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Trump Tax Plan Said to Call for Lowering Corporate Rate to 15%

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Re: Trump Tax Plan Said to Call for Lowering Corporate Rate to 15%

#81
It's amazing how many people simply don't understand how taxes work.

Taxes are paid on profits, not gross revenue. If my company makes $1M net but I decide to expand my business by buying more equipment or staffing up I can spend that $1M on that and have a net of $0 profit and owe $0 in taxes.

Explain how by lowering the tax rate from 35% to 15% gives me any more money to expand my business when it is taxed on profit, which I could choose to reinvest as much as I want when I want and write it down (current, past or future years)?

All it does it does is it means when I have no where else to spend my profits that it shows up on the balance sheets as profit. Do you know who benefits from that? Shareholders, execs and board members.

All of that extra money will just get locked up in the bank accounts of the people who already can't figure out how to spend the money they already have. It does not create more revenue for the govt, it does not accelerate growth.

History has shown time and again supply side economics does not work. It's not just a theory, the Laffer Curve has been proven to be nonsense as much as it can outside of a vacuum.

The reason the wealthy love the idea is because there are only so many ways to create the growth on the balance sheets that the market demands each year and this would be an easy way to do it.

You think wealth inequality is bad now, wait until you see a 15% Corp tax rate. The people who will pay for the missing trillions in revenue will be the 99% that are already struggling. At some point the system will be too stressed and this could be the proverbial straw.

I would recommend those reflect on the origins of our tax system and how tax was to be derived exclusively from business income and not wages before feeling sympathy for the non-human entity called a corporation.

If you want to see a large influx of growth to the system you force that money to reenter the system. Making it illegal to use shell companies and tax havens purely to reduce tax liability would have injected trillions back into the economy that would have created some great outcomes just based on tax revenues and the need to reduce tax liability thru investment. Read healthcare, education, wages, infrastructure, better jobs, etc.

Re: Trump Tax Plan Said to Call for Lowering Corporate Rate to 15%

#82

Honestly, corporate taxes don't make much sense. It would be much better if we reduced the corporate tax rate to 0% and made up the difference by increasing capital gains tax.

This is the most insane idea I've ever heard of. You do realize that capital gains are only assessed at time of sale of said asset right? So where do we make up the trillions in revenue? How does the govt operate when there is a bear market? I just don't understand why when taxes and economic principles are so simple on a macro level that people seem to get lost on how it all works.

Something that sounds crazy, but way less crazy than what you are floating, would be to have something like a 90% tax on corps with a 3 or 5 year deferment to allow the profits to be invested back into the company. Then, whatever the Corp couldn't figure out how to spend in useful ways would go towards hiring instead of layoffs, raises instead of a race to bottom. The shareholders like me who make money for doing nothing but placing my money there wouldn't make such a killing, but I would rather see this country have a booming middle class than continue the wealth inequality to the point where I can't leave my house to use my toys and defend my big house against raids. I know that sounds a bit hyperbolic but if we stay on the current trend lines at some point in the distant future that day will come. Reducing Corp taxes and eliminating the estate tax are the types of things to accelerate that as opposed to putting us back to a good economic equilibrium.

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