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

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

#91

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…

It's a cartel of violence monopolies putting together a deal to raise their protection tax.

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it may be a cowardly way to divert responsibility I don't agree that this is so bad. This problem can only be solved by cooperating, otherwise companies can just shop around for the cheapest taxation rate.

But isn't it good that companies shop around for the cheapest tax rate?

Now they can still shop around, but probably on all the benefits they will receive.

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

#93

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…

As a normal guy, it is hard to understand the extremes to which a company will avoid taxes, basically getting all the profit to it's stakeholders, and none to the ones who made it possible for them to succeed (the workers, the ones who built the roads, the ones who provides the education to their kids...)

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

#94
post #59

“For decades, the United States has participated in a self-defeating international tax competition, lowering our corporate tax rates only to watch other nations lower theirs in response. The result was a global race to the bottom: Who could lower their corporate rate further and faster? No nation has won this race,” Translation, "We want to have these corporations in our country so badly that we keep paying more and…

> Who is actually going to pay for this in the end?

The companies them selfs I presume. If tax evasion is a necessary requirement for the existence of multinational companies, or—in other words—if multinational companies need government subsidies to stay afloat, perhaps they can just die in bankruptcy.

More realistically, the companies will do just fine paying their fare share of their profits back to the states that provide them with infrastructure and skilled workers. I mean it is not like a multi-million dollar yacht for your CEO is necessary for the company to continue its operation.

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

#95

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.

It's basically the shareholders that pay this tax - the corporate tax being described here only on applies to the profits, so salaries for example would be counted as an expense and not included in that. There's also not a lot of reason for this to be passed on to the consumer - if raising prices would let the company make more profit, it would make sense for them to do that anyway regardless of the specific tax rate…

Shareholders tend not to wind up holding the bag - higher corporate taxes result in higher prices at the consumer level.

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

#97
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what sense is it good that a company can make profit through a business activity in some country, but instead of paying the tax there, it pays it somewhere else?

It minimizes the amount of taxes paid overall, which weakens the state.

How is weakening the state a good thing?

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

#98

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.

What stops a person from creating a legal entity to funnel your activities through to personally avoid taxes? If the corporate tax rate is 0% and the individual tax rate tops out at 40%, the incentives to practice this kind of avoidance are strong.

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

#99
post #59

“For decades, the United States has participated in a self-defeating international tax competition, lowering our corporate tax rates only to watch other nations lower theirs in response. The result was a global race to the bottom: Who could lower their corporate rate further and faster? No nation has won this race,” Translation, "We want to have these corporations in our country so badly that we keep paying more and…

Isn't it a consensus position among economists that corporate taxation is inefficient and badly targeted? That taxes on individuals (wages, goods&services, capital gains) and on land are easier to collect and better at providing desired incentives? Really, isn't a "race to the bottom" a virtuous cycle here? Kinda weird to see Yellen -- Treasury Secretary and former Fed Chair -- making this kind of statement.

Actually a common reason given for having corporate taxes is they're easier to collect since you collect from fewer payers.

The biggest problem is they obscure tax burden. All tax burden is ultimately born by individuals. If you levy on the corporation instead of the individual directly, then the burden just gets divided between clients, suppliers, owners, and employees, and how it get divides ends up depending upon the relative price elasticity of demand for each of their services. When taxes are levied on individuals directly, how the burden gets distributed can instead be codified in law.

At least in that sense, corporate taxes are somewhat anti-democratic. Politicians and voters are out for blood on this, but what they really want is for the owners to pay more tax. That can be better accomplished by just taxing capital gains and carried interest.

There is, of course, also tremendous deadweight loss in that business decisions are often dictated by what results in the best tax treatment rather than what is economically optimal. The fact that it actually makes financial sense to entirely relocate operations to other countries is itself a pretty big indictment of taxes like this. That's a huge amount of resources being allocated in a way that does not result in any improvement to the goods and services.

But, to the point of this treaty, if they're not going to eliminate corporate taxes and tax owners directly instead, the next best thing is at least make the taxes the same everywhere so the relative change in rates will stop dictating business decisions.

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

#100
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought their whole schtick was "one world government," which is precisely what colluding to destroy tax competition is, as is banning capital flight which results from abusive policy.

colluding: to act together secretly or illegally in order to deceive or cheat someone. And please: capital flight being the results of abusive policy? Corporations and wealthy individuals will always try to avoid giving the fair share to the society that enabled their wealth in the first place: the case where wealth moves because of abusive policies is so marginal in the ocean of pure greed. Some countries are fiscal…

> wealthy individuals will always try to avoid giving the fair share to the society

Given that the median US household pays about $10k in taxes per year, and has a net worth of about $120k, perhaps we also need a global minimum wealth tax of say 8% per year, with a tax free allowance on the first $100m of net worth.

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