151–160 of 362 posts
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?
Hahaha, and then be saddled with paying for defence infrastructure and education?"
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How is weakening the state a good thing?
State leaders have no incentive to create value, but rather to keep power. Companies must create valuable things people want, or be out of business in a very short time.
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I think you're misunderstanding the concept here, this has nothing to do with dodging responsibility for unpopular policies. If you think countries shouldn't tax corporate profits at all, great, but that's a separate discussion; this is predicated on the assumption that all countries desire a non-zero corporate tax, and just need a way to get there. The point of this measure is to avoid a coordination trap that leads…
Low Corporate tax rates invite corporations into your country. This benefits poor countries more.
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...until a poorer country adopts a lower rate, and the corporation leaves. That's the trap this avoids.
It's not a trap. The money will just never go to those countries now.
Imagine you and I are neighboring farmers who irrigate our fields from the same river. Our farms grow, as does our water use, until we're each using half the water. I buy a bigger water pump and start sucking up most of the water, leaving you with dying crops. So you go out and buy an even bigger pump; now you're getting most of the water, and some of my crops are dying.
What's the result? There are only two outcomes here: either we agree to split the water, or we spend more and more money on larger and larger pumps until neither of us has any profit left over. The latter outcome is the "trap" - neither of us wants to spend every spare dollar on pumps, but unless we come up with some agreement, that's what will happen.
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.
Pretty basic megarich person accounting: You realize zero income, you just hold a lot of valuable assets, and you pay no taxes.
"But surely they must have some income to live on!" you argue.
Nope, you get a $10 million loan backed by your assets. You spend that loan, which is not income, tax free. When the time comes to pay back that loan, obviously the next move is to get a $20 million loan. You can keep rolling these loans tax-free until you die. "Aha, now the estate pays the taxes!" except there are a multitude of other loopholes for evading inheritance taxes.
On paper and at first glance it seems like everything is fair (which is the goal, to seem fair), but only the most incompetent ultra-wealthy person is pulling anything close to their own weight when it comes to taxes.
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Gee, it's almost like taxing corporate profits twice has caused massive distortions everywhere: biggest stock price bubble, tax residency shopping, etc Tax the wealthy. Don't let them take "charitable" deductions or use tax-exempt IRAs. 100% inheritance tax above $4 million.
> Tax the wealthy. Please don't tax the wealthy. I have a couple friends who are in top 0.1%. They have enough money for the rest of their lives. If you start taking money from them, they will simply stop working and start spending more time with friends and family. The correct goal is not to take money from the rich (which can be achieved by taxing them; this is what Bolsheviks did and it resulted in millions of dea…
Things are getting bad enough to where "cutting ones nose to spite the face" starts to make sense, redistributing the misery the rich have insulated themselves from.
Just my feeling on the situation.
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…
Raising corporate taxes is generally popular, not "wildly unpopular." For example, in a recent poll 65% of Americans support raising corporate taxes [1]. This number has been fairly steady over time. It's even higher when you ask about closing loopholes that allow international tax havens, as this 15% minimum tax agreement is trying to do--70-85% support [2]. The only terrible shame here is you laundering your opinio…
The flavor of democracy we practice has been good. However, we must be honest enough to admit it can degenerate into mob rule, which generally means decisions are made by the most gullible and ignorant among us on any specific topic.
Simple example: There is no way my vote on a whole range of medical issues should have the same value as that of a medical professional, such as my wife. While I have a reasonable understanding of biology, the difference in knowledge and understanding in this area of knowledge is massive.
In other words, I am as ignorant about medical matters as she is about engineering. It isn’t an insult to classify me as ignorant in this category. It’s the truth. Why do our votes have the same value?
So, yes, 65% of Americans want to raise business taxes. They are ignorant fools being led by the nose by politicians using this ignorance to gain votes at their expense.
The most important reality to understand us that politicians are never negatively affected by some of the nonsense they push. They don’t lose their jobs, careers or level of pay. On the other hand, the fools who buy their nonsense very often end-up with the short end of the stick.
Raise business taxes? No problem. More businesses will go to China if they are able to. If they can’t, they’ll reduce costs through automation. Some will do both.
In a globalized economy we need lower taxes. Zero would be an even better number. Anyone who thinks otherwise suffers from a serious deficiency in perspective.
Don't governments have enough money? I think they could do with a lot less actually.
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…
Raising corporate taxes is generally popular, not "wildly unpopular." For example, in a recent poll 65% of Americans support raising corporate taxes [1]. This number has been fairly steady over time. It's even higher when you ask about closing loopholes that allow international tax havens, as this 15% minimum tax agreement is trying to do--70-85% support [2]. The only terrible shame here is you laundering your opinio…
Did a quick cross ref for the non-signatories ranked by GDP: https://pastebin.com/YyYTV65i I'd predict corporations to move to countries on this list that are non-sanctioned, high rule of law index, and easy to do business in. Ireland and Estonia in particular come to mind.