Amazon doesn't pay taxes despite being worth $793 billion. How can I do this?
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IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
171–180 of 319 posts
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#172I'm going to keep saying this in every goddamn tax thread I see here - We need to switch around the way we are taxing from the US level getting the largest pie to the state. I'm not saying I figured it out - but right now there are enormous issues with the way we tax.
1. We have a system where the fed. government holds states hostage for money when it wants to bully things around. (emergencies, etc..).
2. The current system is actively encouraging people to domicile in TX, FL, WA, SD, etc... (income tax free states) and not actually live there, hoping to play the tax lottery (or move around so much they can't be convicted).
3. The "sales tax" system in the US is ridiculous. It's egregiously illegal according to our tax-once rule. If we can get a tax break on all sales tax we paid, that would be one thing, but we can't.
4. Ind. contractors are taxed in extremely unfair ways, often have no recourse to get discounts or tax breaks on health insurance.
My solution -
I say it's time to start having states collect that 25% and the feds are hands-off of taxing individuals. Beyond that it would make sense for people to declare a state of residence (one that they most want roads repaired at, police hired, etc..). Get rid of sales tax completely - it's a massive waste of time if states are getting a fair amount. Move MOST fed employees to the state level and remove major govt. contractors that are bilking the public (in the long run companies like Northrup Gruman etc.. are paying the heads billions each - there's no oversight.). Remove the national army and start creating state-armies. Re-write the constitution that changes how states operate within the federal level, and completely change the role of the federal government to be allowed to make laws that are scoped towards fairness across states. Make the fed. government in charge of analytics and cross-state environmental regulation. States would then have the right to make laws that apply to the people.
Some might say this is ridiculous but in a time where we getting to the "end of capitalism" a MASSIVE re-write to how money is moved around is damn fucking necessary.
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#173Taxing businesses at all has been objected to as double taxation: the business is taxed, then the residual profits are distributed to shareholders, who are taxed. It isn't a fringe idea: in 2015, many of the Republican candidates in the running for President stated they thought making corporate tax rates 0% would not only "boost the economy", it would essentially remove all tax laws from the books, greatly simplifying things.
Superficially it sounds reasonable. But it isn't. The US military spends $700B+ every year, often times very pointedly protecting the interests of US businesses. The state department has untold people spending billions more opening markets and making trade favorable for US businesses. By and large, the benefits to individuals is an afterthought -- what is good for US business is good for US citizens is the thinking. Large swaths of the government function is spent optimizing conditions for business activity.
So, to get to the point: why should I pay higher tax to protect the business interests of Grumman, and GE, and farmers, and Apple, etc? Apple derives far more benefit and far more directly than I do. Why aren't they paying their portion of the taxes to support it? If part of the cost of doing business is running overseas bases so we can exert influence, that cost should be built into the business expenses as taxes, instead of being externalized to John Q. Public.
The answer is, of course, the super wealthy have captured government and a large part of the media which promotes their interests.
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#174Reading the actual study [1], the headline is a bit deceptive. The study looked at audits between 2000 and 2010, a period during which funding to the IRS increased, and found that generally more funding for audits led to more money recovered from audits (duh). But that $34.3B figure is over 10 years, so it's a tiny fraction of a percent of overall federal revenue, and it's not offset by the amount of more money the IRS would have taken to run those audits.
Also unmentioned is the very real negative externalities that IRS audits cause. Audits disproportionately affect poor people [2], who are also the least able to spend time dealing with them. The United States already has extremely low tax evasion rates [3]. Rather than spending money to catch more of the very few cheaters by audits, other country's tax authorities have found "nudge" letters were found to be similarly effective and vastly cheaper.
[1] https://www.aaajournals.org/doi/abs/10.2308/accr-52520?utm_s...
[2] https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/eitc-audit
[3] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Size-and-development-of-...
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Amazon pays taxes, not sure how anybody still believes this piece of misinformation. You do realize it is Congress who creates the tax rules to begin with, so if anyone is at fault for the tax 'loop holes' these companies leverage, it's corrupt legislators. "In 2017, Amazon paid close to $1 billion in income tax. In 2018, the amount jumped to $1.18 billion, accounting for local, state, and international taxes." https…
> "In 2017, Amazon paid close to $1 billion in income tax. In 2018, the amount jumped to $1.18 billion, accounting for local, state, and international taxes." Your quote glaringly leaves out federal....
It leaves it out because it isn't relevant. Amazon pays no federal tax (or close to none anyway) but it pays a shitload in other taxes.
Amazon reinvests revenue into the business which is discussed tons on this site. It also has the effect of eliminating certain types of taxes... and massively increasing taxes in other areas (like sales, use, B&O, payroll, etc...). Somehow I don't see discussion of how payroll tax at Amazon is exploding, though.
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#176Greed is winning in America. Any person or political party that is trying to reduce staffing for a tax collection agency is trying to get away with tax fraud or they are working for somebody who is. It is far past the time to recognise this.
I generally believe that Taxation is the problem, not the other way around.
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read her plan to tax businesses with $100m in profit is easily sidestepped by spinning off child-subsidiaries of your businesses right around that $100m mark and report back "womp womp, no over $100m profits here".
And that's easily countered by saying "total profits, including subsidiaries."
And that's easily countered by having franchises and not subsidiaries
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it's appreciating society where everyone puts in according to their ability to make something we can all enjoy. I'm fine with people who are unable to contribute putting less in, I'm not fine with people who exploit the system - and before some BS about welfare queens gets injected... I also care about scale, the amount of missed revenue from corporate taxes far outweighs how people below the poverty line are abl…
> everyone puts in according to their ability Ahh yes punish those who worked to provide something worthwhile and reward those who couldn't be bothered to do the same.
I love how the sick and handicapped are in the category of "those who couldn't be bothered".
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#179IRS budget cuts seem to be thrown around a lot, but to me this is just a symptom of the real problem -- a tax code that is way too complex. Years of congress pandering to special interests, fixing minor issues with pages of new tax rules and no implementation accountability (implementation and enforcement is dumped on IRS) brought US tax code to a state that can overwhelm any staffing levels. Simplifying tax code wil…
Simplifying would be great, but it's not really possible to do because you won't get the exactly same tax distribution with a simplified set of rules. So politicians will frame it as "why do you want to raise taxes on single moms?" and "why are you taking away the deduction for teachers?" and "this bill hurts vulnerable people who have been hit by natural disasters." So any suggestion to simplify the tax code is a no…
Seems like it should be possible to make a credible disparate impact case in response.
Re: IRS budget cuts cost $34.3B in lost revenue from big business
#180I don't get why countries always under-invest in tax collection... as long as it's ROI positive, shouldn't budgets be getting increased?
If 99.9% of the national income were used to gather 100% of the national income, you would have positive ROI.
Exactly, which should illustrate just how pointless this calculation is. Obviously spending 99.9% of national resources on tax collection would be a colossal waste from the public's point of view despite the "positive ROI". The IRS supposedly exists to benefit the public; maximizing the amount transferred from private citizens to the government is not the end goal here. The benefit to the public from having that money spent by the government rather than by those individual members of the public who earned it is at best a small fraction of the total amount of tax collected, and may even be negative.