Six Lufthansa employees, including four flight attendants, have been arrested after sneaking in more than 63,000 pounds of out-of-circulation, €1 and €2 coins from China back to Germany over the last four years.
Euro coins have two color tones, gold and silver, and when the German Central Bank takes the coins out of circulation, the two colors (see picture to the left) are separated then sent to China to be melted down into scrap metal.
A wily group in China reassembled the coins rather melting them, then sent them back to Germany with four LH flight attendants serving as “mules.” Because FA’s don’t have baggage weight limits and can typically carry-on their bags and breeze through customs, they became the ideal method of transporting this discarded money. The FAs would then take the coins to the Bundesbank (only the central bank in Germany accepts damaged coins) and turn them in for bills. The bank typically does not count coin deposits under €1000 but will instead weigh the money bags without inspecting the coins. The scheme went off without a hitch for over four years.
Daily Archives: April 6, 2011
Twitter’s Tax Break Lobbying
Twitter is well on its way to getting a tax break in San Francisco after threatening to leave the city for the suburbs.
San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors on Tuesday voted 8 to 3 to preliminarily approve a tax break that could allow Twitter to avoid tens of millions of dollars in taxes. A second vote expected next week would make the legislation official.
As I recounted in an article Monday in the Times, Twitter had said it planned to move out of San Francisco, where it is based, because of the high cost of doing business.
Amazing that Twitter, of all people, get a tax break. much more on tax break lobbying, here.
On Medicare Reform
Eugene Steuerle, a former Treasury official in both Democratic and Republican administrations, says simply, “We have a budget for a declining nation.”
Mr. Steuerle — along with his Urban Institute colleague Stephanie Rennane — has done some of the most careful work comparing Medicare taxes and benefits. They added up all the taxes people at different points on the income spectrum would pay over their working lives and then translated these amounts into a single sum, expressed in today’s dollars. Mr. Steuerle and Ms. Rennane likewise added up the value of Medicare benefits (net of premiums) that men and women could expect to receive.
Their results show that no cohort of Americans, with the possible exception of the very affluent, pays enough Medicare taxes and premiums to cover their costs. The gap is growing over time, too.