*WITH THE IMPORTANT CAVEAT THAT THE OFFICIAL LINE RIGHT NOW IS THAT HER SHELL CORPORATION WAS CREATED SO SHE COULD PURCHASE PROPERTY PRIVATELY AND WITHOUT FANFARE, WHICH IS CERTAINLY POSSIBLE, I DON’T MEAN TO IMPLY SHE IS 100% A TAX DODGER BUT IT CERTAINLY RAISES SOME QUESTION, OKAY, BACK TO THE FAN FICTION NOW, AGAIN BEARING IN MIND THAT THIS IS JUST FOR THE SHEER DELIGHT OF PICTURING A LIBERTARIAN HERMIONE IN A SMOKY ROOM CREATING SHELL CORPORATIONS AND BUILDING TAX SHELTERS, ALSO HERE IS A QUICK PRIMER ON THE PANAMA PAPERS IF YOU’RE UNFAMILIAR OR READ A PRIMER A FEW WEEKS AGO AND THEN FORGOT
“Hermione,” Ron said quietly, “what’s a tax shelter?”
Ash fell from her cigarette. “Well,” she said. “Someone’s been learning his letters.”
The memory grew brighter. “Professor Slughorn,” Hermione asked brightly, “What if someone wanted to split his wealth into multiple offshore accounts? Say…seven?
“Good heavens, seven?”
“Well, isn’t seven considered a magically significant number?”
“Merline’s beard, girl! Isn’t it bad enough to consider doing it once? To dodge their tax bill seven times…This is all hypothetical, isn’t it, Hermione? All academic?”
“Of course, sir,” Hermione said, smiling. “It’ll be our little secret.”
“Mustn’t complain, though,” Harry said after an odd silence. “That’s what our taxes are for, after all.”
“We don’t pay taxes,” Hermione said. “Taxes are for Muggles.” She extinguished her cigarette in the last slice of cake.
“But you’re –” Harry started.
“I used to be a lot of things,” Hermione said decisively. “I have money now instead.”
Harry stopped at every bar on the way home, until he could no longer remember the look that had entered her eyes as she said it.
Inside Hermione’s library was a book Ron knew without being asked he was never to be allowed to read. It was an old edition of Treasure Island. It was not by Robert Louis Stevenson.
HARRY: But, Hermione, I thought we weren’t allowed to create shell corporations on Hogwarts’ grounds.
HERMIONE: Well, being me…has its privileges.
“There’s going to be a war,” Harry said, looking into his glass.
“There already is a war,” Hermione said, refilling hers. “A class war. And they’re winning.”
[With grateful thanks to Tom Sveb for an A+ joke assist]
Emma…my dear sweet Emma….was named in the Panama Papers?
I NEEDED SOMETHING UPLIFTING THIS MORNING AND THIS NEWS WAS NOT THAT THING.
She also advertises skin bleach. Sorry!
The funny thing is that Ta-Nehisi Coates admitted just a day or two ago to setting up an LLC to buy his apartment in Brooklyn in order to avoid publicity. It also sadly failed to provide anonymity, so he has to move back out of Brooklyn since people were bothering him about it.
But really, now I’m picturing a Watson and Coates corporate espionage thriller, where the two of them have to go deep undercover into the shell corporation game in order to bring down the system from within. And while doing so, they have deep, trenchant discussions about the destruction of the patriarchy and racial oppression and the difficulties of fighting both battles at the same time. I WOULD WATCH THIS MOVIE.
but he made an LLC, not a SECRET OFFSHORE HOLDING ACCOUNT THAT’S TAX-FREE THOUGH????
I heard that this is something a lot of celebrities do. It adds extra layers of secrecy. Some may be avoiding taxes, but I got the feeling that it’s for privacy. Like maybe if Coates had done this, his cover wouldn’t have been blown? IDK, all I know is that I have actually thought about doing this if I buy a house because I’m super non-famous yet SUPER private. I would pay *more* in taxes if it meant people can’t find me.
