781–790 of 931 posts
Sounds like it's almost a tarrif, and we've got ample evidence that the country that imposes a tarrif on itself is the country that ends up paying for it in the long run
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Land taxes are based on the value of the land, not the size of the land. The property tax system already performs land value assessments. Land taxes are highly progressive. Note that land taxes are only assessed on the value of the land, not the value of any buildings on the land. This incentivizes land owners to put the land to its highest and best use.
> Land taxes are highly progressive. Maybe in the 19th century, where this idea originated. Economics of business have changed too significantly to use it as a one size fits all taxation scheme. It may have made sense when revenue was somewhat proportional to the amount of land a business occupied, but that no longer holds true in the age of skyscrapers and digital revenue generation. An internet company in a 10-stor…
That's irrelevant, because the ultimate owners of the corporation - the shareholders - will always be in demand of land. Real estate explains most of the growth in wealth inequality in the US over the last 60 years:
https://medium.com/the-ferenstein-wire/a-26-year-old-mit-gra...
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If you’re going down this route, many will argue that all forms of income tax are equally “wrong”. Henry George - a 19th century political economist - proposed exactly this, and suggested the only thing that should be taxed should be land: impossible to hide from a tax inspector, potentially a waste to the public commons if useful land that could be exploited isn’t and you can even protect land you wish to keep prist…
The deadweight loss of taxation is much lower for a land tax than an income tax. The deadweight loss is the economic resources allocated to complying with the tax. The armies of tax lawyers would be able to perform other economically productive activities if they weren't pouring over the tax code. Pigovian taxation is even better. Taxing gas is a great example. Gas consumers emit carbon which has a cost for society.…
The land tax has zero deadweight loss, because what it's taxing is pure economic rent, rather than production of value:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_value_tax
Any tax imposed on anything except scarce natural resources will be penalizing the creation of wealth, and impose deadweight losses.
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Taxing revenue would kill small margin high input businesses, lead to double taxation, encourage vertical integration. Makes no sense outside of small business where they get a heavily discounted rate since it's usually there to save them the hassle of keeping expenses.
> lead to double taxation I’m not sure why double taxation matters so much. If I get a salary then use some of that salary to get a haircut, the money is taxed twice but we think of this as normal. Human W2 taxpayers are not able to write off expenses such as driving to work (or even a home office), yet these are clearly costs of doing business. Why should corporations get additional rights that aren’t afforded to hu…
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> 3. The parliament (for the US the Senate) ratifies the treaty, making it binding. Under international law, ratification happens when a state’s international representatives (head of state, ministers, ambassadors) formally lodge instruments of ratification with the depositary. (See Article 2(1)(b), Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.) When the US Senate "ratifies" a treaty, that is not ratification under inter…
International law is very much a gentlemen's agreement, though. It's not like domestic law. Domestic law always wins.
If a country's domestic law violates international law, the extent to which that country gets away with it depends a lot on how powerful that country is. Great powers have much more ability to violate international law with impunity than small countries do.
And in this particular case, it is not that US law and international law are actually in conflict. It is just they assign different meanings to the same words. Even the US government generally accepts the internationally standard meanings in international fora.
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The agreement changes the way a company revenue is recognized and allocated between jurisdictions. I suspect it may require to change the tax treaties between those countries. It's not just changing the corporate tax rate.
From what I can tell with what's out there on there internet, the main change is allowing local jurisdictions to tax a company on the money they make in that country, even if they have no presence there. So again, it would just increase revenue for the US, and I see no reason they wouldn't agree to it. At the end of the day, I don't think the US had to compromise here. I think it's universally better for the US gover…
Imagine running a small business and somebody from Algeria wishes to purchase your software. Is the $5 you make worth having to file Algerian taxes?
I mention this, because this is something that happened with YouTube this month. Content creators have to give their tax info to YouTube because the US is now charging taxes from creators outside the US on money they made on US customers.
Edit: as was pointed out - there's a minimum $10 million threshold. That makes it far more reasonable.
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> Only the ECB can "print" money > expanding national debt I feel the need to point out that currency debasement is a fundamentally different thing from taking out loans/issuing bonds/other debt. If anything, currency debasement reduces national debt in real terms, by devaluing the currency it's denominated in. I'm not especially clear on the situation, but I was under the impression that Greece's problem was that no…
Extremely short analysis. After 2008 Greece's GDP crashed by 50% over several years and stabilized 2016. It's pretty obvious that when you have a shrinking economy that your real debt burden is going up over time. 100% debt to GDP will turn into 200% and it's not because of irresponsible spending or low taxation. If anything you have to lend more money to Greece and only give the most productive companies/sections of…
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From what I can tell with what's out there on there internet, the main change is allowing local jurisdictions to tax a company on the money they make in that country, even if they have no presence there. So again, it would just increase revenue for the US, and I see no reason they wouldn't agree to it. At the end of the day, I don't think the US had to compromise here. I think it's universally better for the US gover…
It will also massively increase the complexity of doing taxes for smaller businesses. It wouldn't surprise me if it lead to even more websites going "sorry, we value customers from your country, but we cannot serve this content to you". Imagine running a small business and somebody from Algeria wishes to purchase your software. Is the $5 you make worth having to file Algerian taxes? I mention this, because this is so…
So that would never happen. You’d have to make a ton of money there before you have to file taxes. And it’ll be worth it by then.
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As a business I can take out a mortgage and give you a rental for the exact same price. The income and “expenses” cancel out, so the profit of your business is zero. Since this rental is an income producing activity the IRS (and other tax bodies) allow you to depreciate ( https://www.irs.gov/publications/p946 ) the value of additions on the land (I.e the building) on a straight line over a 28 year period. The basis o…
It's fair that you don't pay tax when don't make a profit after taking depreciation into account. Depreciation isn't a cheat code that lets you avoid tax on profit. If you depreciate the building more than its actual market value depreciation, you owe back what you deducted when you sell the building.
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I can’t believe we as a society don’t adopt this idea more. Punishment should be a percentage of taxable income of that year. The impact should equally felt regardless of your current financial status. Extending this to a corporation would simply put them in back foot in a market.. which is indeed the punishment.
Percentage of revenue seems like the least likely to be gamed metric.