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Global minimum corporate tax: 130 nations to support U.S. proposal

cnbc.com

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Re: Global minimum corporate tax: 130 nations to support U.S. proposal

#21
post #5

Corporations should be taxed on revenue, not profit.

Restaurants and other low margin businesses would cease to exist under this plan.

That’s a common misunderstanding, restaurants are low margin due to competition. As long as the industry moves in lockstep with cost increases the margins stay the same.

Sales taxes for example vary widely yet have minimal impact on low margin business. Lower them and customers save money but restaurants margins stay the same.

Re: Global minimum corporate tax: 130 nations to support U.S. proposal

#22
post #13

Anyone got a list of the countries? I tried googling around a bit to try to find it. At least other articles[1] mention all G20 countries are on board. That would include India, Russia and most importantly China. [1] https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57573380

https://www.oecd.org/tax/beps/oecd-g20-inclusive-framework-m...

Re: Global minimum corporate tax: 130 nations to support U.S. proposal

#23
This alone:

>>The deal also reportedly includes a framework to eliminate digital services taxes, which targeted the biggest American tech companies.

>>In their place, officials agreed to a new tax plan that would be linked to the places where multinationals are actually doing business, rather than where they are headquartered.

Was enough to address this concern:

>>If widely enacted, the GMT would effectively end the practice of global corporations seeking out low-tax jurisdictions like Ireland and the British Virgin Islands to move their headquarters to, even though their customers, operations and executives are located elsewhere.

Not only can the concerns that are being used to justify a global minimum tax be addressed through other means, the tax agreement itself is a terrible policy, because it freezes the evolution of tax policy for the whole world, presupposing that an income tax, and specifically a corporate income tax, is ideal.

There are structural problems with the corporate income tax, and many economists argue for eliminating it altogether, and replacing it with other types of taxes (e.g. a transaction tax, a carbon tax, a land tax, etc). But this locks it in place as a constant for all countries.

It's exactly this kind of homogenization of governance that Europe had to get past to prosper:

https://aeon.co/amp/essays/how-the-fall-of-the-roman-empire-...

Re: Global minimum corporate tax: 130 nations to support U.S. proposal

#24
post #5

Corporations should be taxed on revenue, not profit.

Restaurants and other low margin businesses would cease to exist under this plan.

Why? If it were applied across the board, then every business would just treat it like any other business expense and price accordingly. On a theoretical zero-margin business it would translate dollar-for-dollar right to the customer, yes?

Re: Global minimum corporate tax: 130 nations to support U.S. proposal

#26
Imposing taxes on a legal entity always seemed fishy to me.

Politically, it sounds great to say, "Make the corporations pay their share!", but who exactly are we targeting with these taxes? Is it the rich executives? Why not just raise taxes on the rich directly?

I suspect in most cases the tax burden is just shifted onto the lower-income workers or the customers somehow.

Re: Global minimum corporate tax: 130 nations to support U.S. proposal

#28

Imposing taxes on a legal entity always seemed fishy to me. Politically, it sounds great to say, "Make the corporations pay their share!", but who exactly are we targeting with these taxes? Is it the rich executives? Why not just raise taxes on the rich directly? I suspect in most cases the tax burden is just shifted onto the lower-income workers or the customers somehow.

> who exactly are we targeting with these taxes? Is it the rich executives?

Lot of times the money were not handed to the employee, executives included. They just stay at the company or paid to the financial company that owned the companies.

Re: Global minimum corporate tax: 130 nations to support U.S. proposal

#30

This alone: >>The deal also reportedly includes a framework to eliminate digital services taxes, which targeted the biggest American tech companies. >>In their place, officials agreed to a new tax plan that would be linked to the places where multinationals are actually doing business, rather than where they are headquartered. Was enough to address this concern: >>If widely enacted, the GMT would effectively end the…

As if "locking it in" weren't bad enough, the billionaires also propose to lock in the USA system that they have already completely reconstructed to their own benefit.
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