Sam and I wonder if your Beanie Babies toy collection will be worth more money or less now that creator Ty Warner has agreed to pay $53.6 million in fines and fees for trying to avoid paying U.S. taxes on the money he’s made on those little stuffed toys.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, written by Laura Saunders and Mark Peters, Mr. Beanie Buddy Warner started depositing some serious coin in 1996, in UBS AG of Switzerland, one of those supposedly secret Swiss bank accounts.
“When the account had an approximate balance of $94 million,” according to the WSJ article, Mr. Warner “moved it to Zurcher Kantonalbank, another Swiss Bank” under the name Molani Foundation. Taxes owed on that money amounted to $885,300 according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Well, like Sam and I always say, criminals are dumb. This guy will wind up paying about six times what he owed because he tried to hide some of his stash, plus he could go to jail. Oh greed, what hath thou wrought?”
I had a Beanie Baby once. Some title company seeking my business gave me an Orca Whale BB when I was a real estate agent. Not realizing the potential value of owning a Beanie Baby, I took the Beanie Baby tag off the little varmint and set it up on my computer. A woman and her daughter came to my office one day to talk about one of my listings and the daughter - about 10, I think - told me I had destroyed the value of my Orca because I took the Beanie Baby tag off it.
Aw crap!
But here’s a question Sam and I have. What’s the deal with Swiss banks and some of those offshore banks suddenly ratting out people who’ve tried to hide money? Used to be a Swiss Bank account was a good place to hide your gold if you had any gold. When did Swiss Banks become snitches?
More to the point, Sam and I just don’t understand how the U.S. of A. can “crackdown” on people with secret bank accounts in other countries. Guess we won’t try that when this blog makes us rich.
How can the U.S. go into a foreign country and tell its government (or banks) what to do? How can we go into a Panama or a Iraq and take down a dictator we don’t like? How can we send missiles into a foreign - supposedly sovereign - country like Syria just because we think they shouldn’t gas their own citizens? Who the Sam Hill do we think we are? Boy, we sure wouldn’t like it another country told us what we could and couldn’t do.
I met this woman from Mexico once who told me she was a missionary. I inquired if she was a missionary in some poor Third-World country. She said no, she was a missionary to the U.S. She said I wouldn’t believe how most people in the U.S. reacted to that bit of news. She was right. Seems the prevailing attitude here was, “Hey! We don’t need no stinking missionaries” (the idea being of course, that we are perfect)!
Three bags of poop on being snitched out by your bank. If Sam and I had any money to hide we’d stash it in one of his bone holes.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, written by Laura Saunders and Mark Peters, Mr. Beanie Buddy Warner started depositing some serious coin in 1996, in UBS AG of Switzerland, one of those supposedly secret Swiss bank accounts.
“When the account had an approximate balance of $94 million,” according to the WSJ article, Mr. Warner “moved it to Zurcher Kantonalbank, another Swiss Bank” under the name Molani Foundation. Taxes owed on that money amounted to $885,300 according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
Well, like Sam and I always say, criminals are dumb. This guy will wind up paying about six times what he owed because he tried to hide some of his stash, plus he could go to jail. Oh greed, what hath thou wrought?”
I had a Beanie Baby once. Some title company seeking my business gave me an Orca Whale BB when I was a real estate agent. Not realizing the potential value of owning a Beanie Baby, I took the Beanie Baby tag off the little varmint and set it up on my computer. A woman and her daughter came to my office one day to talk about one of my listings and the daughter - about 10, I think - told me I had destroyed the value of my Orca because I took the Beanie Baby tag off it.
Aw crap!
But here’s a question Sam and I have. What’s the deal with Swiss banks and some of those offshore banks suddenly ratting out people who’ve tried to hide money? Used to be a Swiss Bank account was a good place to hide your gold if you had any gold. When did Swiss Banks become snitches?
More to the point, Sam and I just don’t understand how the U.S. of A. can “crackdown” on people with secret bank accounts in other countries. Guess we won’t try that when this blog makes us rich.
How can the U.S. go into a foreign country and tell its government (or banks) what to do? How can we go into a Panama or a Iraq and take down a dictator we don’t like? How can we send missiles into a foreign - supposedly sovereign - country like Syria just because we think they shouldn’t gas their own citizens? Who the Sam Hill do we think we are? Boy, we sure wouldn’t like it another country told us what we could and couldn’t do.
I met this woman from Mexico once who told me she was a missionary. I inquired if she was a missionary in some poor Third-World country. She said no, she was a missionary to the U.S. She said I wouldn’t believe how most people in the U.S. reacted to that bit of news. She was right. Seems the prevailing attitude here was, “Hey! We don’t need no stinking missionaries” (the idea being of course, that we are perfect)!
Three bags of poop on being snitched out by your bank. If Sam and I had any money to hide we’d stash it in one of his bone holes.
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