271–280 of 467 posts
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Is Ireland not a democracy? Can't they vote to change their own tax laws if they have a problem with them?
I am from Ireland and from talking to friends and family most people are pretty happy with it. We give them a pass on taxes and they employ thousands of high end engineers here. We then collect large income tax revenues from these workers and subsidise the rest of the country.
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Is Ireland not a democracy? Can't they vote to change their own tax laws if they have a problem with them?
Why would they do that ? The light tax they require from those entity still benefits them immensily, because those entity choose to pay them there instead of elsewhere. If Ireland introduced more taxes those big corps would move away, so they would actually receive less...
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Yep, the current corporate tax laws basically punish single-nation companies, while giving multinationals a free pass. International tax laws desperately need an overhaul.
Is Ireland not a democracy? Can't they vote to change their own tax laws if they have a problem with them?
Of course, Irish citizens could vote to withdraw from the EU and set their own tax that way, but that's not likely - they generally accept that the benefits of participating in the EU are worth giving up a little sovereignty.
This is unjust and unfair! Advice to local governments in EU countries and elsewhere: just write laws to tax such companies locally with "internet tax for companies with over 100 million USD in revenue" and do it NOW! These corporations will do this for so long as it is possible... they don't have any intent to stop it... it is legal, but it is unjust and unfair...
If you want to understand why we ended up here you need to get at the root of the issue. Exemptions, tax breaks, and writeoffs. Once those were created there will be an accountant that will max/min that thing. You may think 'oh flat tax'. The problem is unless everyone does flat tax no one can. This is due to putting yourself at an economic disadvantage in relation to other countries. An interesting prisoners' dilemma if you will.
I have to pay 40% of my income as income tax. I have HAD ENOUGH. This is infuriating. What can we do?
If it's the first one I can't disagree more, I'm paying kinda the same percentage and I'm happy to do so personally.
If it's the second one, I can't agree more that this is infuriating indeed.
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Is Ireland not a democracy? Can't they vote to change their own tax laws if they have a problem with them?
It's a representative democracy so no not really. We can vote on representatives but then they do whatever they want same as any other democracy.
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They are surely talking about Europe. Not US.
I live in Germany and pay between 20-25% of my income in income tax depending on how much I bill. I easily support a family of 4 on this. Rent, car, holidays, the lot.
When you count employer contributions, then you are quite close to 50%.
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Won't work because all truly wealthy people can secure their wealth against inflation, while poor people cannot. As a simple example, consider owning a house vs. renting. If you own the house, the actual number doesn't matter. If you're renting, the ratio between rent and salary is highly critical for your lifestyle.
Add a UBI and it would work. There needs to be an economic floor which ensures there is no destitution. The aim isn't to get rid of wealth. The system now isn't working because wealthy people are securing their income and wealth without paying tax at the expense of social and civil programs.
A loose monetary policy (a la NMT or Keynes) also needs taxation in order to destroy currency. Currency works in a loop. Governments/issuers make USD and pay for stuff (UBI, etc). The currency must complete its life cycle by returning home. It's circulation that makes currency currency.
Without taxation, we'd have currency collapse, not inflation. Printing money without sufficient taxation, we have what we're seeing currently: asset value inflation.
Also, I think we're beginning to understand that "general inflation" isn't really a thing. The price of investable assets isn't connected to the price of consumable goods. Wealth disparities are a big part of this. In theory, if Jeff Bezos and such tried to spend their earnings... we'd have inflation. But when personal income and CG is measured in billions, it's basically impossible to actually consume as much as you earn.
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> Why on earth do you think its fair for US based organizations to spread across the globe, reap the huge profits from that but funnel all the cash back into the US Random guess, they're American :-) Facebook, Google & co. are absolutely ravaging local economies, pardon me, disrupting legacy economies all over the world and a small chunk of that ends up as compensation in the US. The rest of that, FAANG are just sitt…
I'm not from US. And it works the same for most countries, it just happens that those companies are based on the US and very visible, but if there is a EU corp that's heavily successful and all the development is done in EU why wouldn't the profit be booked in EU? (Other countries mostly have sales, that's what sales/vat are for) If instead of being a digital company it was a physical good company, would it be so con…