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Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

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Re: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

#111
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right because GE builds roads and funds public schools.

> Right because GE builds roads and funds public schools. I'm going to assume sarcasm so: http://archive.fortune.com/2008/06/30/news/companies/ge_phil... https://www.google.com/search?q=general+electric+charitable+...

Cool. GE paid an average of 5.2% tax over the last 15 years.

But they donated millions and that's a lot right?

http://www.taxjusticeblog.org/archive/2016/04/just_plain_wro...

Re: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

#112
post #102
post #93

Finland tried this same thing with the same "dynamic effects will offset lost tax revenue!" rhetoric a few years ago, and it didn't work out anything like expected. At the start of 2014, Finland lowered its corporate tax rate to 20% (from a previous 24.5%). The lost tax revenue amounted to $800M EUR, but the government claimed that half of that would be recouped thanks to positive dynamic effects the tax cut would cr…

To play devil's advocate, Finland was giving sort of a vague argument for their tax cuts: "dynamic effects", while in America there are very concrete potential effects of the policy. You can point directly to Apple and say, "If we cut tax rates to 15%, Apple will bring back $X to the USA", "Exxon Mobile will bring back $X to USA", and so on. You can even... talk to them and ask them what it would take to repatriate t…

Eventually that money will be either returned to share holders, or will be invested in the business. You also have to consider that the government in Finland is probably way less shitty than the US government.

Re: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

#113

0%, with raises to capital gains to offset the tax revenue, would be better, but I can understand it's politically infeasible (because people are ignorant). Better than nothing.

Yeah, to me it seemed to make much more sense to get rid of corporate taxes entirely, and then just tax all dividends and capital gains at income tax rates. Is there an economic (as opposed to political) reason this is a bad idea?

Might raise too little revenue. But in general, if you want to tax capital, you should tax capital, rather than taxing companies (which do a pretty good job of offloading tax incidence onto labor.)

Re: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

#114

I challenge all of those against this to learn what tax incidence is and how it applies to the corporate tax rate

Here you go: http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Clausing2012.pdf "At the end of the searching, I find some evidence that suggests that corporate taxation may lower wages, but the preponderance of evidence does not suggest any wage effects from corporate taxation."

And counterpoints:

http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/Desaietal2007.pdf

"between and 45 and 75 percent of the burden of corporate taxes is borne by labor with the balance borne by capital. "

https://www.kansascityfed.org/Publicat/RegionalRWP/RRWP07-01...

"Using cross-country data I estimate that a ten percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate of high-income countries reduces mean annual gross wages by seven percent."

https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/tax-policy/tax-anal...

"While further research is necessary to draw definitive conclusions, these studies suggest that labor may bear a substantial burden from the corporate income tax. Overall, the recent empirical evidence, the open economy computable general equilibrium models of tax incidence, and the sensitivity of the amount of capital investment within a country suggest reconsidering the assumption that the corporate income tax falls on the owners of capital; labor may bear a substantial portion of the burden from the corporate income tax."

Re: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

#115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right because GE builds roads and funds public schools.

That's a mischaracterization of his argument. He's saying that a lower corporate tax rate would help grow companies, and the economy as a whole. We would continue to pay income and payroll taxes (which are the main source of tax income anyway), and that the benefits of a larger economy + more income/payroll tax income would offset the lowest revenue in corporate taxes.

Are you kidding?

The idea that companies hire linearly with revenue growth should be dying by now no? Is this not hacker news? We think that will continue for the foreseeable future?

Corporate revenue follows a power law distribution, and the top companies are not growing by hiring as many people as they can.

Apple earns about $1M/US employee in profit. Federal tax rate (~30%) on that number is say $300k. Payroll tax is 12.5% of salary (~100k) or $12.5k. So Apple would need to hire 12x the employees overnight to make up the tax shortfall if we suddenly halved their tax liability to $150k. That's if they actually paid the nominal tax rate (they dont).

This is all besides the fact that an inverse correlation between tax rates and economic growth is purely theoretical.

Re: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

#116
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was a Planet Money podcast (or similar) recently that talked about tax cuts to small/medium size businesses. They looked at a few anecdotal cases and small cuts in taxes didn't result in enough money to hire someone or spend large amounts. They just simply weren't paying a ton in tax anyways, so a cut here or there wasn't a big change.

How many businesses fail that could have succeeded with lower taxes?

I could ask a similar question, how many businesses would fail with a 0% tax rate. If we reduced that barrier to entry, more people would open businesses, thus creating a ton of competition, which would lead businesses to fail.

Businesses are going to fail no matter what. Sometimes it's the tax rate, sometimes it's the market, the location, the product, the employees, the manager, the owner etc etc etc.

Re: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

#117
What a fucking joke.

Apple is sitting on almost 2250 Billion and they won't bring a penny of it back to the U.S. because they don't want to pay some tax.

The rich people who are making the congressmen and senators rich are making sure that the rich and the corporations are flush with money while 20% of all children in the U.S are living in poverty.

Reagan was right it is trickle down, it flowed down at one time, now it trickles, soon to drip.

Re: Trump Wants Tax Plan to Cut Corporate Rate to 15%

#120
post #34

The thing that most people fail to realize is that a lower corporate tax rate helps the overall enconomy and all Americans. Companies now suddenly have increased capital to spend on growth (hiring, R&D, and acquisitions). Additionally it boost earnings which will likely increase most people's retirement accounts and stock portfolios. Typical that I'm getting downvoted without any rebuttal.

You're getting downvoted because you pretend that a neoliberalist trope ("lower corporate tax rate helps everyone") which has been beaten to death over the past 40 years is something that "most people fail to realize".

Im sure you have plenty of 90 year old socialist tropes yourself.
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