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

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

#491

Post by smsm42 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #470
smsm42 wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is. Basic level of labor is almost always there - people have to work to earn the living (even if you go into crime, you still have to work - maybe you pay taxes to different people and do different things, but you still have to do stuff to earn your money). However, once you earned enough money, beyond subsistence level, you have a choice - you can spend it all on consumption, or you can defer some of the cons…

This is predicted on the unstated assumption that everyone starts out from about the same place and subsequently people make a variety of different choices. It ignores the effect of inheritance or the costs of increasingly binomial wealth distribution.

At least in the US, old money effects are not as huge as one would think. Of course, everybody knows about Donald Trump, and maybe other people with inherited wealth, but there's also the survivorship effect - if somebody had rich parents and spent all the wealth how likely you to read about him in the national press? Nobody cares about those.

Moving onto more statistical approach, this one: https://www.fa-mag.com/news/most-millionaires-self-made--stu... says only 8% of millionaires inherited their wealth. For billionaires, according to this: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/269593 18% got a jump-start (maybe parents were mere millionaires, but the child became a billionaire), and 62% are self-made. So inheritance effects exist, but maybe they are not that huge? At least, clearly, not a majority.

Of course, not everybody starts in the same place. But human behavior and motivations are similar, and thus you can reason about them despite the differences.

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

#492

Post by JamesBarney »

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…

This is only true of dividends. But I don't think it wasn't true of stock buybacks.

Also there is plenty of business income that is not double taxed because it isn't run through a C Corp.

Then in regards to incentives. We already have interest rates to adjust the knobs of investment versus consumption. Capital gains is just a way to make the tax system less progressive.

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

#493

Post by jayko »

macspoofing wrote: post #250
jayko wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regulators don't care about stopping it, they only care about lining up their pockets. You have a corrupt agent and then you expect another corrupt agent to do you justice.

You have evidence of Netflix paying-off corrupt IRS agent, right?

How is an IRS agent a regulator? IRS are just enforcers of regulation.

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

#494

Post by ksec »

SilasX wrote: post #189
otachack wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that simple. Companies lobby to keep, even coerce, laws that benefit them and allow these sorts of things to happen. What is the common person, or collection of persons, supposed to do when they are against that kind of force? I believe one way is to actually be involved in politics and get into the seats that govern and make the laws. But it's easier said than done.

It is that simple (in the sense of the parent's post): you need to know the specifics of why they were paying no taxes. If, as in the comment, they were carrying over losses, then there's nothing really objectionable. You lost $10 million last year. You profited $10 million this year. Over a reasonable horizon, you weren't profitable. Did they get a specific exemption against the public interest that no one else got?…

Agreed. Using Apple as example.

From my observation, most people on the internet doesn't seems to care. There was an argument about Apple paying little tax in US. I said Apple is the largest tax payer in US and paid 20%+, then the topic changed to he is paying ~40%, why is Apple paying 20% only?

There is Apple tax in France, there are even some saying Apple should pay tax in France, then paid Tax in Ireland, and pay Tax in US.

There are some saying how can Apple not paying any VAT in France and UK? ( Have they been watching too much Fox News ? )

I mean seriously, unless your whole life have been working on any non business side of things, if any of the job involves calculating profits and sales would know none of these makes any sense. And yet we are in a world with people demanding company should pay more. Which is fair point, but what they are suggesting is ridiculous.

I know many are concern about the lack of money for government spending, but as a counter point, do they realise how much money and inefficiency government have wasted in their bureaucracy, and their out of touch project which more than often leads to failure with sums that is unrealistic by any standards?

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

#495

Post by jki275 »

anth_anm wrote: post #481
jki275 wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The US is a Representative Republic, which differs from a democracy in several significant ways. It was designed to be difficult to change because democracies always fail when the majority decides the rule of law is no longer important.

A democracy and a republican are not mutually exclusive. The US is a democracy.

A representative republic is the system we have in the US, which is by definition not a democracy. They're two very different concepts, and they are mutually exclusive.

This is basic civics. It's taught, or I hope it's still taught, in grade school. It's not controversial, it's not surprising, it's fact.

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

#496

Post by ci5er »

brianpgordon wrote: post #249
stale2002 wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 0. Lobbying is a right, but one that can only be exercised by individual citizens, not corporations. A "corporation" isn't a thing that exists in the world. They don't have mouths, and can't speak, so it makes no sense to outlaw their ability to use the mouth that they don't have. There are people in the world. As well as groups of people. A corporation is merely the pural of person. Each person in that corporation…

This argument is facile. There's an obvious and clear difference between a person representing their own interests and a person paid by a corporation specifically to advance its interests.

At least the agent representing the corporation knows who its master is. The interests are aligned.

Unlike with our our elected representatives. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...)

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

#497

Post by angus-prune »

crgwbr wrote: post #480
OrwellianChild wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your edge-case comment, it sounds like you'd prefer that losses from business income not roll over, rather than making rollovers accessible to individuals. I was approaching it the other way - trying to see if there was a reasonable way to credit individuals with a "P&L" view of their finances that could cross multiple years. As you indicated above, so much of our personal expenses are "discretionary" in the sen…

From a purely theoretical standpoint, I’m terribly curious what would happen if we incentivized spending like that. I’m sure it’d be terrible in the long run, but it’d also have definite macroeconomic stimulus effects.

There is a short scifi story from the 50s called the Midas Plague by Frederik Pohl which deals with this in a very silly way.

It's available through archive.org https://archive.org/stream/galaxymagazine-1954-04/Galaxy_195...

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

#498

Post by Karunamon »

curiousgal wrote: post #184
AlexB138 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The answer is to outlaw lobbyists, it would fix a lot of problems. That, and enact term limits for Congress. That will fix even more. When you think there are simple answers to big problems it's generally because you don't actually understand the problem. How would you outlaw lobbyists? Setting aside the fact that it would be unconstitutional, do you think it should be illegal for you to air your grievances to elec…

> unconstitutional God forbid we think outside the realm of what the Founding Fathers wrote down. > fly directly in the face of democracy Except the U.S. has long been classified as a flawed democracy. The problems you list can "simply" be solved with a comission akin to the FTC. A small business can complain to said comission which would solve the matter.

Think outside it all you wish - you will be unpleasantly surprised when your idea gets in front of courts who are bound to honor it.

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

#499

Post by norswap »

wool_gather wrote: post #265
norswap wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would it really be unconstitutional? The right of petition cannot abrogated, but surely one can outlaw the exchange of political favors for money or other forms of compensations. Yes, actually showing that political favors were exchanged for money is tricky, but still, it's better than nothing and it changes the whole discussion from "it's the system" to "who's doing something bad and hiding it?".

> outlaw the exchange of political favors for money or other forms of compensations ? This is already illegal. It's generally termed "corruption".

I guess you could say lobbying legalizes a portion of what is understood as corruption. (Not everything, obviously.) Under the guise of "defending special interests", or something similar.

You shouldn't be allowed to finance people whose decision you stand to profit from.

I guess the only "simple" way to solve this is to outlaw the private financing of politicians and their campaign. It should all be public money. Not that easy to operationalize (almost nothing of interest is), but feasible, desirable and fair I reckon.

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

#500

Post by naasking »

dlp211 wrote: post #450
naasking wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Except they do. Politicians know that making business more difficult will affect employment.
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