tyb
Tesla Must Pay $323 Million In Taxes To Shanghai Every Year Or It Will Lose Gigafactory Land
For a company that has already racked up a tab of over $1 billion in losses this year, what's another $323 million amongst friends?
This was quite possibly the attitude the company took when agreeing to pay China 2.23 billion yuan - about $323 million - in taxes every single year as part of their deal with local authorities to build their factory on the outside of Shanghai, according to Bloomberg.
Tesla has also committed to drop about 14.08 billion yuan - or about $2 billion - in capex on the plant over the next five years, according to its lease. While the point of the Shanghai Gigafactory was to avoid tariffs and keep prices down, we're not sure how an annual tax requirement of well over a quarter of a billion dollars is going to make things easier for Musk.
But, not unlike many of Musk's other projects, we're sure the motive was to get the factory set up for optics as quickly as humanly possible and (literally) at any cost so Tesla has something flashy to show the investment community; it would only worry about the expense side of the ledger much later.
Tesla will likely argue that the requirements are tame compared to their targets in China, where it aims to produce half a million cars at the site over the next 12 months, depending on how quickly output ramps up.
Tesla said in its 10-Q: “We believe the capital expenditure requirement and the tax revenue target will be attainable even if our actual vehicle production was far lower than the volumes we are forecasting.”
OK. We'll hold you to that.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-07-30/tesla-must-pay-323-million-taxes-shanghai-every-year-or-it-will-lose-gigafactory
>No bank account numbers or Social Security numbers were compromised," the bank said before listing the above numbers.
140,000 Social Security numbers were hit in Capital One hack — are there better alternatives for opening bank accounts?
Keep your data close and your Social Security number closer.
The massive hack at Capital One COF, -7.36% announced late Wednesday resulted in the loss of a wide array of information, including credit scores and balances, zip codes, email addresses, dates of birth, among other details, plus the Social Security numbers of about 140,000 customers and 80,000 bank-account numbers from credit-card customers. The hack affected about 100 million people in the U.S. and 6 million in Canada.
Social Security numbers are among the worst piece of personal data to have hacked for one reason: They cannot be changed.
There’s good news, however. The Social Security numbers and account numbers were tokenized, so that information should be safe from any potential bad actors, according to Capital One. “Those numbers were replaced by unique ’tokens’ that can’t be used by anyone except Capital One,” Paul Bischoff, privacy advocate with Comparitech. “The real numbers were stored elsewhere.”
Also see: 100 million Capital One customers were hacked — everything you need to know about data breaches, but were afraid to ask
After Equifax agreed to a data-breach settlement with the Federal Trade Commission this month and agreed out at least $650 million in restitution to consumers and government fines, the FTC also ordered the company to look into alternatives to Social Security as a form of identification. That settlement came after a 2017 security breach that exposed the personal data of more than 146 million people.
These hacks do raise a timely question: Are there any viable alternatives to Social Security numbers to verify the identity of consumers?
There are other options, some more than two decades old
One security feature that could replace the Social Security number in identifying individuals when applying for bank accounts or credit cards is Voice ID. “It’s a print of your voice,” Neal O’Farrell, executive director of The Identity Theft Council, told MarketWatch. “When you want to verify yourself to apply for a loan, the bank will send you, say, six new numbers and you repeat those numbers with your voice.” This technology has been available for the past 25 years.
Newer methods of identification include biometrics. An individual’s iris or your thumbprint could serve as a form of ID. But the problem with using that alone is that “a thumbprint could be compromised,” O’Farrell told MarketWatch, because thieves or hackers can copy it.
He thinks of the future of verification is in “real-time” personal information. “A bank could ask what was the last number you called on this phone or what was the last purchase you made.” This information would be hard for thieves to use because it’s constantly changing.
Other potential identification methods include your phone or laptop’s IP addresses and even a blockchain-created digital ID.
Banks and other financial institutions could also look to the Department of Motor Vehicles for better methods of identity verification, Robert Siciliano, a privacy expert and the founder and CEO of Safr.me, told MarketWatch.
The Real ID Act, passed in 2005, changed security standards for state driver’s licenses. Beginning in October 2020, individuals will need a “Real ID” driver’s license — or a passport — to board a domestic flight.
“Registries of motor vehicles have been setting up verification methods for at least a decade,” Siciliano said. “They set the standard. It’s really hard to get a driver’s license in someone else’s name.” To obtain a driver’s license, one needs to present multiple pieces of identifying information.
“I don’t think there’s a problem with the continued use of the Social Security number. It just needs to be used with a lot of other methods like at a registry of motor vehicles,” Siciliano said.
Even a heartbeat can be an identifier
With new methods of identification come new privacy concerns for consumers. At least one company is working on technology that will be able to identify a specific individual’s heartbeat and turn that information into a unique identifier, O’Farrell said.
But not everyone may want to give their heartbeat to their bank, and for good reason. “Consumers are skeptical about giving away any information,” O’Farrell told MarketWatch. “In this case, they may be afraid the heartbeat will be sold to an insurance company, which could find something wrong with you and use it against you.”
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/equifax-has-to-limit-using-social-security-numbers-your-voice-or-heartbeat-could-be-the-next-way-of-verifying-identity-2019-07-23
good that you got away from them. Not an option for many. If you have to use a bank use a credit union.