“I heard that this is something a lot of celebrities do. It adds extra layers of secrecy.”
Yeah, I didn’t want to derail yesterday, but, iike, EVERYONE who buys property in Manhattan, at least, these days uses an LLC. People shouldn’t post TNC’s home address because he’s a black writer on politics with a family and thus has genuine reason to worry about his security, but the mere fact that he used an LLC wasn’t some extra gesture swearing everyone to secrecy. In fact, the state is thinking hard about how to cut down on the use of LLCs in real estate transactions, because it’s believed that they are used to hide money laundering or store the proceeds of foreign plundering.
we bought an apartment several years ago and really wished afterwards that we had set up an LLC because alllll of the information – name, address, amount listed, amount paid, etc – is easily available online and it was horrifying to discover that nothing can be done about it. it’s just… privacy doesn’t exist in real estate unless you set up an LLC and even then it’s hard. and we’re not famous.
Oof. I just found out that if one googles my name, one will find my LinkedIn and then ancient records for the last 3 cars I have bought (and then links to a bunch of people who have somewhat similar names who aren’t me). That bothered me enough, but the thought that personal details from real estate transactions are also accessible online. . . is very disturbing.
Yeah, I googled my name once with my zip code and found a photo of my apartment building.
A lot of sites that list that information have a form you can fill out to remove it from their listings for free, though. And the solution to this is to make different laws about listing someone’s address online, not to allow wealthy people to set up shell corporations while those who aren’t wealthy can’t afford privacy.
Wow, that seems… why would that information be online?
well, sites like StreetEasy etc like to keep track of “real estate trends” and technically those were all public records filed with the department of buildings – it’s just that historically you’d have to go and dig through the records and request copies for a certain address. so if you were buying a home and you were TNC/etc, if someone said “oh I think TNC bought a home at 123 A street” a journalist could, in theory, go and get those records and find out for sure – but it’s just such an UGH. when we were researching during the process of buying, we ended up finding out tooooooo much about all of our neighbors and while it was sort-of-not-really useful, mostly it just made me feel kind of like a voyeur. and then skeeved out.
as far as I’m concerned, emma watson can squirrel allll the money away. I doubt that she’s trying to avoid paying taxes and think it’s much more likely that she’s just a figure who doesn’t want her business broadcast to the universe.
Huh, I see. Thanks for explaining, I don’t live in the US so this is all news to me.
Yep! All this. All this is why I wouldn’t want to buy a house in my name.
luckily, it doesn’t seem to have had any significant repercussions for us, but I would 1000% recommend an LLC to anyone anywhere ever!
There’s also the liability side of it (as in Limited *Liability* Company), in our sue happy world it means that if someone sues your LLC, they don’t get your personal assets, just anything owned by the LLC.
I know its very common practice in the horse world, especially in the US East Coast sect where people own $$$$ horses and property. If your horse hurts someone (loaning of horses and having trainers ride horses is very common), or someone gets hurt on your property (Farms are freakishly dangerous places, and people are stupid.) its the LLC that owns everything and is liable, not your personal assets or wealth (which in this crowd can be substantial.)
Emma Watson having an LLC or shell corporations doesn’t really bother me, I completely believe it was so she could invest in property, that’s standard practice for the very wealthy and she comes from a wealthy family anyway so would be getting a lot of advice. TBH unless there’s proof of tax dodging, most of the people named in the Panama Papers were probably just trying to be financially responsible and were following the advice of their financial advisers. I doubt the majority of them have ever even heard the name Mossack Fonseca (however you spell it), they just hired people who did it all for them, possibly not in the most upstanding way. (Jimmy Carr got stung badly for this a few years ago, he just followed the advice of his accountants and unfortunately took some bad advice, its still his own fault, but there’s an industry behind that that is pushing/advising people to do these things.)
