81–90 of 122 posts
It's a wonder that Apple is still a primarily American corporation at all. Really big companies like Accenture are multinational corporations, generally incorporated in a tax haven with decent legal standing and running its HQ in the US as a domestic subsidiary.
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Well, the wikipedia cites the WSJ, which is behind a paywall. I suspect that they're either wrong or creatively fudging things. After 100k your FICA payments taper off to nothing. That's money off the top, right into your pocket. Additionally, the capital gains taxes are only 15% compared to much higher for income. This means that the wealthy have a hugely advantageous tax situation. Although, I thought that the bott…
If your income comes from capital gains or creative accounting, yes. But if you're a salaried worker earning over 150-200k, the percentage of your income going to federal income tax is greater as your income increases - more of your income falls into a higher bracket. (Also, FICA doesn't drop to nothing, it drops to 1.45% from 7.65%, saving you 6.2%.) See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_income_tax_2008.svg…
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If your income comes from capital gains or creative accounting, yes. But if you're a salaried worker earning over 150-200k, the percentage of your income going to federal income tax is greater as your income increases - more of your income falls into a higher bracket. (Also, FICA doesn't drop to nothing, it drops to 1.45% from 7.65%, saving you 6.2%.) See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_income_tax_2008.svg…
Hm, you actually may be right, assuming no accounting and no income from capital gains, high-paid salaried workers do pay more in taxes. And they're probably earning their pay. So I was wrong on that part of the math. Meanwhile, people who are supremely highly paid (in the > 500k -> millions range) usually get a big chunk of it in options. That's fine as a payment plan, I even agree with it, but they should pay the g…
Direct stock grants are also taxed as income, with the same caveat that stock value appreciation can be taxed at the lower capital gains rate.
It sounds like your beef is with the capital gains tax rate, not income tax itself. :)
I can't speak to the culture of "tax avoidance is honorable", but if the federal government is trying to incentivize people to behave in a certain way (say, to invest in stocks in the long-term) by giving folks who do that a tax break...then your beef is really with the government wanting people to invest long-term in stocks. That seems like a more difficult argument to make.
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Taking a wealthy friend as an example, and watching how many jobs he's created, how many charities he's created, and how many lives he's changed - plus the sheer raw numbers of dollars he paid in taxes on top of all that - I don't really care if the percentage is less than mine. I didn't create 500 jobs or donate hundreds of thousands of dollars to real-life charities every year. EDIT: That doesn't mean I think the s…
Yeah, and he did all of that because we have a society that enabled him to do it. Good for him. Seriously. But if he doesn't feel obligated to pay back towards that society then he's either missing something inside or fell victim to a convienent ideology that told him it's good to be selfish. Whatever happened to noblesse oblige? Not to mention, of the millionaires I've met, most aren't entrepreneurs and didn't creat…
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If there isn't actually a legal duty to the shareholders, though, then you're basically in a territory of normal ethics, with subjective tradeoffs and competing interests, aren't you? There might be some ethical concerns about being "fair" to your shareholders, even beyond what the law requires, but there's also concerns about paying a "fair" amount of taxes to the state you reside in, and all sorts of other things t…
How does having a legal duty put you outside the realm of ethics? If you have a legal duty to do something unethical, you're still doing something unethical.
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Are you donating all the extra money you have to the IRS? Are you skipping all deductions, even if you're eligible for them? Why not? Your argument is essentially that we have a duty to pay as much tax as possible. But this is predicated on the belief that paying taxes is the best way to benefit society with your resources. Obviously, this is a long-standing debate that we won't solve here, but I would argue that the…
I don't know about other people, but I don't go out of my way to avoid taxes. I certainly don't create new companies or change how I do business in order to avoid taxes. If there's an actual deduction box on a form that I'm eligible for, sure, I'll check it. But I don't really spend days thinking up ways to hide my income. Any time I would've spent on that could be much more productively spent by just making more inc…
Which is actually a good reason to make taxes lower and less burdensome, so the most productive members of our society (as measured by income) will spend their time producing, instead of defending the fruits of their labor from the tax man.
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Yeah, taxes come out of worker paychecks, so it doesn't matter that the big corporate entity with billions in the bank doesn't have to pay any. We can just hit up the workers with their mortgages and families. Personally, I'd prefer a little more honest accounting, and maybe some more money going the workers' way, a little less going investors' way.
At least in Washington, there is no state income tax, the only thing removed from a workers paycheck is federal tax and social security. The taxes come a bit more indirectly, in the form of spending from employees. With a 9% sales tax, and at least 50,000 employees each for Microsoft and Boeing, Washington still gets money. Additionally, both Microsoft and Boeing more directly support the state economy in other ways…
Additionally, both Microsoft and Boeing more directly support the state economy in other ways (many donations, and support of public works, etc etc). Obviously, these tax breaks do lose the state some money
Are they supporting the state economy or not? I doubt they can support the state economy by making the state lose money.
(Honest question, I'm not American and don't live in the state of Washington so I have no clue)
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Yeah, but they make more than 50% and more than 3/4 of the income, respectively. No, the linked Wikipedia page says: the top 5% with gross income of $137,056 or more pay 57.1% (earning 33.4%)
Well, the wikipedia cites the WSJ, which is behind a paywall. I suspect that they're either wrong or creatively fudging things. After 100k your FICA payments taper off to nothing. That's money off the top, right into your pocket. Additionally, the capital gains taxes are only 15% compared to much higher for income. This means that the wealthy have a hugely advantageous tax situation. Although, I thought that the bott…
Since your SS benefits are also capped, it's unclear why you think that capping the taxes is wrong.
The folks who set up SS thought that the tax and payout cap was a good thing beause it kept rich people from caring about SS. If you uncap both taxes and payout, you end up paying Ross Perot $400k/year in retirement. If you uncap taxes but cap payout, rich people start caring about SS.
What is your alternative to capped payout and taxes?
FWIW, SS payouts are progressive - the less you contribute, the better your return.
Seems like a smart business move to me. Are we suppose to be upset about this?
well, the state is bankrupt. partly because companies that embody its dreams are not chipping in with the bills.
Nope. CA has a spending problem.
CA is taking in about what it spent in 2008. Unless you think that 2008 was a disaster, spending that amount now should be perfectly acceptable.
CA has a deficit because it is spending far more than it spent in 2008.
As to my "spending plan", it's rewind the spending until the budget is balanced. If the legislature and governor want to keep any specific new spending, they get to cut an equivalent amount of old spending.
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I think the "right thing to do" for shareholders is probably a better way to describe the situation. Duty so much as to reduce their costs (with taxation being a cost).
Yeah, but that's a crappy thing to do. Lots of unethical practices are legal but we don't encourage companies to do them. Why this?
If you don't like that, you can become an activist shareholder (or just an activist) and campaign for changing this company policy.
This is no question of company ethics. It might be a question of the ethics of shareholding.