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Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

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Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#401

Post by Bedon292 »

MetalGuru wrote: post #346
nsxwolf wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by "lose money"? There are plenty of kinds of losses that the average worker might incur that would offset their income tax. It could be a capital loss on an investment. It could be casualty losses from theft or a fire.

Casualty losses are tax deductible? That seems like it would be hard to verify if you got audited.

Yes, hurricanes are a big one as well. However this is un-reimbursed losses only. So if you have a large deductible, or you insurance subtracts depreciation from your payment. Then you can take a loss on just that part. But yes, need receipts and all that stuff to prove the loss.

100k house, 30k in damage, 20k insurance check. You can take 10k in losses.

*Also note, I am not a CPA, consult one. This is my current understand trying to deal with a town house I own in NC that was damaged this year.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#402

Post by AlexTWithBeard »

int_19h wrote: post #321
AlexTWithBeard wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An average worker has few job-related expenses.

Everything that is necessary for a human to function is job-related expenses for somebody who is working. We just choose to not recognize it as such.

Correct. That's what the standard deduction is for.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#403

Post by SilasX »

awakeasleep wrote: post #398
SilasX wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is that simple (in the sense of the parent's post): you need to know the specifics of why they were paying no taxes. If, as in the comment, they were carrying over losses, then there's nothing really objectionable. You lost $10 million last year. You profited $10 million this year. Over a reasonable horizon, you weren't profitable. Did they get a specific exemption against the public interest that no one else got?…

Your argument is a form of 'this is too complicated for you to understand' .. aka bullshit. The average joe doesn't need to grok the whole tax code to know it's wrong when one of the most high profile profitable companies doesn't pay any income tax. That indicates the system is fucked. There isn't a technicality in the universe that will indicate that somehow our perception is wrong.

No, it's the opposite. It's saying, "get the facts first", and I gave a few examples (some positive and some negative), at a high level of abstraction, of what would and wouldn't be objectionable.

I completely agree that you shouldn't need to know the whole tax code to say, "deducting arbitrary figures for payments to a foreign subsidiary shouldn't be allowed and is shady". But "profits didn't cancel out recent losses, thus no taxable income" is not shady.

All I'm saying is, you can't even have the discussion until you know what case you're talking about. Is that really controversial? Did it really sound like I was saying this is too complicated to understand? Is there a better way I could have said it?

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#405

Post by Consultant32452 »

rchaud wrote: post #217
danso wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The First Amendment protects the right to petition the government. Outlawing lobbying would require a significant campaign to amend the Constitution.

Lobbying would be toothless without campaign contributions. Money on the table is the only reason why lobbyists get meetings and average citizens get a full voicemail inbox and templated auto-response.

When The Young Turks spent millions of dollars in air time endorsing Hillary, was that a campaign contribution?

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#406

Post by celtain »

chongli wrote: post #334
deeviant wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except a large portion of revenue does not go to workers, but to shareholders, who pay far less taxes then those who strain their backs in creating said revenue.

Lots of people love to throw around the word "shareholders" like it's a pejorative. The word seems to carry connotations of greedy old Uncle Scrooge, Uncle Pennybags, or some spoiled Saudi Prince. That's a highly distorted view. Lots of "shareholders" are people's retirement funds, pensions, and the like. When those funds finally pay out, they get taxed as income just like for everybody else.

Even including stocks owned through retirement and pension funds, 84% of stocks are owned by the wealthiest 10% of Americans, and roughly half of all households have exactly $0 invested in the market.

Saying that Uncle Scrooge and his buddies own all the stocks is not much worse than implying that normal people own a significant share of the market through their retirement accounts.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#407

Post by prostoalex »

PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #261
SilasX wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is that simple (in the sense of the parent's post): you need to know the specifics of why they were paying no taxes. If, as in the comment, they were carrying over losses, then there's nothing really objectionable. You lost $10 million last year. You profited $10 million this year. Over a reasonable horizon, you weren't profitable. Did they get a specific exemption against the public interest that no one else got?…

>Over a reasonable horizon, you weren't profitable. The average worker isn't allowed to do that even when they lose money in a given year. Why is it so naturally assumed to be acceptable for a business to do it? Maybe the time is to just remove the loopholes in general from both business and personal income taxes.

Average (or even above-average) W-2 worker - no, a self-employed individual or a single-person LLC - yes.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#408

Post by objektif »

OrwellianChild wrote: post #363
anigbrowl wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no good reason investment income should be privileged over income from labor.

At risk of bottoming out on the threaded replies, I'd be interested in talking through how that would work... Let's say you wanted to give income from labor the same benefits as (negative) income from investments that lost money... How would you do that? Say I earn a healthy $250K/year at my W-2 job. If I buy a large house with the proceeds from my job, have I incurred a loss? How about if I eat out at an expensive r…

How is eating at an expensive restaurant a worse decision than say investing in Blue Apron? What are we trying to prove here?

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#409

Post by objektif »

andrewla wrote: post #280
PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Over a reasonable horizon, you weren't profitable. The average worker isn't allowed to do that even when they lose money in a given year. Why is it so naturally assumed to be acceptable for a business to do it? Maybe the time is to just remove the loopholes in general from both business and personal income taxes.

Business taxes and personal taxes are different. Businesses pay taxes on income, while individuals pay taxes on revenue. The differences are significant enough that any sort of parallel like this does not hold a lot of value. Yes, it might make sense to disallow this for corporations, but the justification seems reasonable -- it's not a loophole that allows corporations to take home huge amounts of money without payi…

Individuals pay taxes on their own income.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#410

Post by kelnos »

chongli wrote: post #283
PurpleBoxDragon wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Over a reasonable horizon, you weren't profitable. The average worker isn't allowed to do that even when they lose money in a given year. Why is it so naturally assumed to be acceptable for a business to do it? Maybe the time is to just remove the loopholes in general from both business and personal income taxes.

Why is it so naturally assumed to be acceptable for a business to do it? Because a business isn't a person. Taxing a business is taking real money away from payrolls, money that would get taxed again anyway once it was paid out. Corporate income tax only makes sense when you look at it as a barrier to entry for competition in the marketplace. Big companies like Netflix know how to avoid taxes. Small companies don't.…

The actions that most companies took after the corporate tax cuts were passed proved that taxing a business does not in fact take money away from payroll. When you give that money back to businesses, they either bank it, do share buybacks, increase their dividends, and occasionally re-invest in capital expenditures or give some employees a pitiful one-time bonus that in no way reflects the magnitude of the tax break they've been given.
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