.
The private sector is good with scale and incremental improvements. Quite bad with fundamental research.
Here are some of their contributions,
> The injector at the heart of Merlin is of the pintle type that was first used in the Apollo Lunar Module landing engine (LMDE).
> To meet that need, in 1994, just as Fastrac was getting underway, Majumdar began developing the Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program, or GFSSP, which was first used by the Agency’s analysts in October 1996. NASA employees used the software for the Fastrac turbopump, and even though the program was cancelled in the early 2000s, the turbopump became the predecessor for others like it, such as SpaceX’s Merlin rocket engines, which power the company’s Falcon 9 commercial launch vehicle.
> The basic principles of the Fastrac design (namely, a pintle injector and ablatively cooled chamber) lived on in SpaceX's Merlin 1A engine, which used a turbopump from the same subcontractor.[18] The Merlin-1A was somewhat larger with a thrust of 77,000 lbf (340 kN) versus 60,000 lbf (270 kN) for Fastrac. The same basic design was capable of much higher thrust levels after upgrading the turbopump. Variants of the Merlin-1D achieve 190,000 lbf (850 kN) of thrust as of May, 2018,[19] though the combustion chamber is now regeneratively cooled.[20]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fastrac_(rocket_engine)
> Hackler: Did NASA share any technological types of lessons learned that influenced your vehicle?
> Giger: Yes, Mike Horkachuck and Warren Ruemmele were very good about looking at our system, seeing how it was similar or dissimilar to Shuttle, Apollo, Mercury, Gemini, any other program in history, and trying to share those lessons learned. For example, parachutes. We were able to get a lot of data from the Apollo Program, from the Orion Program even, and leverage lessons learned from them on that.
> A lot of joint technologies, too. We learned about PICA, Phenolic Impregnated Carbon Ablator tiles that we use on our heat shield, which was originally developed in conjunction with NASA. We learned a lot from how they did that, and they helped us bring that technology in house, which was great. Now we build our own variant of that in-house. There were numerous kinds of examples of that, where they shared technology or lessons learned that we then either incorporated in the design, or took that technology to the next level here, which was great.
Much of the materials technology, engine design, engineering simulations etc. at SpaceX were derived from NASA expertise and knowledge. Furthermore, this was all done largely on NASA's dime. NASA gave SpaceX an extremely favourable deal and is its single largest investor.
> Fourth, we took no equity. The reason the decision was to take no equity was that in the world of venture capital, sometimes you make poor investment decisions and you get no money back. Sometimes you make really good investment decisions, and you get five times your money back or ten times your money back. But you almost never get one time your money back.
> I knew enough about the federal government to know that if you invested money and you got none of your money back, everybody would get angry. But it also turns out that if you invest money and you get five times your money back, everybody gets angry too, because then you’re competing with the private sector. There’s no way that when you’re doing innovation like this you could expect that you were going to get one times your money back. That’s just silly. It was better to take no equity at all.
This is from the oral histories, https://historycollection.jsc.nasa.gov/JSCHistoryPortal/hist...
So NASA gives them access to technological expertise + historical engineering data + designs + prior NASA IP, gives them cash for development, takes no equity, let's SpaceX retain IP, and provides a guaranteed market.
SpaceX is doing incredible work and they're bringing these technologies to the market. They're making the sexy iPhone from the unsexy fundamental science done by NASA for them, and this development is being mostly funded by the tax payer, with nominal (up to 30% to 50%) private contribution.
I would hold them up as a model for how to blend the best elements of public works & private enterprise, and a model on how to do public-private partnerships.
Goddard's research, or heck even the Wright Brothers, to go from a smidgen to the Saturn V or Boeing 737, took decades of funding and research over time spans that are just too long for most investors and human beings.
I know some contemporary investors are trying to be ambitious and change this, which is something I applaud them for. But their inputs are still focussed on bringing technologies to commercialization, not the greenfield research needed to produce the next paradigm.