I totally agree. There’s no reason not to try to protect your assets and your privacy, and if setting up shell companies does a better job of that, I’m all for it, so long as you aren’t dodging taxes.
And I totttaaallly believe that people can innocently follow bad advice and get nailed for not paying taxes. I believe it because I used to work for a company that gave tax avoidance/reduction advice to wealthy clients, and it was supposed to be all legal, but then clients started getting in trouble and it turns out it wasn’t legal. Those of us who weren’t doing the work of financial advising just thought the owner was a jerk, but it turned out he was also extremely dodgy.
Yes, there is nothing wrong with having an LLC, in fact, everyone probably should have one. Having an LLC has nothing to do with tax dodging!
Here’s the website one would use to get information on a company in the UK: https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-compan… – publicly available, searchable from any browser.
In New York state one would use the the department of state, division of corporations website to search for information on an LLC. (Which is why trusts are a better instrument for privacy protection)
WOULD WATCH AS WELL.
I’m ensaddened that Emma Watson was named if she was dodging taxes, but I’ve gotta admit, I kinda want to read the version of the Hermione Granger books featuring Harry Potter that we see snippets of above.
I JUST now reading this found out she was named in the Papers and I my heart is breaking a little.
J.K. Rowling must have been so disappointed in her.
These are easily some of the best jokes I’ve read in months.
(what makes this even better is he was talking to Emma Watson)
:O
once again your gif game is the ACTUAL EMBODIMENT OF PERFECTION
WHOA.
Here’s a link to the interview/conversation.
CACKLING
Oh totally. She could definitely be avoiding taxes which is totally a possibility! And she’s ultra-rich so it wouldn’t even surprise me that much! Just that her cover story is at least KINDA believable in light of all the stalking she’s had to deal with.
I just want her to be one of the good ones 🙁
“I just want her to be one of the good ones :(”
So Say We All.
Death and taxes, Hermione, death and taxes… Don’t you remember how well avoiding death went over for Voldemort?
That’s what made the horcrux/tax shelter thing so PERFECT.
“We could be killed,” said Hermione, “or worse, exposed to the public as having dodged taxes for no justifiable reason and subsequently ruined in the eyes of public opinion!”
“That one’s a piece of work,” said Ron.
I can’t believe how easy it is to picture Hermione smoking a cigarette. She would never!….but IF she did, she would make it look good.
By extinguishing it in food.
THE LAST piece of decadent food, thus ruining it for everyone.
Kind of like tax dodging.
If Hermione isn’t hungry, no one is hungry.
I’m going back to bed, since I have already read the best line I’m going to read all week.
“I used to be a lot of things … I have money now instead.”
Hilarious. That said, I have heard (pre-Panama Papers) that celebs almost all have shell accounts so they can buy property without being stalked, so I’m willing to give Emma the benefit of the doubt.
Can you create a shell account in the country where you would normally pay taxes? Is that a thing?
This semester my classes have been focusing on finance and the economy, and I’ve been supplementing them with Planet Money podcasts, so I actually understood a news event for the first time in my life and this is the FUNNIEST THING I’ve read in 2016.
I’m trying to imagine how this intertwines with Ronbledore. Does Hermione find out his secret and use him to play the stock market?
She totally used the Time Turner to make a killing on short-term bets–horse races and the like. Not for long, though–just to scrape together some starting-out money for serious financial wizardry.
“You’re saying it wrong,” Harry heard Hermione snap. “It’s Mossack FonsAYca, not Mossack FonsecAH.”
All of the above jokes (in the post and the comments) were fantastic, but this one actually made me snort aloud.
That was awesome. Especially funny after hearing this firm mentioned in a way too long presentation on cyber insurance this morning.
1. Looks like the course after Arithmancy is Voodoo Economics.
2. You’d be against big government too if your experience with it was a bunch of pinstriped buffoons who spent all their time trying to stop a bunch of teenagers from defeating Wizard Hitler.
