Some Corporations Pay a Lot More Taxes Than Others

Post by grandalf » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 3:03 PM UTC

danmaz74 wrote: post #35

grandalf wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If shareholders do not demand the money as a dividend and prefer instead to have it kept in the company's control, then so be it. Shareholders in Apple want Apple to be able to make big investments or acquisitions and are willing to let the money sit there rather than take it as a dividend. This would not be true for most firms.

"So be it", you say. In other words, average people will need to pay those taxes, instead of very rich people that don't even care about getting dividends. Seems fair to me.

Post by Nursie » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 3:15 PM UTC

rossriley wrote: post #11

zimablue wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that what you're suggesting (based on a vague understanding of the UK tax system) is abolishing corporate taxes and taxing dividends as income? I'd be curious to hear someone who knows more accounting's view on this. I've always thought that the answer was to have wealth taxes, easier to avoid but surely what we should actually aim for.

Well the problem is that you just create a loophole. You can already avoid paying any corporation tax by taking money out of a company as salary. In the UK you have dividend tax credit so effectively when you take a dividend you get the tax back that has already been paid (as corporation tax). So both those reasonable ways of extracting money from a company allow you to not pay any additional tax above what income ta…

Post by rb808 » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 3:18 PM UTC

quuquuquu wrote: post #6

m777z wrote: post #3

This is because some corporations make a lot more profit than others. "Amazon's corporate income tax bill is so small, though, because its corporate income (aka profit) is so small. Wal-Mart's pretax income since 2008 has totaled $209 billion, Amazon's less than $11 billion. So while Amazon's rise to fifth-biggest market cap in the world on the strength of such small earnings is a fascinating and perhaps disturbing p…

The author is acting like this wasn't an intended phenomenon. I don't understand the mental gymnastics required to NOT see this. Bezos decided, "we need to grow, and to grow we need equipment and real estate, so I'm going to spend the profits on those assets, since we will get more bang for our buck than just holding onto after-tax cash." A corporation doesn't just accidentally conduct business that way lol, for bett…

Post by seanmcdirmid » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 3:29 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #2

This is why corporate taxes are a dumb idea. Firms should not keep one set of books for management accounting and another set that they use for tax purposes. When money is paid to an individual, tax it as income tax. Very simple. Don't give firms an incentive to act as tax shelters or tax avoiders. Think about all the legal fees that have been spent by the firms on that list to avoid and reduce corporate taxes. It's…

Post by jellicle » Tue, Sep 19, 2017, 3:39 PM UTC

grandalf wrote: post #2

This is why corporate taxes are a dumb idea. Firms should not keep one set of books for management accounting and another set that they use for tax purposes. When money is paid to an individual, tax it as income tax. Very simple. Don't give firms an incentive to act as tax shelters or tax avoiders. Think about all the legal fees that have been spent by the firms on that list to avoid and reduce corporate taxes. It's…