For example, during the US' Apollo Program, the necessity of a lightweight, power-efficient, and resilient navigation led to a radical design proposal that suggested a computer designed entirely out of Integrated Circuits (ICs). At the time, the IC industry had barely entered its cradle, with the "monolithic concept" having been invented less than 2 years before the proposed design. The Apollo Guidance Computer was the technology's first major application and became the first computer built from Integrated Circuits.
But the technology was too immature. They just didn't have production processes that could produce ICs at any level of reliability. It took nearly 5 years of collaboration between NASA, MIT, Fairchild Semiconductors, Texas Instruments, and others to create scalable and reliable processes to bring the Integrated Circuit concept to the mass production.
During this time, the Apollo Program consumed nearly 60% of all production capacity in the world. Without this effort, the advent of the personal computer would likely have been pushed back by a decade or more, due to low general interest in the risky new technology.
https://twitter.com/_areoform/status/1319694832311304192
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Testing this assumption.
There is an easy test for this assumption. Apple has $192.8 billion in cash on hand. What exactly is it doing with this money? Is it spending it on fundamental research in optics, laser communication, optical computing, and other stuff? No, it's not. Apple invests about $16bn a year on "R&D" which includes new product development and seeking marginal gains for production processes. Even here they do so with the help of Government funding. Yes, Apple applies for Government grants and R&D tax incentives.
What about Google? They had Google X, but it was short-lived, and they've broken up their most ambitious projects (which now seem to be withering). These projects will be dead far short of the multi-decade timeline needed to bring things to fruition. And they have $120 billion in cash lying around.
Google's pattern seems to be, they make a flashy announcement, and then they bail from putting long-term, significant capital where their mouth is. Take Calico for example, what's going on there? It seems to have a foot in the grave, and it's less than a decade old.
This isn't Google's fault, it's what investors want. They just aren't patient enough for Google to deploy the unproductive capital they already have into long-term research;
https://realmoney.thestreet.com/investing/technology/alphabe...
https://www.engadget.com/2020-02-20-alphabet-makani-chronicl...
https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/is-alphabet-thinking-of-its-...
They don't see it as an investment into the future. They see it as a "money losing segment".
There will never be groundbreaking photonics Google research or a Google particle accelerator, simply because the "incentive structure" won't allow it.
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This fact translates geographies.
Furthermore, do people in low-tax jurisdictions and countries do more groundbreaking R&D? Places like Singapore and Hong Kong? As far as I can tell, no, they don't. Even there, what little research that gets done is on the taxpayer's dime.
This pattern has repeated itself across history & geography. There must be a reason for it. Saying that it's because Government takes away money and creates pressure on corporations + individuals which forfeits such private efforts denies the reality;
With few exceptions, almost every single breakthrough from the discovery of the Americas to the first computers has occurred on the taxpayer's dime. Or, more accurately, it has been performed by organizations who can afford to have some goals on decades-to-centuries long time horizons.
It is important to realize this dichotomy to understand why public funding matters, and why even today, for the pharma industry, the vast majority of targets and agents being tested have been/were funded/identified with public money.
Most of Apple’s “cash” is invested in corporate bonds, which allow other companies to access capital in order to expand their operations and grow their productivity, and most of the rest is in government bonds, which allow the government to make up for the shortfall of the “public money” you talk about. Sure, Apple might “only” spend $16B on R&D, but rest assured, they aren’t just sitting on their cash pile like Scrooge McDuck, instead it is efficiently used by many different actors.
If the logic of the comment I was replying to held, then Apple would be investing a commiserate amount into fundamental research. They're not. They'd rather seek a return (however, meagre) by buying bonds than fund research.
And hey Google made money due to Internet being there. Who created the internet? Darpa and universities.
Boom. We have someone that knows what they are saying. Yes. It is a tax covered shell. Wonder why your $23.29 check from google for 1.2 million impressions is coming from Ireland?
How much tax revenue has Google created? How many intelligent people have immigrated to the US because of google?
Governments have already have already found outsourcing their manufacturing to contractors had superior results to doing so in house. I think nuclear weapons are about the only thing which isn't privatized.