3. Hermione Granger and the Chamber of Commerce.
4. I hope her shell company was named Time-Turner-Warner.
5. She’s just been really disillusioned since the Occupy Diagon Alley movement fell apart.
You’d be against big government too if your experience with it was a bunch of pinstriped buffoons who spent all their time trying to stop a bunch of teenagers from defeating Wizard Hitler.
This. I’m trying to remember the good people in the wizard government, and it’s basically Arthur Weasley, Kingsley Shacklebolt, Tonks, and Neville’s parents before they lost their mind?
Amelia Bones, too.
And even Arthur’s pretty corrupt (in terms of his job – writing his own loopholes into the law, etc.; obviously his politics are preferable to rest of the MoM).
Merline’s beard
I. Am. DEAD.
Needs more trains. 9/10.
I can’t remember the person’s name and I’m too lazy to Google, but some rich Canadian woman was caught up in this and when asked by the Toronto Star to explain herself, her answer was pretty much “but darling, I’m so very rich. I hire people to worry about my money. Why would I know the details about where they’re putting it? I just get the high level overview.”
honestly this is plausible to me. At a certain level of rich, you hire people to manage your rich, and if you’re not VERY SPECIFIC that you want to PAY TAXES on it and INVEST IN ONLY MORALLY DEFENSIBLE THINGS, they’re gonna do all the same shit everyone else’s rich managers do.
Can verify. (Not me personally, a great uncle who was an early Silicon Valley innovator and has a “cottage” on Lake Tahoe large enough to host cocktail parties for 200.)
Yeah, when my extremely wealthy grandparents died it took the executor a couple years to find all their money, and at one point all the $$$ attorneys were like “you know, we give up. If we can’t find it the government probably won’t be able to either.”
Like, an entire townhouse in DC just went missing. I have theories that it was signed over to one of my grandfather’s long term mistresses ages ago, but how do you misplace a Georgetown townhouse?
how do you misplace a Georgetown townhouse?
Very carefully, and with many layers of paperwork.
Emma Watson IS Hermione Roark IN:
FOUNTAINHEAD 2000
I’m sorry George, I’m too witches to pay tax.
Oh many many many thumbs up.
Why can I only like this once, I’d like to know.
And now I am woderings things like, “would casting Emma Watson as Dagny Taggart make a film version of Atlas Shrugged tolerable?” And, “would casting Emma Watson as John Gault make a film version of Atlas Shrugged tolerable?”
The latter might be the only casting that would get me to watch that movie.
Still no.
I wanted this to be her being cast as Daenerys Targaryen, and now I am wondering if GRRM was lifting things from Ayn Rand.
I feeling like there now needs to be Hermione Granger/Ayn Rand slash fic
The sound you’re hearing is hell opening up under that comment D:
Mallory, you’re the smartest witch of your age.
If nothing dodgy comes up I’m actually willing to buy her official line (finding property without everyone jumping all over you is a legitimate concern celebs are often trying to find shields against) but I’m equally willing to suspend that good will for the purpose of cackling at this for the minute.
Yeah, I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, particularly because she’s a woman advocating globally for women’s rights, so in addition to being at huge risk for the “regular” stalking that all female celebrities have to endure (and this includes the risk of actual physical harm) she’s also at risk from all the disgusting MRA-types. I’d be super-protective of my privacy in her shoes. And on a technical note, I think I remember (but it’s been a while so this is hazy) that in some US jurisdictions the membership of an LLC is not private but is in fact considered public information, whereas these offshore arrangements are supposed to be completely private. (Obviously I have no idea how an LLC or its equivalent works in the UK.)
But I still laughed at all of these.
companies in the UK have to register with the companies house, and it’s all publicly available just like LLC/inc information is in the US, so yeah :/
I am ready to read (and re-read) all of these immediately.
I’m also willing to entertain the possibility that, as a former child star who started getting big bank well before she could unilaterally sign contracts, it was set up for her by a well-meaning family member who didn’t want her to be one of those sad broke superannuated kid celebrities.
