Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something nobody's talking about: OpenAI's losses might actually be attractive to certain investors from a tax perspective. Microsoft and other corporate investors can potentially use their share of OpenAI's operating losses to offset their own taxable income through partnership tax treatment. It's basically a tax-advantaged way to fund R&D - you get the loss deductions now while retaining upside optionality later. T…
>> For the right investor base, $10B in annual losses at OpenAI could be worth $2-3B in tax shields So just a loss for governments, or in other words, socializing the losses.
OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
691–700 of 777 posts
Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#692The best case I can see is they integrate shopping and steal the best high-intent cash cow commercial queries from G. It's not really about AI, it's about who gets to be the next toll road.
Google already puts AI summaries at the top of search. It would be trivial for them to incorporate shopping. And they have infinitely more traffic than OpenAI does. I just don’t see how OpenAI could possibly compete with that. What are you seeing that I’m not?
Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#693Earlier quoted context omitted.
The chat history feature makes the product worse, I had to turn it off.
Agreed, I don't have a single user who finds a large number of old chats useful.
Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#694Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#695Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU doesnt collect income/corporate tax, the individual countries do. These big corps use holdings in low tax jurisdisctions like Ireland and Luxemburg, funnel all their EU subsidiaries’ revenues there and end up paying 0 tax in the individual EU countries. This system is actually legal, EU lawmakers should pass laws to prevent this.
I don't really understand this perspective. What should be taxed? Amazon, as an example, has servers in country X. Country X taxes the transaction or the income from the server company. Amazon pays delivery drivers in country X to deliver goods, and the driver is taxed through various means (vehicle, fuel, payroll, etc). What is Amazon doing in country X that should be taxed?
> What should be taxed?
Profits of the company, like all other (local) companies do. > Amazon, as an example, has servers in country X. Country X taxes the transaction or the income from the server company.
Amazon has servers in Germany, Germany is unable to tax the transaction or income from Amazon, because;1. The user completes a transaction either on Amazon (buying a product) or in AWS (running an EC2 instance)
2. If the user is a business, there is no VAT. Because VAT is applied only to the end user. (To prevent compounding effect also). If it was the end-user, then end-user already pays for their VAT, usually around 18-20% in the case of an EC2 instance. But that has nothing to do with Amazon. User technically pays the VAT directly to the government depending on where he/she is located and where the server is.
3. Obviously Amazon does not sell the products or servers for free, they have a markup or profit margin, let's say 40% for a 100eur EC2 instance. So, 40eur lands into Amazon's bank account. While other 60eur goes to the operating expenses. (ie. Electricity, maintenance, employees' salaries, etc...)
4. In this case, Amazon should be taxed from that 40%, (ie. from the 40eur profit). Luxembourg corporate tax is about ~16-17%. Mind that US federal corporate tax is 21% itself. For the sake of simplicity, let's take 20% as the corporate tax. This would make 8eur going into the government's pocket. while 32eur stays as the profit with amazon.
5. All other companies provide the same service and has no magical entity outside pays that ~8eur to the government. Which in turn used to provide services to the citizens. (For example, Luxembourg has completely free public transportation that works 24/7, subsidized by the taxes)
6. However, Amazon having a magical entity, they declare all that 40eur profit belongs to the US entity due to the IP rights. They essentially say 100% of the things that are produced in Luxembourg, by employees in Luxembourg even owned by the US entity. Therefore, they do not pay any income tax as in fact there is no income on paper.
7. Instead, since they were able to save that 8eur, they can reduce the prices of the services up to that amount. But instead, Amazon usually reduces prices about half, reducing 4eur for customers and other 4eur going into Amazon's profit pocket.
8. It all seems nice so far, since users also benefit from reduced prices, right? Unfortunately, no. In the longer term, it hurts competition as other companies must pay taxes and losing the customers [to Amazon].
9. When there is no competition left, then Amazon can just start syphoning all the 8eur profit back to themselves. Even setting the prices as there is no longer any alternative to go.
10. Not only it hurts customers, it also hurts the random person on the street; as they receive services from government which were subsidized by the taxes. You may say that Amazon can or may invest even better products or services, but that's again not helping the layman unless he/she is an Amazon customer. And mind that a citizen does not need to be Amazon customer to get their electricity and water running.
