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I read about tax avoidance schemes like corporate inversions or sending all your patents to a company in some tax free haven and licensing your patents from your company for all your profits, and so on, and it makes me really mad. Companies making many billions of dollars paying no taxes. My intuition is that if I personally came up with a cute "gotcha" like this where I wound up paying zero in taxes because of some…
When I worked as a tax lawyer, we created structures and defended cases that saved our clients hundreds of millions of dollars. At this scale, paying for our services was a no-brainer.
On top of that, big companies lobby lawmakers to make the tax system favorable to them. This makes sense for the same reason: paying a couple million dollars to create/maintain a provision that saves $100M/yr is a no-brainer.
I'm not saying any of this is right or good (and I am no longer a tax lawyer; I now build tools that help people with disabilities). I'm just saying this is why it makes sense that companies can walk a fine line on taxes, save tons of money, and you and I cannot.
Imagine a world where instead of inventing new interpretations of the concept of 'rights', we respected private property rights.
"Lets not argue over the interpretation of the concept of rights, lets just accept my interpretation". Why didn't anybody think of it earlier!
Would a right for the public to know the specific steps an entity uses to retain property go even further afield from the original premise?
Hopefully this clarifies my intent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_and_positive_rights#:....
Stacking new positive rights upon each other seems like an inferior solution as compared to the original, simple solution of respecting private property.
Where does the expansion of positive rights end?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
People have tried and the problem is when you want to bring the money back to use it on something. Say you setup a licensing company on an island nation that use to then charge yourself $10,000 a month to license the software you wrote... that you transferred there. Now lets say you want to buy a house and you bring back a certain amount of money. That money is taxable and that is where people mess up they don't repo…
You're partly correct but here's an overview of what's really going on. The money is "brought back" (if it even left) into segregated accounts in the US. Most of that US off-shore money is in New York to avoid currency risks, etc. Then those accounts are used as collateral (if needed. I doubt if anybody says to Apple, "Where's your collateral?") for loans. Also, the biggest money havens in the world are 2 US states,…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Presumably, people who are international enough aren't being taxed by the US in the first place.
But who would have their own government taxes to dodge.
i am not in the US but "many" countries around the world use something called "MAT" or minimum alternate tax, wherein if you calculate taxes which is like zero or even a percentage lower than the limits mentioned, you are forced to pay MAT instead. forced as in, you can claim a loss and all but you still pay MAT taxes which usually are around 18%.
If you claim a loss what are they taxing, revenue?
its like saying to a kid who doesnt want to go to school because his knee is bruised. cry all you want, you will go to school.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
LOL this is primarily why many self employed people eventually incorporate. Tax reduction. You should try it some time.
I can’t figure out what to deduct that is more than the $12.2k single filer deductible. I have $500k/yr I’d love to pay less taxes on at the moment due to a booming side business + healthy salary. Can’t find any deductions worth my time and the CPA filing fees.
Summers is right, of course releasing M3 would be a no-brainer. Can we ever reconcile accounting and economics? With its excess cash reserves, if Apple paid tax, absolutely nothing about its business would change. The more profound perspective is, who is really the tax collector then? Who is playing that economic role? Obviously these giant tax-evading companies. They are accumulating huge stockpiles of cash they can…
Why does US tax money coming back into the country and at what rate? Wouldn't you want to encourage money to be made elsewhere and brought back to the states for investment? or am i fundamentally misunderstanding economics?
It's only right for US corporations to be taxed the same way. Most of these insane financial contortions are done because they aren't taxed on foreign, non-repatriated earnings - creating an incentive to convert domestic earnings into 'foreign' ones, that get repatriated the next time there's a tax holiday.
I personally would love to earmark my personal income as foreign-sourced, and to not pay any taxes on it until I get a tax discount... But if I were to do that, I would go to jail for tax evasion.
I read about tax avoidance schemes like corporate inversions or sending all your patents to a company in some tax free haven and licensing your patents from your company for all your profits, and so on, and it makes me really mad. Companies making many billions of dollars paying no taxes. My intuition is that if I personally came up with a cute "gotcha" like this where I wound up paying zero in taxes because of some…
I feel like if that's the case, then you shouldn't expect the US Government to participate in the enforcement of your patent. You licensed in some tax haven? Then adjudicate it in that same tax haven, we want no part of your disputes over it.