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U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

nytimes.com

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Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#171

Post by zionic »

gher-shyu3i wrote: post #161
zionic wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Do you use public roads or sidewalks? Yes, and that is paid for by my outrageous property/vehicle registration/gas taxes. Huge portions of our cities have roads in near 3rd-world conditions. The major arteries of every top-50 US city grind to a halt twice a day, and you have been conditioned to believe this is normal/acceptable. Our bridges, roads, and railways are falling apart. > Do you live, work or shop in a str…

I agree with your sentiment overall. > How does 30-50% of your take home not impact your "overall well being"? How do you respond to the claim that if income and other taxes were lower, then everything would go up in price to compensate for the extra liquidity in the market?

Perhaps initially, but the additional demand would drive economic expansion via demand for more workers to fill said demand no?

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#172

Post by permo-w »

ajkdhcb2 wrote: post #157

You will never close all the loopholes. It is impossible and the real people in power don't want it. High taxes, like in most of current society, will always mostly keep the poor poor and eliminate the middle class; politicians just dress it up as redistributing money from the rich.

based on what?

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#173

Post by JamesBarney »

dnautics wrote: post #135
stephen_cagle wrote: post #129

I thought I remembered at some point (might have been more than a decade ago) that I heard that most economist thought that corporate income taxes were basically a bad idea? Is this no longer held as a valid belief? Long term, I would almost prefer if we just moved to taxing people's assets. Maybe we can force corporations to basically pay out most of their profits to shareholders to avoid having them get too large?

taxing people's assets is complicated as hell. How much is your house worth. And before you answer that question, have you been in a bubbly market? Quotes for houses in the place I've been have gone up by 10% in the last 4 months. Now, suppose you have bought a house and suddenly all of your neighbors are rich. An appraiser comes to your place and suddenly you owe taxes and you basically get evicted from your home un…

Taxing people's assets are complicated. But not because of houses. There are large portions of the U.S. where people are taxed based on their house value. Like in Houston where I pay ~3% of the value of my house every year in taxes.

The real tricky part is small businesses. If I run a small software consulting business or own a bar how much is that worth? Is that the value of the software consulting business with me or without me?

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#175

Post by rsj_hn »

wolfi1 wrote: post #106
mgolawala wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does anyone know why this approach would be preferred over the use of VAT (Value added tax) instead of a corporate profit tax? I recall a US presidential candidate in the most recent election cycle mentioning this as the solution to the current corporate tax avoidance problem. In fact it was a major part of his campaign. I am not very knowledgeable of the downsides of a VAT approach and how it could be gamed, but wha…

simple, VAT is paid by the customer not by the corporation

By imposing a tax the company must raise the price of the goods to pay for the tax (or produce the good more cheaply, say with fewer inputs, which reduces the quality of the good somehow, which is the same as raising the price). At a higher cost, fewer goods are sold and so the firm has less revenue and thus lower total profits as well as hiring fewer workers. So the tax burden falls on workers, consumers, shareholders. Exactly how it falls on each group is the theory of tax incidence which has nothing to do with whomever needs to collect the tax for the government. The fact that A collects the tax and sends the check does not mean that A pays the tax.

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#176

Post by zionic »

mrguyorama wrote: post #166
zionic wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I'm surprised to hear this sentiment, but honestly I think there's a huge amount that the government does that is invisible to most citizens. It's invisible because it provides no true value to them. Right now you and I are paying for some NSA hacker to compromise American telecom networks, 13 carrier battle groups to put around the ocean doing nothing, literal armies of people in a hundred plus bases on literally e…

If the US government is taking $10k in taxes from you, you're making over $80k a year.

>If the US government is taking $10k in taxes from you, you're making over $80k a year.

This is an extreme lower bound looking only at FICA. In reality you have:

-FICA

-State income tax

-Local taxes for your city

-Social security and medicare tax

-Sales tax at point of purchase

-Property taxes (directly if you own a home, indirectly + margin if you rent)

-Gas tax

-Vehicle registration fees/taxes when purchasing

-The payroll taxes your employer pays for paying you, directly suppressing your income/earning potential.

-A whole host of taxes on any capital gains, inheritance, gifts, your phone bill, the list goes on and on.

When you _only_ look at your tax burden in terms of what gets deducted from your check you get a highly misleading figure. This doesn't even factor in what happens when the gov inflates the currency and "taxes" your cash holdings.

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#177

Post by BitwiseFool »

jsnnxjsn wrote: post #50
zionic wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a US taxpayer who sees the fraud, abuse, and general mismanagement of my tax money why would I willingly support the same government getting more? It is incredibly depressing how little I get from the government vs how much they take from me. The entire system is a sham and I honestly don't want to support it anymore. I'm working as hard as I can to try and escape it at the earliest possible moment.

The US is actually not that bad. One thing I think many ppl who have not spent time in developing countries overlook is how much stuff just works in the US. Compared to most EU countries US taxes are much lower. People like to point to Singapore as low tax example, but the difference in scale is such that the comparison is not meaningful.

>"I think many ppl who have not spent time"

Please just write out the word "people". You're already using full words and normal punctuation everywhere else.

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#178

Post by onetimeusename »

I am concerned about two things seldom discussed by people who endorse increasing tax revenues in ways like this.

1) I don't like unelected, global, IGOs who have powers over citizens without citizens' consent, such as forcing a tax increase in tax havens which crushes local autonomy in those places. The US can do this by embargoing a tax haven.

Imagine if you are a resident and business owner in Monaco, etc., who is now facing an increase in corporate tax that is only necessary because the US decided to threaten sanctions against your country to make it less attractive to (ostensibly) US corporations. You could make a moral argument about what tax revenue should be but I don't think it's moralistic because of my next point.

2) No one ever discusses fiscal responsibility or whether tax revenue is well spent. The solution is always to increase taxes or to increase the power to collect taxes.

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#179

Post by teachingassist »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #160
teachingassist wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporations have a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder value. I understand this statement to mean "Corporations have a fiduciary obligation to maximize shareholder value [within the law]". Do corporations have a fiduciary obligation to change the law, as in your interpretation?

Yes! Lobbying. A lot of laws are essentially written by corporations for corporations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

I get that corporations do lobby, but I was questioning whether they have an obligation to lobby.
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