A couple of weeks ago broad public disclosure of information stolen from the files of a Panamanian law firm began in ernest.  The data was stolen more than a year ago and during that time has been analyzed by the thiefs and agencies they shared it with.

Justifiable Theft

So far the majority of the publicty, analysis and discussion has been about what the data tells us.  For me this is a little disturbing as my personal value system has a strong bias to personal property rights.

The law firm did not share the data, ergo it was stolen.  The fact it was stolen and this is not the focus of the discussion is disturbing to me.  Allowing imoral behavior because the ends justify the means is an attribute of degenerate and corrupt cultures.

Behavioral dilemma

Basically Panama only applies tax to Panamanian sourced income and on that income the highest rate is 27%.  It is therefore considered a tax haven.

If you can get your money to Panama and then invest that money in non Panamanian investments and have that income paid to the Panamanian account you avoid taxes.

Depending on specifically what your investments are and how the money got to Panama a lot of this tax avoidance behavior is legal.  Some is tax evasion which means a law was actually broken, but not all the money disclosed in the Panamanian papers is related to illegal activity.

The Panamanian legal firm maintains everything they were involved in was legal.  The “leakers” , that is those that stole the data argue legal or not it is immoral.

Avoiding taxes is bad

The current discussion is primarily focused on the morals of tax avoidance (tax evasion is illegal so this  is not a moral discussion).  My view is if you want to have a moral discussion you should not avoid (pun intended) the morals of data theft.