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Conferences

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LLMA's event: How the Rich Hide Their Money
Myron Taylor Hall, 390
Cornell Law School, Myron Taylor Hall, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA
The LLM Association in collaboration with the Tax Association will be hosting a talk about taxation and how the rich hide their wealth. Professor Adib Y. Tohme, an economist, university professor, and taxation lawyer will be giving the talk, discussing his experience and sharing strategies and structures adopted by the rich. Professor Robert A. Green will be discussing the US legislation concerning the issue. 

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25 years after I graduated from Harvard and worked in the US as a visiting scholar and a corporate lawyer, I am very proud, grateful and happy to be back here, at Cornell University, in the cold weather of Ithaca, to talk with you about taxation. Thank you Fouad Debs for making this happen and thank you professor Green for participating in this talk.

How the rich and powerful hide their money? Let me tell you at the outset, there is no more place to hide. nowhere to hide… This might be the title of a love song… But ax is never romantic… However it is becoming more interesting, more challenging and it resumes and encompasses the debates about our society, about the system, about our relationship with the state, about the economic model, about the planet and about the future of democracy…
I came from Paris, the city of light … But also the city of "Gilets Jaunes", the yellow vests… where wealth inequality, shrinking buying power for the mass, and a biased tax burden are setting the ground for a renewed class conflict… Some express their discontent by going to the streets and closing the roundabouts while others by going simply away, far away in a tax heaven, close to their fortunes... And the money that is going away is instantaneous coming back in the form of debts, speculative investment in assets and in financing of all sorts of activities, giving rise to more ineqality, more anger, more violence and an increasing gap between the happy few and the others...
I will postpone this passionate debate about the philosophy of tax for another time and focus on practical international tax aspects… I will start by telling you a story… This is the story of some successful guys who have launched a company in a garage somewhere in New York, developed their products somewhere in Silicon Valley, through R&D US financing aid, and successfully expanded worldwide…

 

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It is not only about tax, it is how to rebuild our societies that are at the edge of collapse, it is about living together, about the future of democracy about our vision of human and the survival of our planet. Thinking about tax is think about all of these issues. Unfortunately, many of us are hiding in a conscious ignorance and refusing to put themselves in the shoes of others...

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