111–120 of 167 posts
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There is a theory saying that Brexit campaign was financed by the people afraid of the EU banking transparency laws, that would threaten many UK-based tax havens.
If you look at the data, there’s plenty of EU tax havens to use
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A consumption tax (a tax on sales) is proportional to your lifestyle. If someone chooses to buy a gas guzzler v8, they should pay taxes on the gallons they burn to pay for roads and emissions. Consumption tax is also easier to be set to a geographic location, and harder to shift to different tax jurisdiction. Harder to play games in comparison to an income tax. But nobody wants it. Very unpopular in a vote because, p…
Consumption taxes are regressive, serving to further exacerbate income inequality.
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A consumption tax (a tax on sales) is proportional to your lifestyle. If someone chooses to buy a gas guzzler v8, they should pay taxes on the gallons they burn to pay for roads and emissions. Consumption tax is also easier to be set to a geographic location, and harder to shift to different tax jurisdiction. Harder to play games in comparison to an income tax. But nobody wants it. Very unpopular in a vote because, p…
Rich people rarely buy stuff in proportion to their greater income (earning 100x more but not buying cars worth 100x more, etc). This would mainly affect the not-so-rich people, who, given fixed purchase budgets, would probably respond by consuming less, which is likely to hurt businesses with lower demand for just about any product.
Certain items can be excempt from sales tax, such as groceries.
> Likely to hurt businesses
Since when is the HN crowd worried about hurting businesses. Most people here want higher taxes for corporations.
I am fairly certain 40% of all citizens would shift their income to a tax haven if possible.
This is a good point, actually. Attributing the blame to an extreme minority of people (billionaires) is counter-productive. The problem is not their individual moral failings (however numerous) but the system that permits them to exist and incentivizes their parasitic and exploitative practices.
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Based on that premise: Should we, as a society, permit a select few to shift their wealth to tax havens or should those folks also join in with everyone else? Are those sheltering their taxes more privileged that they deserve being able skirt the rules others can't, even if others would do so given the same circumstances?
Yes. We should allow free competition between tax jurisdictions. If another state is willing to provide better services in any regard, people should be free to decide what suits them best. What is the meaning of private property if individuals can not move it abroad as they wish? A more productive line of inquiry might be an examination of what tax authorities can do to make their schemes more palatable. Perhaps the…
Move your money wherever you want, after you paid your taxes.
I am fairly certain 40% of all citizens would shift their income to a tax haven if possible.
Corporations being able to book their profits wherever they find it most convenient to book them, is utterly unreasonable. They make their profits in specific markets, and should be paying their taxes there. Profits made from selling in the US should be paid in the US, profits made from selling in Germany should be paid there. The problem is, profits are the end result of a lot of complex corporate operations across…
I might even go as far as saying that to a certain extent fiat money disappearing is better for the economy than the government allocating it towards something that is a net loss in terms of actual productivity (compared to something else the same people/resources could be doing instead).
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That extreme minority of people have a lot more power to influence the system than the common man. It makes one wonder how the system got to be the way it is in the first place.
I don't mean to diminish their effect on the world. What I'm saying is that if we take down Epstein and lapidate Bezos and whatnot, some other unscrupulous person will take their place.
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Unfortunately, that would make some entire categories of business non-viable. Any business that relies on importing raw materials would be hit with punishing taxes—unless their margins were huge, or their local & labour costs were orders of magnitude higher than their import raw material costs, they would likely not be able to operate. Effectively, you would be taxing them on revenue, rather than profit.
They wouldn't get to deduct the costs of importing those raw materials, but they would get to deduct the costs (labour, probably) of refining them and making something out of those raw materials. And if they sell back to the country they imported raw materials from, they get to deduct the raw material costs from those profits (assuming that country uses a similar scheme). But you're right, for a company that makes th…
It would be a problem if it meant that an entire category of product suddenly became completely impossible to profitably produce in the country—particularly if it was one that had been produced in significant quantity there for some time.