The government already has an effective equity share anyway over everybody - it is called taxes. Money being mobile has other economic benefits but comes at the cost of allowing more fringe case shenanigans.
Not exactly. Anything created by the government and it's employees is automatically public domain (so, no copyright), but the government can and does get copyrights assigned to it[0] all the time for things created by vendors and contractors (this is negotiated in advance).
So, the government can own copyrights, if it acquires them.
[0] sometimes the US government just gets a perpetual, worldwide, yadda, yadda license instead. Typically not sublicensable, though. This can be a really sweet deal for the vendor, and really annoying for the public, particularly when it comes to data sets created with public funds.
Why would they need to do something like outsource to JPL to get patent? Pretty sure I’ve seen patents by scientists on behalf of the airport?
Here is the conversation he and Jared Cohen had with Julian Assange: https://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt
Schmidt has been so bold as to brag about his billion dollar efforts to get Obama and Hilary into the White House by writing new algorithms that direct users to rigged sites and ads that support his candidates.
Zuckerberg has tried to hide his crimes by lying about Russian ads and hiding his Template to Win, but the head of the Global Engagement Centre has told the press that he used Facebook to target and attack US citizens throughout the election.
Zuckerberg hasn’t really answered why Yuri Milner and other Russians own large amounts of Facebook shares. Mark also hasn’t answered why his best friend and investor ($200million), the Russian Yuri Milner now lives in Silicon Valley and buys political and corporate support like it’s popcorn.
I think that's emblematic of Google's regard to reinvestment. Even the products which made them so powerful in the first place they regularly abandon.
But one could argue that would be even more reason for him to step in and try and make it better.
EDIT: The 90/180 rule is for the Schengen area, not the whole EU, and, yes, that includes Switzerland, which is not in the EU. Not sure what the rules are for the rest of the EU, but he probably cares about Schengen anyway.
These rules are littered with loopholes. If you work media, you (and your staff and family and apparently girlfriend) get a free pass in Portugal and Italy.
I just got back from a wedding in Germany—just had to quarantine in London for two weeks first.
edit: I guess it must be since I got downvoted. Wish they would explain their reasoning
But on aggregate, Europe and the US have both massively bungled their Covid responses.
Traveling FROM the US is the problem, regardless of where your passport is from. Getting a passport (or even a residence card) from an EU country would only allow you to get back to THAT country, it doesn’t just suddenly open up the world to you.
Slovakia had a similar traffic stop. People had to cross the border crossings on foot - and international trade was exempt from this.
Also, when they crossed, they were loaded on buses and sent to mandatory 14 day quarantine to state facilities.
AFAIK only Belarus forbids repatriation, and it has more to do with the demonstrations against the regime than COVID.
Estonia forbids travel from any country with an infection rate higher than x/100k (x keeps changing...)
During the first pandemic lockdown the Baltics were open at first, then Finland shut their borders, then they all shut their borders.
Poland agreed to let people traverse the country... then decided not to. Estonia had to send a ship to rescue citizens from the Polish border.
For a while a few months ago you couldn’t come to Estonia from the UK, but if you flew into Helsinki and then flew to Estonia it was fine.
Know your facts.
It's actually pretty funny that you would refer to that convoluted situation where one would have to fly first to Helsinki then to Estonia, considering both Finland and Estonia are in Schengen so no document would be required of an EU citizen to adapt their travel plans at the last minute.
Which is why he would be traveling from Cyprus
I'm working on doing the same, not because I care about taxes (which as others have pointed out doesn't really apply here) but because citizenship is a single point of failure.
Only reason my wives family got St. Kitts passports was because it was easier and quicker than Cyprus at the time, but they did eventually get their Cyprus passports too.
Not for tax purposes, they're tax resident in Dubai.
Fixed that for you.
(sorry, couldn't resist)
Apart from that quite a lot of other EU members offer residency for investors, not ideal either but better than outright sales of passports.
If you aren't rich the rules for citizenship vary quite a bit between member states but they all require some years of residency and tax payments to qualify for citizenship.
Here in Sweden I'm going through the process and it's one of the most straightforward citizenship processes: live here for 5 years legally on a visa, pay your taxes and you qualify.
