321–330 of 362 posts
Apologies for being cynical, but this agreement is just slight change of music in the 0% corporate tax dance.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An agreed upon international base tax rate is the wrong solution. This becomes a minimum wage for nations and removes the incentive to compete to be the home of corporate headquarters. Border adjustment tax removes the tax shelter loophole and strengthens the incentive to be a good place to headquarter a corporation.
Nations can still compete. Stability, rule of law, infrastructure investment, etc. Everything except letting companies use the country as a pirate's cave
As for generic infrastructure, most companies need roads, but other infrastructure is often handled by the private sector e.g. airports, ports, telecoms.
Realistically lots of countries can meet this minimum bar and it doesn't require high tax rates to do so. The countries that have lower corporate tax rates than this new attempt at a minimum standard do have working rule of law, stability and infrastructure. They aren't Somalia. So it's unclear how much scope countries have to compete in this area. On the other hand, efficiency provides scope for more or less unlimited competition. Minimum global tax rates are pretty directly an attempt to end competition on the axis that is both very important and also has most scope for improvement.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
65% of Americans have no clue what it takes to run a business of any scale. They can barely calculate a tip at the restaurant, yet they think they are qualified to make decisions on taxation. The flavor of democracy we practice has been good. However, we must be honest enough to admit it can degenerate into mob rule, which generally means decisions are made by the most gullible and ignorant among us on any specific t…
> Zero would be an even better number. Looking at monetary policy since 2008, I sometimes wonder if taxes are even necessary. It's increasingly clear that central banks can print and fund ~20% of their host governments' budget without any risk of lasting inflation. Why not try ratcheting that up?
Also remember that inflation is compound. 4% a year inflation isn't a steady increase.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
An agreed upon international base tax rate is the wrong solution. This becomes a minimum wage for nations and removes the incentive to compete to be the home of corporate headquarters. Border adjustment tax removes the tax shelter loophole and strengthens the incentive to be a good place to headquarter a corporation.
Nations can still compete. Stability, rule of law, infrastructure investment, etc. Everything except letting companies use the country as a pirate's cave
What many seem to be forgetting is the entire economical aspect of it. Economies are not all the same, some are stronger and some are weaker. Some are naturally attractive because of the talent pool, location, other businesses settled there, etc. Others aren't and might need to lower the tax rate to be able to compete. Adjusting the rate is an important economic tool for governments, losing this will cause some countries problems, the same way some countries in the Eurozone are now suffering serious consequences for giving up sovereignty over their currency and losing the ability to devalue it. A border adjustment tax theoretically avoids these problems and might be a much better choice for the smaller countries that aren't the US and don't dictate the rules.
Apparently it's also possible to address the issue of shifting corporate profits to tax-havens even without a large scale international agreement. Basically, corporations have one place money comes in and two places it comes out, like so: sales = expenses + profits If you tax the sales, then deduct the expenses, that leaves the incidence of the tax on the profits. But importantly, unlike profits, it's usually clear t…
This is an interesting concept, and worthy of including in the discussion, but you are presenting Border Adjustment Tax as if the results are a certainty. The Wikipedia article describes this as theoretical with quite a bit of uncertainty, and economists are far from concensus on what the outcomes would be. There are also definitely winners and losers in this system, so it's not so simple to say it the proposal was k…
Not that I think it's necessarily bad, it's probably better than the current system which is very broken. But can you explain how and why that is actually a better idea than introducing a BAT system? Again, both are theoretical and have never been tried, so you should have very good research to back up a claim that the global flat rate tax is the better idea.
The idea that politicians and bureaucracies can defer to external international conventions to be the bad-cop for wildly unpopular policy decisions - and then claim to be powerless to stop them - is anathema to democratic principles like national representation, consent of the governed, and other concepts of human rights. This proposal seems like a global group of government affiliated people colluding to fleece each…
Raising corporate taxes is generally popular, not "wildly unpopular." For example, in a recent poll 65% of Americans support raising corporate taxes [1]. This number has been fairly steady over time. It's even higher when you ask about closing loopholes that allow international tax havens, as this 15% minimum tax agreement is trying to do--70-85% support [2]. The only terrible shame here is you laundering your opinio…
First, countries would reduce their taxes to the minimum 15% based on the same dynamics we had until today (note that US's tax is higher). Later, countries would find ways to return the tax (not difficult when one could simply 'fail' to collect, or give 'investment aid' etc.).
IMHO, the importance of the treaty is with regards to establishing common standards. Raising corporate rates would require an additional vehicle.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Tax the wealthy. Please don't tax the wealthy. I have a couple friends who are in top 0.1%. They have enough money for the rest of their lives. If you start taking money from them, they will simply stop working and start spending more time with friends and family. The correct goal is not to take money from the rich (which can be achieved by taxing them; this is what Bolsheviks did and it resulted in millions of dea…
>The correct goal is not to take money from the rich (which can be achieved by taxing them; this is what Bolsheviks did and it resulted in millions of deaths from starvation), but to get rid of poverty. Getting rid of poverty requires taxing money (and taxing nothing else). This doesn't have anything to do with redistribution schemes. Rather, the act of hoarding money in a 0% interest environment is regressive and ma…
The mistake is that you think to get rid of poverty you need to send money to the poor.
But instead, to get rid of poverty the US need to make things cheaper for poor people, in particular, housing and healthcare. Both of these can be achieved with almost zero money by fixing regulations and perhaps adjusting taxation for these businesses (like give tax credits to companies which build homes where homes are desperately needed).
If you tax rid of the hard working rich, you will choke the economy (rich people who are the most productive, innovative, driving etc) will stop working. But if you make lives of poor people cheaper, they will be able to save more to get out of poverty and it will grow the economy.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
USA has about a 100 trillion in wealth. Spending 1% of it to insure its safety seems about right. How much would you spend ?
> Spending 1% of it to insure its safety seems about right. How much would you spend ? Are you unironically saying the US isn't spending much on military? Most wars conducted by the US are not defending its safety. If you still believe you went to Iraq or Vietnam to protect freedom at home, then you're just too indoctrinated and there's no point debating. > USA has about a 100 trillion in wealth. This is not how it w…
Obviously the government doesn’t own the 100 trillion in wealth itself. On paper it’s net worth is negative. But us gdp is 20 trillion and tax revenue is 25% of that or about 5 trillion.
China is spending half as much as the usa after adjusting for purchasing power parity. And the us also defends the banking and market structure of the rest of the world. https://power.lowyinstitute.org/data/military-capability/def...
How long would it take for crime lords to take over control of semiconductors, commodities, and everything if defense wasn’t a priority ?
At the city level, many us cities spend around 25% of their budget on law enforcement: https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2017/08/07/how-mu...
The idea that politicians and bureaucracies can defer to external international conventions to be the bad-cop for wildly unpopular policy decisions - and then claim to be powerless to stop them - is anathema to democratic principles like national representation, consent of the governed, and other concepts of human rights. This proposal seems like a global group of government affiliated people colluding to fleece each…
Raising corporate taxes is generally popular, not "wildly unpopular." For example, in a recent poll 65% of Americans support raising corporate taxes [1]. This number has been fairly steady over time. It's even higher when you ask about closing loopholes that allow international tax havens, as this 15% minimum tax agreement is trying to do--70-85% support [2]. The only terrible shame here is you laundering your opinio…