Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

larrysummers.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 423 posts

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#221

Post by srtjstjsj »

rapht wrote: post #126
ALittleLight wrote: post #26

I read about tax avoidance schemes like corporate inversions or sending all your patents to a company in some tax free haven and licensing your patents from your company for all your profits, and so on, and it makes me really mad. Companies making many billions of dollars paying no taxes. My intuition is that if I personally came up with a cute "gotcha" like this where I wound up paying zero in taxes because of some…

Tax loopholes (and tax lawyers) exist only because there is sufficient complexity in the tax system/tax code. This is because the tax system actually has 2 conflicting uses: (i) collect revenue for the gov't and (ii) create incentives/disincentives that are meant to push taxpayers in ways that are deemed beneficial, be it to the economy or to certain policy like environment, housing, etc. If you drop (ii) you can end…

No, the tax system is complex because businesses are synthetic entities that can be arbitrarily complex. This is because corporations are allowed to exist unchecked since the 19th century. Return to the original intention of corporations, that they must be chartered and regulated in order to preserve their exemption from human individual law, and most of the problem goes away.

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#222

Post by andromeduck »

cies wrote: post #115
andromeduck wrote: post #99

Or we could just focus on taxing the unearned value arising out of land control instead of property. Land tax + VAT would be ideal and difficult to avoid.

Or just tax pollution and resource (land et al) usage. That will rearrange the economy to overcome one of the biggest challenges of our time. Tax on labour and housing are dis-incentivizing "good behavior".

I don't think pollution taxes ought to be treated as general revenue. It should be distributed back as UBi for transparency purposes.

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#223

Post by srtjstjsj »

nicolas_t wrote: post #155
ALittleLight wrote: post #26

I read about tax avoidance schemes like corporate inversions or sending all your patents to a company in some tax free haven and licensing your patents from your company for all your profits, and so on, and it makes me really mad. Companies making many billions of dollars paying no taxes. My intuition is that if I personally came up with a cute "gotcha" like this where I wound up paying zero in taxes because of some…

> I read about tax avoidance schemes like corporate inversions or sending all your patents to a company in some tax free haven and licensing your patents from your company for all your profits, and so on, and it makes me really mad. Companies making many billions of dollars paying no taxes. This used to be a typical loophole but is being closed by the OECD, a lot of tax havens are now taxing royalties differently. 10…

It's insane that a nation delegates its sovereignty to others. There's no reason to allow subjects to shop around for better tax rates, except corruption.

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#224

Post by srtjstjsj »

gnicholas wrote: post #62
wolco2 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Expensives can be hidden at the corporate level but used personally. The company plane can be used for both personal/business and those are hard to separate.

There are actually very detailed rules about how personal use of corporate planes needs to be reported for both tax purposes and shareholder reporting purposes. Even if a plane is already going from City A to City B for business purposes, if the CEO brings a spouse along for personal reasons, there can be reporting consequences. Of course, this only matters if the company is under sufficient scrutiny to actually repo…

Donald Trump deducts all his personal expenses from his businesses because he claims his personal lifestyle is a marketing program for his businesses.

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#225

Post by srtjstjsj »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #211
iguy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this isn't exactly parallel to the digital service tax, but for the larger debate: The huge obvious revenue tax is VAT. On (almost) anything sold in France they get 20%, and it's very hard to dodge. It does not depend on where you claim your headquarters to be. All these arguments about which country gets to collect a few percent tax, of a few percent profit, are dwarfed by this much larger slice. Which every…

VAT is not a tax on business revenue. Only end-customers pay tax, that's why it's called "value-added" tax.

It's called "value added" because it's a tax on profit, and everyone in the supply chain pays it.

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#226

Post by srtjstjsj »

draugadrotten wrote: post #113
lotsofpulp wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, this works well with the ethos of some companies (like Amazon, allegedly) which reinvest a lot of their profits to cut margins/develop new products... And overall just tighten their hold on the market Should a businesses goal not be to tighten their hold on the market? I’m pretty sure if I don’t, someone else will.

Pure greed dictates that companies must do what is best for the individual company. Grow like cancer, engulf all competition, capture the market etc. However, the owners of the company are humans that do not need to be constrained by those rules. Indeed, humans can hold other values higher - such as seeing that acting in the benefit of the entire society or even to benefit the entire planet is better than focusing on…

The question is whether that moral owner can successfully compete in the unregulated marketplace. The answer is clearly No, which is why regulation is needed.

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#227

Post by Aeolun »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #211
iguy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know this isn't exactly parallel to the digital service tax, but for the larger debate: The huge obvious revenue tax is VAT. On (almost) anything sold in France they get 20%, and it's very hard to dodge. It does not depend on where you claim your headquarters to be. All these arguments about which country gets to collect a few percent tax, of a few percent profit, are dwarfed by this much larger slice. Which every…

VAT is not a tax on business revenue. Only end-customers pay tax, that's why it's called "value-added" tax.

Revenue tax is charged in the same location as VAT though, you just cannot offset it with the VAT you pay (or between two companies, it’s never zero).

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#229

Post by sokoloff »

tpxl wrote: post #191
jlokier wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Or do like Europe is finally starting: just tax revenue. That rapidly turns into a disaster of consolidations and monopolies. You don't want that. Think about the difference between big company $BIG selling you the consumer a million Widgets for 10^9 currency units, versus 26 small companies $a..$z each selling to the next in a long supply chain which results in a million Widgets. In revenue taxation, big company $…

VAT is literally tax on revenue and it works fine. You tax the added value, so each company pays tax only on (sell_price - purchase_price).

VAT is a tax on revenue from the last purchaser, but not on revenue for each company.

Re: The public has a right to know how companies that pay no taxes pull it off

#230

Post by srtjstjsj »

MattGaiser wrote: post #41
ALittleLight wrote: post #26

I read about tax avoidance schemes like corporate inversions or sending all your patents to a company in some tax free haven and licensing your patents from your company for all your profits, and so on, and it makes me really mad. Companies making many billions of dollars paying no taxes. My intuition is that if I personally came up with a cute "gotcha" like this where I wound up paying zero in taxes because of some…

The IRS tries and loses. https://www.propublica.org/article/ultrawealthy-taxes-irs-in...

Because the legislature ties IRS hands behind their back.
Post reply on HN