Here are the first two links on DDG:
https://www.second-citizenship.org/permanent-residence/portu...
https://www.escapeartist.com/blog/get-residency-second-passp...
Canadian Golden Visa Program AKA Quebec Immigrant Investment Program: https://citizenshipshop.com/product/canada-golden-visa/ AKA
USA EB-5 Golden Visa: https://citizenshipshop.com/product/usa-golden-visa/
[1] https://www.eb5daily.com/2020/02/latest-statistics-eb-5-immi...
(thanks for the link , interesting that a residence visa in canada costs only 250K)
Getting a EU passport makes moving in the EU a lot easier.
1) https://play.acast.com/s/masters-of-scale-with-reid-hoffman/...
If a country sells its citizenships, that country alone benefits financially from that transaction, but the potential obligations are borne by the entire EU community.
In my opinion, there is nothing inherently wrong about a country selling its citizenship, but in the EU framework it seems to go against the good faith principles that the EU is built on.
What eg. a German (very!) rich person would do is get a second passport in Cyprus and then open a Swiss bank account. To the Swiss bank, they'd say that they only have that one passport from Cyprus. Therefore, the Swiss bank does not report to the German state that the German individual has a bank account. This is how that person avoids German tax.
0. https://www.kuechenstud.io/medienradio/podcast/di090-geldwae...
also how does having a large bank account in swiss affects her taxes in germany?
Guess it's FOMO-driven rather than election driven then.
Edit: Did the obvious, googled - for "eric schmidt advise us military on tech". First 3 hits indicate I was right. Hit 1:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/02/technology/eric-schmidt-p...
Other 2 hits are Business Insider and The Verge.
"Cyprus is no longer a tax haven for Russia’s oligarchs"
https://infobrics.org/post/31529/
"The reason these politically connected people look towards Cyprus, and by extension, the EU, is because they fear their possessions might be at risk in their home country, Nigel Gould-Davies, a Russia expert at the United Kingdom’s International Institute for Strategic Affairs, told Al Jazeera."
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/8/25/how-rich-russians-t...
Iirc, Schmidt has recently picked up some consulting for the us government?
I wonder if he just had some other "inside intelligence" from that and is setting up something like a plan b.
For anyone wanting to know how much it could cost.
Does anyone know of any other possible tax advantage a rich American might get from Cypriot citizenship?
He s probably not doing it for taxes, but for a convenient EU passport and a humble abode in the mediterranean
I mean; here we have a guy that has taken all the advantage of all the benefits a developed industrial country has to offer and then in turn does everything in his power to give back as little as possible.
Hell yeah I'm going to blame him. It's not moral behavior. I don't care whether it is legal or not, he's behaving like a parasite and should be judged according to his behavior.
It seems more like you regret the laws in the US during the decades he was here, and you are hoping future changes in the law will retroactively address your concerns. But I see no moral basis for that stance.
If we want to change the law, we should be forced to consider the effects on the future, and whether those laws will negatively impact the wealth created in the future. If we start going back and seizing wealth from the past, that will give us a false sense that the laws are working, until the old money runs out and we look around and don't see anyone creating new wealth.
> If we want to change the law, we should be forced to consider the effects on the future
Of course. This is why it's taken so long to come up with laws that prevent the kind of exploitation that creates a couple dozen billionaires while stagnating the majority of America's incomes. It's morality that drives the lawmaking -- since everyone has different morals and we all live under the same laws -- and at least if everyone hates the guy for this then hopefully we see some laws that prevent more behavior like this in the future.
Like Paul Ryan who basically made it where he did thanks to US social services but did everything he could while in power to decimate those very services he himself relied upon now that he no longer needed them.
As much as I enjoy watching people dissemble while describing their true actions, there’s not really anyone naive enough to believe Schmidt didn’t actively create the rules google currently operates under, is there?
Maybe he really was just a bystander in his company as it poured millions of dollars into lobbying the American government and he was powerless to stop them.
Or maybe he though the lobbying did nothing and he thought wasting money was a good thing.
