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U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

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Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#51
post #34
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to call out the other way is to push the income to individuals so corporate profits are always near zero. So to apply energy on taxing individuals rather than corps. For corps income is so fluid, I think we get more revenue with tariffs, usage taxes, property tax, VAT, sales, etc. Profit isn’t as important to corporations as it is to individuals.

Wealthy individuals will just keep all their wealth in a company and accumulate forever. It's terrible for wealth inequality.

Corporate income taxes don’t matter with this as corporate income gets deferred even longer than individuals.

So I think it’s neutral for wealth inequality, since an individual getting $1B in income or a corporation getting $1B in income to a single individual is the same. Or deferring income with trusts, credits, etc.

I think for wealth inequality, the goal is to have more individuals with greater wealth, so this doesn’t seem to affect the number of people impacted.

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#52
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no other way then to establish AMT for corporations. Otherwise countries will apply deductions around this 15% global minimum anyway.

I tried to call out the other way is to push the income to individuals so corporate profits are always near zero. So to apply energy on taxing individuals rather than corps. For corps income is so fluid, I think we get more revenue with tariffs, usage taxes, property tax, VAT, sales, etc. Profit isn’t as important to corporations as it is to individuals.

You’re assuming a 1:1 relationship between company country and stockholder’s country. That’s simply no longer even remotely true.

So, in practice lowering US corporate taxes is a tax break on the Saudi royal family etc and a net increase in taxes for American citizens.

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#53
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the true underlying cause?

Corporation tax. They should just dump it and tax dividends and capitals gains like any other income. It's easy to shift corporation tax but much harder to shift an individuals income.

A large percentage of U.S. corporate ownership is held by foreign taxpayers that would not be subject to U.S. taxation on dividends or capital gains absent a fairly large and radical change in tax law, including breaking more than a hundred tax treaties.

It's much easier to simply impose an AMT and eliminate a relative handful of expense shifting mechanisms (many of which are already covered by a regime known as "transfer pricing").

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#55

Does humanity really want an authority powerful enough to claim dominion over the entire planet?

My two cent is that it’s just inevitable (and personally welcomed). Throughout the history, from tribes to today we have merged in bigger and bigger entities. And pretending that we can live without a global authority, when supply chains are global, food market are global, most of what happens in politics has global effect is total nonsense IMO. We pretend we live in separate societies with entirely different rules when we are already operating like a single, global organism.

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#56
post #32

While I have never looked deeply into the topic of big business corporate taxes, I do share a strong suspicion that the corporate tax system is flawed, and would be supportive of reform in the system. Including international cooperation for solving this. But the way they went about this is disappointing. There should be a way to solve this that would still allow countries to compete in attracting businesses. They tal…

As a US taxpayer who sees the fraud, abuse, and general mismanagement of my tax money why would I willingly support the same government getting more? It is incredibly depressing how little I get from the government vs how much they take from me. The entire system is a sham and I honestly don't want to support it anymore. I'm working as hard as I can to try and escape it at the earliest possible moment.

There is some fraud and abuse, of course. And the huge numbers involved mean that even a small percentage of fraud is a huge number. But there never seems to be any statistics that back up the assertion that government (in general) or the US government (in particular) produces outrageous amount of fraud or abuse.

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#58

If they would just close the loop holes that allow things like having Apple, setup a subsidiary that licenses its own stuff back to itself so it can move profits around the world ... you'd solve this problem. Make a rule, if you own >50% of a company, you can't buy trademarks, patents, whatever from yourself.

Agreed. Self-dealing among companies under the same corporate parent is a scourge.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/fox...

Re: U.S. Backs 15% Global Minimum Tax to Curb Profit Shifting Overseas

#60
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. But instead of solving this problem inside US they want to re-engineer the whole globe. Most countries are mad about multinationals, most of them rich US multinationals. If the US would do a proper job of taxing their own corporations none of this would be necessary. Interesting how this is just in time for the Dutch sandwich scheme to expire. Clearly something else was missing!

Could you walk us through your proposed solution? Like what the United States could be doing that would be a proper job of taxing its own corporations?

Set guaranteed tax rates that make keeping money in the US attractive instead of trying to punish those who find the business practices of other sovereign nations offering better treatment.
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