321–330 of 449 posts
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> What would happen if you replace all (most) tax with VAT? The poor would pay considerably more of their income as tax than the rich. And yes, there are ways to do tax evasion with VAT. There was a court case in the UK about whether Jaffa Cakes were a cake or a biscuit (because there are different VAT categories)
Then don't charge the poor for VAT.
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> What would happen if you replace all (most) tax with VAT? The poor would pay considerably more of their income as tax than the rich. And yes, there are ways to do tax evasion with VAT. There was a court case in the UK about whether Jaffa Cakes were a cake or a biscuit (because there are different VAT categories)
Then don't charge the poor for VAT.
> The average UK salary is £26,500 on which employees pay a total of £5,392.80 in income tax and national insurance contributions. Whoa, what? That's some hefty tax for the 26k bracket!
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Because we have quadriplegics who need 24 hour care so they don't die. Just to choose one random example of why we choose to have a government that levies taxes and provides services.
You don't choose anything (apart from some semblance of choice through voting). Stop using voluntary language for something that is compulsory. This isn't an argument against gov, but your reasoning about choice is after the fact.
Do you think that if there were a society of people where a majority were callous enough to deny those extremely disabled their medical care, that they wouldn't just vote out the bums who gave them that care, and the new generation of politicians wouldn't then rewrite the laws?
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So, in your system, how would a corporations profits be taxed? You have shown nothing like that, really. And a direct property tax is also not a good idea, as then you tax people for having property, not for using their property.
Sorry, I might not have made that point clear: they wouldn't be taxed at all. Not at the corporate level, that is. As far as I can tell, money will exit corporations in three ways: 1) salary, 2) shares and 3) payments for goods/services, mostly to other corporations. Income and capital gains taxes will take care of 1 and 2. The company won't owe taxes, but whichever natural person receives the money will. As for 3, m…
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Simple 1% revenue tax on companies with revenue of more than $15 million would fix the issue. No other taxes, just revenue one, no tax credits, no refunds. No hiding costs, no going offshore, no creative accounting. One tax on all revenues that will hit your account. This would also help to cut out all the middle man driving prices up and make the logistic chain quite small. Some countries want to experiment with thi…
> Simple 1% revenue tax on companies with revenue of more than $15 million would fix the issue. What country can levy this tax? Large companies like Apple have operations in lots of countries. Do they have to pay each one 1% of their raw revenue?
Poland is one of the few countries that already have this tax, but it is high now (I think around 20%) and optional. There is a lot of public discussion to drop it to between 0,5-1% on all revenues for all foreign owned companies making more than €15Mil/year. This got really popular after information that Google is reporting constant losses and not paying taxes despite ridiculous high revenues from local market.
Global companies offshoring profits and not paying enough tax (in the eyes of many countries) was a hot topic at the last G20 summit in Brisbane. This isn't limited to Facebook, as the article explains. The issue and background here is that when large companies operate globally, each country has its own local subsidiary, owned by the global entity. Money is made in each country by selling goods or services. How are t…
Stories like this make me question if corporate tax even makes sense. However well designed, a tax code with today's complexities is going to have holes. If a savings of even one per mill may mean millions, corporations are going to spend insane amounts of money to hire the best experts to use every last loophole. Why don't we cut down everything to a couple of manageable groups that can be tightened down? I think th…
From what I understand, the actual proposed replacement for the corporate income tax is much simpler: eliminate it and replace it with a much more comprehensive capital gains tax. Then require companies to be much more forward with paying dividends.
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No, they use every trick in the book not to, ending up paying less than your local frozen yogurt place (exaggerating a little, but still).
See but they do pay their taxes. They just use loopholes to pay less taxes.
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It's relevant because companies that are not multi-national can't afford to engage in these sort of tax reducing practices. If you want to get rid of corporate taxes altogether, that would be different, but suggesting that it's okay for Facebook to pay less than other companies because their employees pay income tax doesn't make sense. The tax code should provide a level playing field for all companies. You shouldn't…
If we got rid of corporate taxes altogether it would be different, and it would likely "provide a level playing field for all companies". And I'm not sure why companies that are not multi-national can't afford to do this too.. if their corporate taxes are absurdly high like they are here in the U.S., they are free to offshore their operations just like U.S. companies do, or lobby their government to reduce or elimina…
In addition, isn't the whole point of corporate taxes to provide money to the country in which that business is making a profit? We may live in a global economy, but we don't all live in a single country. Businesses should be taxed appropriately for their revenues in a country or not be taxed at all. Saying that it's okay to avoid paying taxes because you can afford to move money offshore is hardly a level playing field and gives money to countries based on their advantageous tax codes, not to the profits achieved in that country.
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> Why not finance helping quadriplegics from increased VAT? Because VAT, beside being a very effective tax (it's the biggest source of income of most countries), is the most unfair one. Say a country have a 20% VAT Low income household need to use the entirety of their income to survive (food, housing, etc). So effectively 20% of their income is collected as VAT. Now a upper class household, let's say they save 25% o…
The best possible tax scheme for poor people would be a simple flat tax that is impossible for rich people to avoid. I've always felt your definition of "most unfair" to be a great fallacy. Yes poor people pay a higher percentage of their income. They also receive more in benefits than they give and the flat tax ensures the rich pay their share. The more complicated you make the system the more it will benefit the ri…