141–150 of 449 posts
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What about scrapping corp tax, and replacing with a higher VAT rate?
The public would go mental. VAT is seen as being most onerous on low earners. Something like a very low "turnover tax" for businesses could potentially work though. We take about £40bn in corporation tax each year. Total business revenue in the UK is around £3.2tn, so a 1.25% turnover tax would cover it.
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Apple sells a huge number of physical devices - phones and tablets. They created a new market, and now governments are able to collect VAT and sometimes customs tariffs on all those smartphones. Why not let Apple have what's left?
> Why not let Apple have what's left? Because other businesses also create products that collect VAT and still pay their taxes. Why should Apple be any different? To promote those that are big enough to avoid taxation to make them even bigger?
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Well, how much Apple money stays outside of the US because it was paid there? Also, how much VAT and other taxes are charged in an iPhone sold in Europe Same for Facebook, their ads generate VAT. Their employees there pay income tax.
If I didn't buy an iPhone, I'd buy a different phone. The VAT would still be there. If I didn't use Facebook I'd be using a different image sharing service, or chat service, or whatever. The VAT would still be there. Because I have a budget to spend on entertainment, and various companies compete for that budget. We pay those taxes, Facebook/Apple doesn't 'generate' anything, that money would be spent on a different…
I just find it funny how the solution to lack of money is always wanting to squeeze more taxes from the companies and people instead of optimizing goverment spending (optimizing, not cutting)
Ah of course, living withing your means is now called 'austerity' and it's bad because?
The UK press seems to have a field day when it comes to multi-national corporations not paying corporation tax. We will no doubt shortly have a number of MPs telling us how unacceptable this is and that Facebook need to start paying up. This all irks me a little. 362 Facebook staff on an average salary of say £65,000 will contribute at least £7,230,696.60 in taxes and NI to HMRC. Let's also not pretend that £65,000 i…
I don't think it's advocacy of "aggressive taxation policies" to argue that the corporation tax bill for a profitable multinational earning millions in UK revenue ought to be higher than the income tax bill for an individual person on the UK average wage. YMMV. How many of Facebook's 362 UK staff would be unemployed for any significant period if they relocated to Dublin? How many would instead be adding value to a co…
If Facebook shut down UK operations then, for starters, Facebook would be paying no tax at all in the UK and Ireland would gain the difference.
If the Facebook UK staff relocated to Dublin then the loss to the UK economy would be exponentially worse.
The similar thing happens here in the US at the State level. It isn't uncommon for large companies to pack up and move their operations to lower tax States, or to actually bargain with individual States over who will give them the best deal. Here in Massachusetts, Fidelity packed up and left for North Carolina and Texas - they found it was cheaper to move employees than pay the taxes.
This will likely continue as long as different countries (and States) have different tax schemes - and that isn't going away anytime soon.
Soon we'll probably have a renewed call for a lower tax rate here in the US for companies to repatriate those revenues.
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I'm a citizen and I think that. Perhaps you describe most citizens, but certainly not all.
I run my own business here in Germany and I'm all for getting every penny out of every tax loophole possible. But then in my peer group I'm the only one who thinks that way. Most people would rather want everyone else to be as highly taxed as themselves than lower taxes overall it seems.
Tax evasion ends up pushing up taxes for everyone else, it's not your government that you're short changing, it's your family, it's your friends, it's your neighbours. This may sound harsh, but it's just the reality of the situation. I hope you will give it a second thought next time.
Re-posting my comment from the Guardian thread that came up earlier ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10371728 ) Corporation tax in the UK is payable on 'profits subject to corporation tax'. In laymen's terms this is roughly equivalent to to accounting profit. Employee salaries, bonuses, etc are generally deductible; if you pay me 50K, that's 50K out of your bottom line. The employees in question likely pay a va…
What about scrapping corp tax, and replacing with a higher VAT rate?
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A sale tax only system would be a nice gift for the wealthy.
Could you develop? I am genuinely curious.
The marginal value of money decreases as the absolute value increases.
Getting a raise from $1k per month to $2k per month is more significant than from $2k to $3k
Meaning that if you earn more, you'll usually save more.
So now stuff is taxed at 50% (VAT or Sales tax), so everything will cost more, but it will be easier for the rich to afford it, because of no income tax, and harder for those with less income (their income tax was not high to begin with)
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This argument is not valid. Yes they are paying VAT and income tax. So what? They should also be paying corporation tax. A start up competitor would have to pay VAT, income tax and corporation tax.
Not if that competitor made a loss the way facebook has here.