Or he’s just lying and hopes people don’t acknowledge that there were maybe half a dozen people who had more power to shape the laws and regulations he operated under. But trying to just pass himself off as an uninvolved observer just rings thoroughly disingenuous.
The solution for the future is to try to harder to make good laws in the present rather than somehow retroactively change the past.
Getting a second citizenship?
We choose to live & work here because SV is the Mecca of software development, but that could very easily change within our lifetimes, so tying ourselves down with this ridiculous obligation for life doesn't make any sense in the long term.
Not quite: I believe Myanmar (and perhaps Eritrea) have similar requirements.
I'm sure Americans feel right at home in that company....
The US has the most draconian global tax system of any country in the world, and has the unique position of being able to actually enforce it due to the fact the USD is the reserve currency of the world and every country needs to stay on the good side of the US Treasury to transact in the global economy.
In fact, the laws are so strict, they make living abroad as an honest middle-class expat a total nightmare. I have friends who cannot find a single bank in their country that will work with them because of the reporting requirements of working with US citizens. They cannot save in foreign banks and they cannot invest either due to the US penalizing foreign Mutual fund/ETF purchases by private citizens.
I mean, first, citizenship is made up. Many people have dual citizenship, and many countries will give you citizenship for ancestorship. And, of course, most countries offer citizenship to newborns who aren't contributing much and don't currently care about the country they're living in (and some countries, like the US, do so for babies born in the US to people who aren't citizens).
Don't get me wrong: I don't like the idea of buying a citizenship at all. But this won't let him escape taxes, if you think that was his intention.
But I’m sorry. Me and many others see the nation state as a service provider. An institution that enforces the rule of law, furnishes protection from invaders and criminals, and provides large-scale public goods in exchange for some slice of tax revenue and a code of conduct.
But if I’m unhappy with a service provider, then I should be free to change vendors to whomever meets my need. No different than the freedom to pay for a new phone plan or new gym membership.
You complain that ordinary people don’t have the same consumer choice as the ultra-wealthy. If so, the focus should be on how to make the global market for nation-states more competitive for a wider range of consumers. I agree that many are locked into a shitty service provider. But if anything, the tiny slice of people who can exercise a choice almost certainly makes this market more, not less, competitive.
Says who? You?
The beauty of people is we have different opinions. If Cyprus wants to sell their citizenship for a dollar each, that's their right.
> People like Schmidt purchase themselves a...
Yes, that's one of the motivating factors for being rich, is being able to purchase things afterwards.
There's a child dying somewhere on this planet right now and here you are moralizing on HackerNews - people like you purchase themselves an internet connection and talk about blah blah, while a child is dying.
Citizenship is just a legal relation between a person and a country. If both sides want that relationship, then it is perfectly moral to start such relationship.
But, by buying the citizenship, they are not just showing in some vague indirect way that they "want to" contribute to the country, they are actually, directly, palpably contributing to the country.
> People like Schmidt purchase themselves a tax excemption or freedom of movement in a world where ordinary people right now lose their jobs and are locked into their country.
I'm confused, is your complaint that Schmidt hasn't done enough to "earn" citizenship, or that people that don't have less capacity to contribute should also enjoy what Schmidt does.
>People like Schmidt purchase themselves [...] freedom of movement
This is not immoral.
>where ordinary people [...] are locked into their country
This is
Its not like he just inherited his wealth and is now skipping out ASAP.
On top of the obvious tax benefits in Cyprus, the country is also member state of the EU since 2004.
That means 'Citizenship of the European Union', that includes the ability to travel to anywhere in the EU (visa free), the Ability to reside anywhere in the EU, hell Schmidt could even run for public office in any EU local governments municipal elections if he so wishes.
There are no tax benefits for US citizens in Cyprus. Giving up your US citizenship involves a significant exit tax.
- Dividend gains exemption
- Capital gains exemption
- Pension income capped at 5%
- Abolished inheritance tax
- All of the above plus bonus EU freedom of movement/residence
The guys fortune is parked on GOOG stock how can you say he has nothing to gain? There is a reason russian oligarchs are parking their money in that tiny island.
