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

Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

theguardian.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

421–430 of 467 posts

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#421

Post by G3rn0ti »

chipsambos wrote: post #309
G3rn0ti wrote: post #245

There shouldn’t be „corporate taxes“. They tend to be difficult to collect, troublesome to declare and actually can not contribute much to national budgets. Think about it: Employees of multinational companies pay billions of income tax. Customers buying products and services from multinational pay billions in VAT. Shareholders of multinationals receiving dividends pay billions of capital gains tax. So what exactly i…

> So what exactly is left for a corporate tax to collect? £220bn in profit last year. It's in the headline.

> £220bn

As others pointed out — this number is nonsense. See for example https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27380998.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#422

Post by fallingknife »

nly wrote: post #348
fallingknife wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You buy $10K of DOGE at $0.0001 in 12-1-2020 and it goes to $0.10 on 12-31. You now have $10MM in wealth, and will, owe $500K to the government. DOGE goes back down to $0.0001 on 1-1. Now you owe $500K of taxes and have $10K of assets. "But you should just sell 5% on 12-31 and you will have enough to pay taxes" you say. Yeah, you and everyone else who needs to pay wealth tax. Know what it looks like when everybody se…

Capital gains taxes are accrued on disposal. Until you sell you owe nothing

Yes, and that makes sense because it is income. A wealth tax doesn't do that or else it wouldn't really be a wealth tax.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#423

Post by fallingknife »

nivenkos wrote: post #364
fallingknife wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You buy $10K of DOGE at $0.0001 in 12-1-2020 and it goes to $0.10 on 12-31. You now have $10MM in wealth, and will, owe $500K to the government. DOGE goes back down to $0.0001 on 1-1. Now you owe $500K of taxes and have $10K of assets. "But you should just sell 5% on 12-31 and you will have enough to pay taxes" you say. Yeah, you and everyone else who needs to pay wealth tax. Know what it looks like when everybody se…

That isn't what a wealth tax is, or how they are implemented. Mainly land value tax, inheritance tax and property tax would be a good start. And we already have capital gains tax to cover the sale of appreciating assets as you describe (note it is only at sale).

The first is a more limited type of property tax, which we already have. We also have inheritance tax. The vast majority of wealth is held in capital assets like stocks and bonds (or DOGE), so if you don't tax that, then you aren't really taxing wealth, and taxing these assets is a nightmare.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#424

Post by rorykoehler »

Grustaf wrote: post #398
rorykoehler wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I want for nothing. Edit: I just want you be clear here. I think the tax rate is way too high even at 25% effective tax rate. The system is overburdening poor people no doubt about it but I also think we should not fudge the numbers by claiming we pay the top tax band rates as effective rate because it invalidates whatever else we say after that. It’s dishonest. IMO effective tax rate should be <5% and actually 0% fo…

As I wrote somewhere, most middle class people people in Europe pay way more than 25%, the average in Denmark being 45%. With payroll tax it would be more like 55%, and it really makes no sense NOT to count payroll taxes. And 5% is not realistic, even if you eliminate all the pork, corruption and inefficiencies. You can't provide education and healthcare and maintain infrastructure for 5%. I hate paying taxes but 20%…

You get the money from other places than income tax on the poor

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#425

Post by axlee »

de_Selby wrote: post #420
axlee wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The definition of a parasitic economy. Other countries are well in their rights to pressure Ireland as hard as they can to end this theft.

You seem to have a very strange definition of theft. Other countries are perfectly entitled to do similarly, as Netherlands does. Why is there not a focus on countries such as Bermuda here? They are the "tax havens" who make this possible in the first place.

>Why is there not a focus on countries such as Bermuda here? They are the "tax havens" who make this possible in the first place.

There is. Two wrongs don't make a right. The topic at hand is Ireland.

> Other countries are perfectly entitled to do similarly, as Netherlands does.

If every country acted the same way, there would not be a single functioning nation on earth. Their benefits only exist because other countries are losing out, which makes them parasites.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#426

Post by pc86 »

falcolas wrote: post #357
pc86 wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thread is specifically about income taxes. Everyone always wants to act like $0.75 of every dollar they make goes to The Man but it's just not true. Most of the money you make, you keep, to spend on your needs and wants. People making a quarter million a year whinging about income taxes is offensive by its own right, but it becomes even more so when they arbitrarily double the amount actually paid to try to prove…

Companies pay, behind the scenes, another chunk of payroll tax that is roughly equal to what the employee pays. It doesn’t make the total 50%, but the taxes paid on your salary are higher than just 25%, even if it doesn’t show up on your paystub.

So now we're including taxes paid by the company when discussing personal income tax rates?

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#427

Post by KMag »

maccard wrote: post #262
KMag wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the MS engineers in the U.S. have an effective income tax rate of 40%, not a marginal tax rate of 40%? Assuming Washington State takes about 10% marginal tax... that's about half their income coming in above the 32% federal tax bracket which starts at $163k. Is a starting salary for an engineer at Microsoft really around $320,000/yr.? If they're really pulling in that, one would hope they'd have some long-term…

Very few people _anywhere_ are paying a 40% effective tax rate. I wasn't aware of the Washington state tax rate though.

I'm not sure what it is in Washington. In New York 10 years ago, my marginal tax rate to the state was around 10%.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#428

Post by rorykoehler »

magicalhippo wrote: post #126
rorykoehler wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one pays that much in a progressive tax system. Every time this discussion comes up people spout off these numbers but if you calculate out how much you actually pay it's probably in the 20-30% of total salary range. That's still high but it's just dishonest and makes people look like idiots when they throw around 40% etc. If you are truly paying 40% of your income in tax you are earning millions and are benefitin…

I pay an effective income tax of 45% (14.1% "arbeidsgiveravgift"[1] and 36% income tax after deductions). And when I buy stuff I then have to pay 25% VAT (12% on groceries). So the effective tax is 59% except for groceries. [1]: https://www.skatteetaten.no/en/rates/employers-national-insu...

Do you get payments from the Statoil?

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#429

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ed_balls wrote: post #405
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Revenue 100mln+ - you have to tax revenue So banks and oil companies, which are naturally lots of revenue with a tiny amount of profit, would disappear, or become very small?

> If your company cannot pay 1% of the revenue you don't have a viable business. Average corporation spends more on accounting and consulting. Accounting costs banks and oil companies around 0.8%, so the will be fine. I don't remember the exact number.

Revenue is simply what you earn regardless of your costs. If some kind of business generates lots of revenues but has costs that are similar, then...they are screwed. You are basically proposing taxing money that moves through any company, regardless of the amount of money that has to pass out of it. Many companies just couldn't afford to exist anymore, we'd go back to hunting and gathering because even farming would no longer be economically viable.

Oil companies have huge capital costs to find and extract resources, if you look at what their profits are compared to their costs of doing business, then obviously taxing revenue isn't going to work.

Re: Microsoft Irish subsidiary paid zero corporate tax on £220bn profit last year

#430

Post by Grustaf »

rorykoehler wrote: post #424
Grustaf wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I wrote somewhere, most middle class people people in Europe pay way more than 25%, the average in Denmark being 45%. With payroll tax it would be more like 55%, and it really makes no sense NOT to count payroll taxes. And 5% is not realistic, even if you eliminate all the pork, corruption and inefficiencies. You can't provide education and healthcare and maintain infrastructure for 5%. I hate paying taxes but 20%…

You get the money from other places than income tax on the poor

The poor are already an insignificant tax base, I thought you meant 5% for the middle class.
Post reply on HN