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If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

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Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#541

Post by bruce511 »

solumunus wrote: post #529
jameshart wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a business invests in building an AI system, they now have an asset, and the value of the business reflects the fact the business owns that software asset now - if someone were to buy the business they would get the AI software and all its potential to monetize that asset in the future, so of course it has value. If its value grows beyond the value the business originally invested to acquire it, it is quite litera…

Yes, that’s how a software business works. The OP seemed to be talking about how we need to reform tax due to worker replacement. Everyone is talking past each other.

Correct, building an AI is an asset, which can then be rented to other businesses.

However the thread revolves around employers replacing employees with AI. Given that the number of AI creators is minimal, and the number of companies replacing employees is large, it follows that most companies replacing employees are renting AI, they did not create it.

Hence, for those companies, AI is not an asset, it is an expense.

One way of taxing those companies would be to tax AI producers based on revenue, not profits. If 50% of revenue was tax, then, the costs of AI to the end-user would go up to cover that. So revenue would "double", but half would go to govt.

I am not a tax lawyer though, but I expect such a scheme is so radically different to the current tax regime, that is has precisely zero chance of being implemented like this.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#542

Post by navane »

zozbot234 wrote: post #334
doener wrote: post #184

No, not the AI. Just the owner of means of production like AI. The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is, in my view, one of the fundamental problems of our time.

This is a bad deal. Capital makes the marginal worker more productive, not less. You can tax the worker and she will still be better off than if you had taxed the capital, due to greater productivity. (This argument also applies to AI, of course. Since AI doesn't just instantly wipe out all jobs, there will be many workers that will benefit from it and will thus be quite able to fund their governments and social syst…

Workers make capital productive.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#543

Post by njarboe »

Many problems with the tax code and all of its complications is due to the fact that people are taxed on revenue and businesses are taxed on profit (revenue -costs). It would be good to remove this mismatch. I would prefer eliminating the income tax (land tax anyone?) but you could take business on revenue (a VAT is sort of like this).

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#544

Post by artursapek »

0x696C6961 wrote: post #300
nish__ wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't that make the hivemind worse? I like to listen to minority opinions, not kick them out.

He wasn't exactly stating a nuanced opinion.

Begging to get taxed harder doesn't warrant a nuanced response.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#547

Post by triceratops »

thunky wrote: post #368
slowmovintarget wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue should not be whether they're paying the government. The issue is whether they're paying us for taking the human content of the last two thousand years and baking it into their generators. How do we get royalties on this, like our share of the oil proceeds if we were citizens of Qatar? How do we trade our share of the contribution? There's twenty years of my posting on Reddit, Slashdot, HN, and other f…

> where's my royalty check? I support the idea of UBI with zero conditions, but not this. You didn't get royalties before AI when someone was heavily influenced by your work/content and converted that into money. If you expected compensation, then you shouldn't have given away your work for free.

The work was given to other humans. They paid taxes.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#548

Post by njarboe »

Treegarden wrote: post #336
harperlee wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

100% agree! I find quite concerning that this point is not immediate in any conversation about AI or robots impacting the number of jobs, and the subsequent conversation about innovating new taxes. AI and robots are capital as any other automation on a factory, and capital gains should be taxed appropriately. This is not a new thing completely separate from the untouchable status quo wrt existing taxes. If it tickles…

This is not an easy question. It seemingly boils down to: what are fair ways to extract value from citizens for the shared value of the state? However, the root questions are: what should the state provide, how much, and of what nature? A secondary question then becomes how important the redistributive aspect is. That’s what you’re seemingly alluding to when you say: people work, get taxed on it, but others automate…

'taxed fairly'

This could be almost any tax system depending on the what one views as "fair".

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#549

Post by andsoitis »

doener wrote: post #184

No, not the AI. Just the owner of means of production like AI. The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is, in my view, one of the fundamental problems of our time.

> The fact that capital owners successfully avoid contributing to the financing of our states and social systems is

Are you sure capital owners do not contribute to our states and financial systems?

For instance, Jeff Bezos is worth $238 billion even though Amazon has a $2.6 trillion market cap. That's $2.4 trillion of value created for other shareholders plus trillions more for employees, customers, suppliers, governments, and other stakeholders.

Jensen Huang is worth $164 billion while NVIDIA’s market cap is $5 trillion. That’s $4.8 trillion of value for other people (ignoring value created for non-equity stakeholders).

etc.

I'm not saying that there should not ALSO be other ways to force contribution (e.g. via taxes), but to say they do not contribute at all is false.

Re: If AI replaces workers, should it also pay taxes?

#550

Post by triceratops »

mike_hearn wrote: post #528
airstrike wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your argument were true we should set taxes on capital to zero, which is quite obviously a bad idea.

No, that's been a common proposal from economists pretty much since people started examining how economies work. Some places do have a capital gains tax of zero. Switzerland is one of them, and Switzerland is economically more successful than the rest of Europe. Tax is one of those issues where there are actually correct and incorrect answers, thanks to many hundreds of years of active experimentation and relatively…

> Some places do have a capital gains tax of zero. Switzerland is one of them, and Switzerland is economically more successful than the rest of Europe. Tax

Switzerland is a bad example because they tax capital more directly. In the form of a wealth tax. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Switzerland#Wealth...

GP said setting taxes on capital to zero was a bad idea. Switzerland has only set capital gains taxes to zero. It still taxes capital.

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