41–50 of 467 posts
Why can't governments learn that taxing corporations is pointless? The same revenue is can be raised more simply through sales tax and personal income tax on salaries and distributions.
I have to pay 40% of my income as income tax. I have HAD ENOUGH. This is infuriating. What can we do?
Well you can look at it in the round and realise that your income is similarly higher than it otherwise would be because government spent money into the economy that it is now extracting as tax.
Moving the tax around doesn't avoid you paying it. It just gets rolled into the price of what you buy instead. That's because in aggregate corporate costs including taxation are a component of final consumption expenditure.
While there are fewer jobs than people that want them the incidence of charges on corporations will always end up being paid by workers one way or another. That's the whole point of the 'unemployment buffer' put in place during the neoliberal era - to make sure that price changes can't be easily passed through to wage rises and thereby resolve the distributional conflict in favour of capital.
Why can't governments learn that taxing corporations is pointless? The same revenue is can be raised more simply through sales tax and personal income tax on salaries and distributions.
Why can't governments learn that taxing corporations is pointless? The same revenue is can be raised more simply through sales tax and personal income tax on salaries and distributions.
> The company, Microsoft Round Island One, posted profits last year equal to nearly three-quarters of Ireland’s entire gross domestic product (GDP) – despite having zero employees.
That, to me, sounds like maybe the plan to collect personal income tax on salaries might not be so straight forward.
Meanwhile my (single-person) company is paying around 20% corporation tax, and then I'm getting taxed a further 20-40% on top of that when I pay myself.
I have to pay 40% of my income as income tax. I have HAD ENOUGH. This is infuriating. What can we do?
So do all the engineers, PMs, etc working at Microsoft.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Invest your surplus then you won't have any profit to be taxed upon. Which is what Microsoft is doing. Alternatively lobby your government to replace corporation tax with a company payable tax on the labour a company uses - which is actually what tax is for: to release manpower for the government use. Then Microsoft can't avoid it by profit shifting.
> company payable tax on the labour a company uses Wouldn't that create a perverse incentive to hire less and overload the remaining employees? I say this because that's exactly what it does on my home country.
That rather depends whether there are more jobs than people that want them.
If there isn't then you need a public job Guarantee option to swing the balance of power.
We want the private sector to hire less and automate more. That's how we push forward productivity. What we want to remove from them is the "what about the jobs" argument. Then it all works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right - but it depends how and when you pay yourself... a balance of salary and dividends, where dividends are not deductible. For me I may have a good year followed by a weak year, so I use last year's profit to keep me going!
If you're in the UK and still using dividends as a significant method to self-compensate, you may benefit from speaking to a (better) accountant. (Your circumstances may vary, this is not financial advice, YOLO, etc)
I'm curious what you're eluding to here? Using dividends as a significant method to self-compensate (for single-person companies) seems to be a pretty common practice recommended by every UK accountant I've spoken to / used.
EDIT: Updated for clarification