Here's an idea for a short story: Schmidt does indeed wish so; he becomes a politician in the EU and places himself in a position that allows him to make the EU a much more friendly place for the adtech industry and surveillance capitalism.
People go to Cyprus specifically because they want a Schengen passport.
https://www.globalcitizensolutions.com/cyprus-tax-for-non-re...
Not totally unreasonable for a global CEO.
a. He has also given a lot more back to the said country. than he has taken from it, IMO. Imagine what life would be like without Google.
b. Google is a global company, not just a US company
c. I don't believe in the notion of nations or citizenship and don't blame him if he doesn't either and is switching citizenships just for convenience/logistics.
Interesting point of view!
In any case, with Trump gone nobody will be around to fight Google if that's your desire.
There was a time when I would have agreed with this claim, but I'm not so sure these days.
So many of his own peccadilloes are out there too, despite his personal attempts to delete them from Google.
However it should be obvious that every potential acquirer of Android was aware of enabling Andy Rubin to enter “ownership” relationships with his subordinates, at a time it was obvious to every huge tech CEO they had to develop an iPhone competitor.
It remains to be explained why Google alone decided to enable him, and what role Eric Schmidt played in that. Like quite concretely, when he looks at the private investigator’s report about Andy Rubin, and everyone else’s people doing the same thing at all the other companies saying “don’t do this deal,” despite the money on the line, why did he say yes?
I would add that of course all the major tech companies were aware of the iPhone before it was released, in addition to being aware of Andy Rubin’s ownership relationships of subordinates, and also Eric Schmidt sat on Apple’s board and was aware, and it was of course instrumental to Android’s acquisition.
For example, if mass civil unrest breaks out in the US as a result of the recent election, Eric Schmidt can flee to his estate in Cyprus and ignore the fact that he owned a social network (Youtube) that knowingly hosted radical content and disinformation which would have (in part) caused the civil unrest he’s fleeing from.
Whether or not that’s his intention, it doesn’t matter. True or not, what people are seeing is billionaires knowingly destabilizing the country in order to make a lot of money, then using that money to protect themselves against the country they just damaged.
That very thing happened earlier this year at the start of the pandemic, SV billionaires fled the country to go to a private island in New Zealand, while their employees suffered and died back here in the US: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/coronaviru...
I wouldn't blame Schmidt much for YouTube's disinformation problem. I'd blame the people directly running YouTube (especially people running it recently / now).
As an anarchist - most people love the state and love giving it power, rich people just use the power that the masses so eagerly give away.
If you want to know where the power of the SV billionaires comes from, just look in the mirror. Nothing, other than our compliance, makes them that powerful and wealthy.
Conspiracy is maybe the wrong word, but OP seems to genuinely believe that Schmidt caused the recent civil unrest through his Youtube ownership.
In the upcoming world war, NZ will just be forgotten. It's even missing from many maps ;)
Expatriating your massive wealth to avoid paying taxes makes it feel like they’re performing a smash and grab job on the whole country. Doubly so because the people doing this would still be fantastically wealthy if they stayed and paid their taxes; they’re just doing it to be even richer still.
Plus he probably has a private jet
Yes, we're both eating a liver but we're not the same kind of person.
Oligarchs travel, just like you and me. That's not what makes them oligarchs.
And where exactly do they travel that is not accessible to you and me?
I'm pretty sure that when governments ban air travel, they also ban private jet travel.
countries like Malta and Cyprus have plenty schemes under which they attract HNWI's like him. I'm surprised about Cyprus considering Schmidt is from the US which is an odd choice since it's usually Russians and Russian companies that launder their money through Cyprus.
Malta is much more popular among expat Brits and native English speakers and also (still) has a cleaner reputation compared to Cyprus.
Both jurisdictions fill a void that opened when Switzerland agreed to hand over data on US citizens to the USA. Technically Cyprus/Malta too shares data but while the Swiss banking is a lot cleaner now than it was 20 years ago and certainly lot of things are now impossible that places like Nevada, New Mexico etc still allow.
