Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

itep.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 512 posts

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#441

Post by gilrain »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #425
onion2k wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I spend a few million to get some lawyers to work out a legal loophole that means I can murder someone and get away with it that wouldn't make it OK to actually do it. The same applies to tax avoidance. It might be legal but it's still wrong .

I don't care if you think tax avoidance is wrong. I am still going to maximize my life around avoiding taxes and I feel absolutely zero remorse for doing it.

Then you're a selfish person. Your fellow citizens deserve better.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#442

Post by dlp211 »

anonymous5133 wrote: post #422
JDiculous wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sales tax is a double-tax. So what?

Double taxation is unethical.

Double taxation is generally a bad idea. What you think is double taxation is not.

Double taxation is the concept where a dollar could, in theory, be taxed at over 100% from the aggregation of taxes owed on it. There are to my knowledge only two real examples of double taxation in America. The first happens due to the new cap on SALT deductions. The second is with regards to FICA taxes.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#443

Post by MockObject »

onion2k wrote: post #48
driverdan wrote: post #34

Rather than being outraged at the headline, what are the actual details? Why were they able to pay no taxes? Was it due to carried losses or something like that? Anyone mad at a company for not pay taxes is misdirecting their anger. Companies follow the law. If you don't like the law elect different politicians. Don't get mad at companies that follow the law.

If I spend a few million to get some lawyers to work out a legal loophole that means I can murder someone and get away with it that wouldn't make it OK to actually do it. The same applies to tax avoidance. It might be legal but it's still wrong .

Avoiding murder is a fairly objective moral decision. Most of us find this easy to follow, without getting into shades of gray between murder and justifiable homicide.

But what is the moral tax rate for a corporation, if not 0%? Is it 18.25%, as opposed to 7.09%? There's no objective answer, and it fluctuates from region to region, year to year, depending on how much governments can extract before corporations flee.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#444

Post by danso »

rchaud wrote: post #217
danso wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The First Amendment protects the right to petition the government. Outlawing lobbying would require a significant campaign to amend the Constitution.

Lobbying would be toothless without campaign contributions. Money on the table is the only reason why lobbyists get meetings and average citizens get a full voicemail inbox and templated auto-response.

I don't follow. Lobbying is paid for by corporations and organizations. The financial conflicts of interests that this poses on legislators is separate from campaign contributions. For instance, a legislator cannot use the latter for anything but campaign expenses [0]. But a legislator, after leaving office, can go to work for a friendly corporation (though there are laws requiring a "cooling off" period before they can directly lobby Congress).

[0] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/mike-pence-used-camp...

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#445

Post by dlp211 »

kelnos wrote: post #414
MetalGuru wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do losses actually carry forward in full like you're describing? I was under the impression there was an annual limit in the amount you can deduct. For an individual, that limit is $3k.

No, for individuals the limit on losses that you can deduct is the amount of your gains, plus $3k. If the entirety of your income comes from investments, you could certainly end up paying no tax if your capital losses cancel out your capital gains, regardless of the magnitude of each. The $3k you can deduct past that is a nice bonus. And even for individuals, losses over that $3k can be carried forward indefinitely t…

There are losses that individuals can't take, but can carry forward due to the amount of income they make, notably real estate investments when the individual is not a real estate professional. Think about how messed up that is, DJT and his ilk can deduct and deprecate all the real estate that they own and operate and continually carry forward excesses, but I as an individual have to carry forward the loss until my income drops to some suitable level. I have no problem with carry forwards, but if you are going to limit the individual to the amount they can deduct in a year, that should apply to business as well.

It's also possible to pay no taxes if you derive all of your income from investments every year as long as you don't exceed the allowed limit since we have a marginal capital gains structure that combos with our marginal income tax structure.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#446

Post by MockObject »

bogomipz wrote: post #369
driverdan wrote: post #34

Rather than being outraged at the headline, what are the actual details? Why were they able to pay no taxes? Was it due to carried losses or something like that? Anyone mad at a company for not pay taxes is misdirecting their anger. Companies follow the law. If you don't like the law elect different politicians. Don't get mad at companies that follow the law.

>"If you don't like the law elect different politicians." What an incredibly naive statement that is. Of the 11K registered lobbyists in Washington, DC more than half of them 6200 of them worked on tax related issues in 2017. 4,200 of them specifically on tax reform[1][2][3] Put another way that is 11 lobbyists for every individual member of congress. The lobbyists are the ones shaping the tax code. Further tax refor…

> The lobbyists are the ones shaping the tax code. Further tax reform is a generational thing, the last time it was taken up was under Reagan in 1986. Simply "electing different politicians" will accomplish nothing.

If the lobbyists had infinite power, I guess the corporate tax rate would be zero -- or negative. So, popular voting must be accomplishing something.

> mature legal system, a stable government, and infrastructure and those things take money to run

Which is by no means the lion's share of a state or federal budget. Chief are all the transfer programs, followed by defense well in excess of the necessary spend for protecting the 50 states from invading armies.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#447

Post by esrauch »

smsm42 wrote: post #433
anigbrowl wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no good reason investment income should be privileged over income from labor.

One of the reasons why it makes sense to have different rules for investment income is investment income tax (at least if you're investing in a corporative stock) is a double tax - the corporation you invest in is taxed on its profit (so your income from it is less than it would be) and then your income from it is taxed again. It kinda makes sense that parts of the double tax would be less than the single one. Of cou…

There's no reason the government wants to promote long-term investment over income-producing labor, is there?

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#448

Post by dlp211 »

gojomo wrote: post #328
arkades wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because private citizens aren’t given the same affordances. The double standard is objectionable.

They can't treat their living expenses exceeding income as deductions, no. But if: * their sole proprietorship loses money in one year, it can be carried forward to offset taxes the next year * they have net losses in investments, those can be carried-over to offset gains in other years * any LLCs in which they are members have allocated losses, those can be carried-over against profits in later years These are the w…

All true, the objection comes from the limits placed on individuals that don't apply to businesses. Businesses are allowed to "use up" all of their losses, both current year and carried forward, in a single year. Individuals are forced to arbitrarily carry forward losses when they still had income/cap gains that could have been deducted against.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#449

Post by rchaud »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #405
rchaud wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lobbying would be toothless without campaign contributions. Money on the table is the only reason why lobbyists get meetings and average citizens get a full voicemail inbox and templated auto-response.

When The Young Turks spent millions of dollars in air time endorsing Hillary, was that a campaign contribution?

No, for the same reason that astroturfing online about sending the troops into south side Chicago isn't a campaign contribution; it's not exchanging money for influence.

With your example, Hillary Clinton would be a billionaire for doing that inane dance on Ellen.

Re: Netflix Posted Biggest-Ever Profit in 2018 and Paid $0 in Income Taxes

#450

Post by dlp211 »

naasking wrote: post #386
ergothus wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, the fact that they have deep pockets is actually important. It means they reflect an important aspect of the economy, so ignoring their interests could also have detrimental economic effects. This embeds the idea that someone making more money has a right to a larger voice than someone that doesn't. - In my "if the world were simple" dreams I'd say something like "every voter can spend $200 - any lobby…

> This embeds the idea that someone making more money has a right to a larger voice than someone that doesn't I don't see how. I just said their opinion shouldn't be ignored, which is what the OP was suggesting by banning corporations which represent large groups of shareholders and employees.

Corporations do not represent employees.
Post reply on HN