> Amazon pays delivery drivers in country X to deliver goods, and the driver is taxed through various means (vehicle, fuel, payroll, etc).
Similar to the above, Amazon does not pay VAT or any other service taxes for any of the services they provide. But the driver does! It is even worse for the driver when he/she uses Amazon because on the net balance sheet, the driver pays income tax from his/her salary. Pays VAT for the services they receive. If he/she receives 1000eur salary at the end of the month, they can use at most about ~60% of their salary to receive goods and services. (~20% income tax + ~20% VAT). Hence, there is a corporate tax that balance these scenarios. But evading it causes more harm than good in the long run. > What is Amazon doing in country X that should be taxed?
All the profits (earnings, surpluses) they receive should be taxed.Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#696Earlier quoted context omitted.
The US already spends 38% more than the OECD average on education per student, just lagging Luxembourg, Austria, Norway, etc - if you’re a student in America, you have access to plenty of resources. You’re right that these are complex systems, and just pouring more tax dollars and more debt into them isn’t working. Portions of our society need to value education, value contributing to society instead of taking, and r…
Let me phrase it this way for you. The best universities are in the US for a lot of things. But they don't scale. In another way, the top talent gets Ferraris for their tuition, the rest gets a bike. In a lot of European countries everyone can get the Toyota Camry of education, decent but not world class. That does scale though. Spending isn't everything, it's how you apply that spending.
Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#697Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Make billionaires richer, make the middle class poor. Make the poor destitute. Make the destitute dead. (All USAID cuts) How do you square this thought with the actual rate of poverty being on a steady downward trend while billionaires do their things?
Kindly use the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) - which accounts for government benefits (e.g., tax credits, SNAP), taxes, and expenses like medical costs. This does not show your "steady downward trend", but has considerably fluctuated over the last few years. It is an increase to 12.9% in 2024, compared to 7.1% in 2020-21. Will need to wait till end of 2026 for the 2025 computation.
Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#698Earlier quoted context omitted.
The EU doesnt collect income/corporate tax, the individual countries do. These big corps use holdings in low tax jurisdisctions like Ireland and Luxemburg, funnel all their EU subsidiaries’ revenues there and end up paying 0 tax in the individual EU countries. This system is actually legal, EU lawmakers should pass laws to prevent this.
And let us not forget the millions and billions the global IT corporations pay in the EU in form of social security taxes, income taxes, the jobs they create, and the further millions and billions in the form of purchases from local delivery companies, consultants, DC vendors, office suppliers, taxi companies, delivery companies, food and catering and all the other local EU-based companies who benefit from having the…
And the decision how to distribute these (corporate tax) should be done by the government. Essentially, companies evading [corporate] tax decides themselves where to distribute that money. Obviously, they make decisions that drives more profits and income, not the public good. Even if it improves living conditions (ie. delivery service would help elderly), it still requires that person to be user of the product. A layman/citizen cannot effectively utilize the benefits.
Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#699Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It shouldn't be the job of the US taxpayer to feed someone that doesn't want to work, study, or pass a drug test This would make sense if every person was given similar opportunities, like providing quality education to all of our youngest and making higher education a mission rather than a business as a starter. As a society we move at the speed of the weakest among us, we only move forward when we start lifting a…
The US already spends 38% more than the OECD average on education per student, just lagging Luxembourg, Austria, Norway, etc - if you’re a student in America, you have access to plenty of resources. You’re right that these are complex systems, and just pouring more tax dollars and more debt into them isn’t working. Portions of our society need to value education, value contributing to society instead of taking, and r…
Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026
#700Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kindly use the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) - which accounts for government benefits (e.g., tax credits, SNAP), taxes, and expenses like medical costs. This does not show your "steady downward trend", but has considerably fluctuated over the last few years. It is an increase to 12.9% in 2024, compared to 7.1% in 2020-21. Will need to wait till end of 2026 for the 2025 computation.
For the world?
https://thedocs.worldbank.org/en/doc/ec3d46c25a822d6d248e86d...
Please note that if you exclude China, the trend of poverty reduction is laughable.