Her family was wealthy before she was cast, iirc.
ACHEWOOD WEIRDLY PRESCIENT ONCE AGAIN
http://achewood.com/index.php?date=09042007
Thank you so much for linking to that.
Can we please make HermAYNe a more regular thing? It’s so delicious. And no, I will never apologize for that terrible pun.
Do the British not have trusts for privacy in purchasing? Or is she just purchasing property on a really large scale? I ask because I grew up in the town where they filmed Dawson’s Creek and in the early years of the show, one of the cast lived/owned a townhouse in my neighborhood (before everybody got really rich and moved to the beach). But it wasn’t in her name in the homeowner’s association’s documents–the listed owner was a trust. So, why would you not do that instead of having a shell company? Trusts protect property and individuals from lawsuits, give more privacy, etc. What’s the benefit of a shell company, Toast lawyers?
To make it short and boring instead of long and incredibly boring, you have more flexibility with a wholly owned corporation than with a trust, because one person can own a corporation, but the trustee and single beneficiary of a trust can’t be the same person, for Reasons, and also some other reasons that I can’t figure out how to summarize but all boil down to flexibility in decision making. Land trusts make more sense for land, which is a stable, long-term investment, than all the things you might want to put in control of a wholly owned or closely held corporation, if you wanted more liquidity.
It *could* be for privacy, or it *could* be for tax evasion, and there’s not enough information to make a decision because for all we know her lawyer said “it goes through the corporation, because privacy” and she wasn’t actively evading taxes. More is likely to emerge, and EW is the least of who I’m concerned with on that list.
In the UK (unlike the U.S.) there are requirements to disclose the beneficial owners of companies and trusts in a publicly available database. So, no, I don’t believe that a UK trust does work for privacy when buying/owning property. So that would be a privacy reason for her to have a Panamanian company rather to own real estate rather than a UK entity. That is the reason that she’s stated – http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/11/news/emma-watson-…
In the U.S., by contrast, very little public information needs to be disclosed regarding trusts, corporations, LLC’s, partnerships, etc. So if a well-known celebrity owns John Doe LLC and then John Doe LLC owns a residence, a property tax assessor database will just list “John Doe LLC” as the owner with no way to tell who owns that entity. A lot of property tax records (in the U.S., at least) are publicly online and searchable by name, and so I can sympathize with a famous person not wanting anyone and everyone to be able to go online and find their home address with a simple name search. That’s presumably a reason for that Dawson’s Creek cast member’s trust. There may also have been others, especially if the person was a minor and/or somehow had combined finances with other family members.
Number 3 is perfect, totally perfect. Is it possible to learn a look that can give that same reaction?
It is hungry, and cold, and ruthless, and empty, and to give it is to give a window into what your inner self knows and embraces. So, yes but proceed with caution?
I think I have over stepped the bounds of how far I’m willing to go to crush a man with a look
Oh, there are less severe routes to that. Harry Potter is just harder to crush than men who haven’t faced down wizard Hitler in their youth.
They are quite weak, so less severe measures need to be taken
I keep repeatedly misreading the title as “Emma Watson EATS the Panama Papers.” That I can well believe. Or she recycles them into a fabulous papier-mâché dress.
Meanwhile, I love this. You go, Hermione. You deserve it. Make as many spell corporations as you wish.
I’m picturing Leslie Knope’s wedding dress and yes.
Could we get, like, 35 more of these? They are Amazing. Thank you.
This is the best Harry Potter fanfiction I’ve read since the one where Ron leaves Hermoine and runs off with Draco Malfoy in his Ford Anglia.
Eh, Emma has always been contrived with her image so I am not surprised by this. It’s just a bit disappointing because she preaches about equality while doing something like this. I don’t buy that privacy excuse at all.
and she advertises skin whitener to women of colour! Sorry, I have to keep telling people this
She should have just bought property at Hogwarts which is protected from the public eye by way of magic