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

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31–40 of 362 posts

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

#32
The complexity of this agreement and its execution are incredible. Not only getting alignment from 130 members, but a system by which companies report their revenue _and the cost of the revenue_ for every country! Future tax avoidance schemes will most likely try to "divert" their costs towards high-revenue countries like the US. After all, what is the profit margin of an iPhone sold in Romania?

For some context, corporate tax makes up around 7% of the US's federal revenue. While this legislation is important, it's a fraction of the overall revenue pie.

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

#33
post #29

When the benefits of creating a new country outweigh the costs (to shareholders), does it fall within the fiduciary duty of corporate leaders to form a new country?

I'm curious if the world-at-large would recognize a corporate country though. A country is only a country if other countries recognize it as such.

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

#34
post #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.

At least from my eyes, recent trends are exact opposite. Stock buyback returns the money to investors (by raising stock price). Huge bonuses to executives. The company itself is managed on a very thin buffer so that

a) When things go south, they can always ask the government for bail-out. Too big to fail & all that.

b) Anything affecting the company, in terms of regulations, can be shown to directly affect the employees and their job.

This may be a cynical take, but this is what I see.

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

#35
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

I worry about a place like Russia. I could easily see them signing on to this. 15% of profit, just like everywhere else. But the reality might turn out to be that, for 1% of profit, under the table to the right person, they'd only take 5% of profit, but supply you with the paperwork saying that they took 15%.

You know that someone will do that. If not Russia, someone else. There's too much money for it not to happen.

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

#36
The idea that politicians and bureaucracies can defer to external international conventions to be the bad-cop for wildly unpopular policy decisions - and then claim to be powerless to stop them - is anathema to democratic principles like national representation, consent of the governed, and other concepts of human rights.

This proposal seems like a global group of government affiliated people colluding to fleece each others' citizens instead of serving them. This is literally what conspiracy theorists have been predicting for decades, it's a terrible shame to make them right.

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

#37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The problem is that you're incentivizing the creation of vertical monopolies. A small restaurant is forced to rely on suppliers who would pass the revenue tax onto the restaurant. Meanwhile, McDonald's can afford to buy their own suppliers. McDonald's suppliers would technically not make any revenue, so they get to pay less in tax.

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

#38
post #29

When the benefits of creating a new country outweigh the costs (to shareholders), does it fall within the fiduciary duty of corporate leaders to form a new country?

Why would a corporation want a country?

If you don’t control the planet you’re just waiting for your competitors to crush you.

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

#40
This is a new kind of imperialism. The G7 makes up the rules, under the guise of fighting tax evasion or financing of terrorist activities. Then they make all the less powerful countries comply to those rules. If they do not, they get greylisted or blacklisted by some "international" watchdog, making it much harder for those countries to participate in the global economy. Of course only the poorer less influential countries will suffer under such arbitrary rules dictated by the G7. Nobody is going to greylist the US or Germany.

It is effectively a new mechanism for the G7 to encroach on the sovereignty of other countries.

And if you tell me, taxing international corporations is a good thing, I agree, but it is just a pretense. Just a setup. The G7 can also just tell those international corporations to fess up the money. They have enough influence to do just that. There is no reason to include Poland, Sri Lanka or Botwana or Bolivia in this agreement. The reason those countries are included is so that later on, the same agreement can be used to blackmail those countries.

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