Both Cyprus/Malta have no shortage of crooks dressed as lawyers, accountants, notaries and bankers that will help him bypass the tax-men if he wants to but I strongly doubt that is the reason simply because he has better chances doing that at home. The US is now the biggest tax-haven in the world. It sounds more personal than this.
Maybe he is planning to do business with wealthy Russians (unlikely) maybe he watched Mama-Mia and is now obsessed with the idea of falling in love on a Greek island, or maybe he wants to live in a city that is politically divided as much as his home planet. (Nicosia) /s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treasure_Islands:_Tax_Havens_a...
Not that I think there's anything wrong with this, probably half of my friends have these passports. Until recently this was the easiest way for Russians to move to the EU.
well not exactly
There's nothing that Cyprus offers that's not done better somewhere else in Europe if you have the money to spend.
Sure, there are worse places out there. But to the Eric Schmidts of the world it firmly falls in the shithole category.
If they want to leave the nation that built them, it’s America’s wealth; fat tax inbound.
These are normal mortal men.
Believing they can live some decoupled free agent life on humanities tab for their accomplishments which are banal business at the core of it, not novel science, is no different from creating a monarchy and its regents, etc
They are normal men. Not deities. This is the first era where their mess being left behind isn’t just some stone fortresses and a handful of factories. This has been accomplished at great environmental cost.
They’re just people.
And for all the folks going on about taxes.
1) Rich people can already avoid taxes by investing overseas and not generating realized gains so funds stay untaxed overseas. I don't think being a citizen of EU would change that much.
2) US citizens are taxed regardless of second citizenships as US citizens.
"If you are a U.S. citizen or resident alien, the rules for filing income, estate, and gift tax returns and paying estimated tax are generally the same whether you are in the United States or abroad. Your worldwide income is subject to U.S. income tax, regardless of where you reside."
https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/us-c...
leaves
[Surprised Pikachu Face]
Yep, me too. If there is any truth to some of the gossip out there about his personal life, that would explain both the source and motivation for blowing this up for him.
Edit: Oh, I see, you’re responding to GP about tax advantages. Yes, as a US citizen he will still owe US tax on worldwide income. Doesn’t mean there aren’t a bunch of loopholes around unrealized gains though.
The EU wanted to make a big deal out of selling citizenship. Like how DARE Cyprus sell citizenship that comes with EU membership! No, rich people should sign up for an """investment""" VISA from the Netherlands instead! That's how they should be let in. The Netherlands is an honorable upstanding country that most definitely would NEVER allow questionable people to get into the EU, definitely no mafia clans or terrorists, not like that place is a hub for narcotics and weapons trafficking. But Cyprus, bunch of brown quasi-orientals selling EU membership! How DARE they!
I know under the Obama administration the federal government had turned a blind eye to people not renouncing a prior citizenship when becoming a naturalized US citizen, but I'm curious about the reverse.
They were not too kind to Eduardo Saverin. (The Facebook cofounder who had to fight zuckerberg over diluted shares, when the case was resolved in his favor he took the money and ran to Singapore and renounced his US citizenship).
From .gov site: "U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another. A U.S. citizen may naturalize in a foreign state without any risk to his or her U.S. citizenship. However, persons who acquire a foreign nationality after age 18 by applying for it may relinquish their U.S. nationality if they wish to do so. In order to relinquish U.S. nationality by virtue of naturalization as a citizen of a foreign state, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign nationality voluntarily and with the intention to relinquish U.S. nationality. Intent may be shown by the person’s statements and conduct."
Link to source:https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/legal/travel-lega....
"...it’s important to recognize that the USA follows a ‘master nationality’ rule. What this means is, it recognizes only the US nationality of an individual, regardless of whether that individual holds any other citizenship."
So it's not that it doesn't allow it so much as it just pretends that your additional citizenship(s) don't exist. The USG will come after you for entering/leaving the US using a non-US passport though.
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States..."
It's hard for federal law to get around that. I guess common law would allow someone to opt out...