New Global Plan Would Crack Down On Corporate Tax Avoidance 324
HughPickens.com writes:
Reuters reports that plans for a major rewriting of international tax rules have been unveiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that could eliminate structures that have allowed companies like Google and Amazon to shave billions of dollars off their tax bills. For more than 50 years, the OECD's work on international taxation has been focused on ensuring companies are not taxed twice on the same profits (and thereby hampering trade and limit global growth). But companies have been using such treaties to ensure profits are not taxed anywhere. A Reuters investigation last year found that three quarters of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies channeled revenues from European sales into low tax jurisdictions like Ireland and Switzerland, rather than reporting them nationally.
For example, search giant Google takes advantage of tax treaties to channel more than $8 billion in untaxed profits out of Europe and Asia each year and into a subsidiary that is tax resident in Bermuda, which has no income tax. "We are putting an end to double non-taxation," says OECD head of tax Pascal Saint-Amans.For the recommendations to actually become binding, countries will have to encode them in their domestic laws or amend their bilateral tax treaties. Even if they do pass, these changes are likely 5-10 years away from going into effect. Speaking of international corporate business: U.K. mainframe company Micro Focus announced it will buy Attachmate, which includes Novell and SUSE.
For example, search giant Google takes advantage of tax treaties to channel more than $8 billion in untaxed profits out of Europe and Asia each year and into a subsidiary that is tax resident in Bermuda, which has no income tax. "We are putting an end to double non-taxation," says OECD head of tax Pascal Saint-Amans.For the recommendations to actually become binding, countries will have to encode them in their domestic laws or amend their bilateral tax treaties. Even if they do pass, these changes are likely 5-10 years away from going into effect. Speaking of international corporate business: U.K. mainframe company Micro Focus announced it will buy Attachmate, which includes Novell and SUSE.
Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:2, Insightful)
Instead, tax-per-use: road tax, school tax, environmental tax, so the tax-payer knows what happens to their money.
If governments would be more transparent, less people would have problems paying taxes.
Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:5, Insightful)
The gp didn't say not to tax anything - it IS a good idea that taxpayers realize the taxes they pay. Payroll taxes hide a tremendous amount of taxation that most people have no idea they're paying.
Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:5, Informative)
Payroll taxes do not hide anything. I think most people realize they pay FICA taxes. It usually is listed on the check
You've proven my point; there is a whole set of payroll taxes your employer pays that is NOT listed on your check stub. There's *your* FICA deduction plus a matching FICA amount paid by your employer, which you do not see on your stub. Then there's *your* SS deduction, and again a matching amount paid by your employer which is not listed. Your employer also pays an unemployment tax which is not listed on your stub.
The point is, all of these payments are, from your employer's point of view, how much it costs to get you to work. You're effectively paying all this extra tax because the money comes from you going to work. But you don't even know about it.
Re: Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:3)
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4. Cap federal student loan interest rates at inflation based on the CPI. What we borrow is what we pay back.
Below market rates is already the biggest problem with student loans; don't make it worse. Easy-to-get student loans make the schools see easy-to-get money which causes a positive feedback loop: tuitions rise because so much loan money is handed out because tuitions rise becase so much money is handed out because tuitions rise.
There was a great article in last month's Economist about the direct correlation of student loan availability and tuition increases since the student loan program was instituted. The
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But tax inversion needs to stop before it creates too much problems. (Also, let's close tax loopholes for individuals.)
Furthermore, the "tax inversion" only happens because the USA is one of three countries in the world that tries to collect tax worldwide. Let's say a UK headquartered company, for example, has an office in the USA and makes some sales. The UK's IRS does not try to tax that revenue made in the USA, only the revenue in the UK. The USA's IRS, on the other hand, insists on collecting tax on revenue made by a USA headquartered company whose office in the UK made some sales. You see how this puts the USA based f
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Individual program taxes will never happen, though, because in the US the biggest suck on our tax dollars is the Pentagon and the military, and a lot of people like me would be happy to opt out of that. I would not, however, opt out of SS and Medicare/Medicaid, since I'm supposed to (in theory) get that money returned when I need it the most.
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Please tell the truth.
Link [nationalpriorities.org] 2015 proposed
Military is 16%, SS is 33% (double military by itself), Medicare is 27% also more than military.
Link [washingtonpost.com] 2014 actual
SS is $866 Billion, military is $627 Billion, Medicare is $531 Billion.
Also note SS is mandatory 100%, while military is discretionary 100%.
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SS is not mandated by the Constitution, where Defense is. Good to know we have our priorities right.
Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:5, Insightful)
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... in any way that gets them reelected.
A bit closer to reality.
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Please. It doesn't matter what is or isn't mandated by the Constitution.
You have just proposed lawlessness, and implied that it was okay. I hope you realize exactly what you're saying.
Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:4, Insightful)
The military is the biggest part of the US budget? Gee.... our government disagrees with that, according to the budget they publish.
http://www.usgovernmentspendin... [usgovernmentspending.com]
Total defense spending, 22%. Pensions, 25%. Healthcare 27%.
And this does NOT include Social Security or Medicare (separate funds, they keep telling us).
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The debt is mostly from wars that were not paid for.
It also ignores the 50 percent of military budget that is in the "black budget", as well as the NSA and the other four three letter agencies we don't tell you about.
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ABC, CBS, FOX, NBC, PBS, MTV, FBI, CIA, IBM, D&D, WoW, LoL.
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No we told you about those
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RLY?
Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:4, Interesting)
Why are you being modded down? The wars are almost entirely off budget. Maybe they'll make up for it with asset forfeitures..
Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:5, Insightful)
Why are you being modded down? The wars are almost entirely off budget. Maybe they'll make up for it with asset forfeitures..
They can't handle the truth. They believe in fictions written by some old lady who collected social security and received other government subsidies she railed against.
That's my guess.
But, yes, the US has an unfortunate tendancy, since the War of Independence, and the Civil War, continued to the present, of always fighting wars off budget. Which is where the budget deficits come from. Social Security pays for itself and has always had a surplus, and still does.
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The first Budget in Obama's term put the war spending on budget.
They were off budget during Bush's terms but one of the first acts Obama did with a democrat congress was to put them on budget.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02... [nytimes.com]
Now, people may think "good, we need to account for that money anyways" but the fact is they were always accounted for in the end. The problem with this is the rules of congress say you have to pay for new spending. With the wars off budget, when congress decided to do something new or
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The VA is filed under healthcare, but it's properly part of the military budget. Officer pensions are included under pensions, but they are properly part of the military budget. We wouldn't have to pay for the VA if we didn't have injured soldiers, and we wouldn't be paying officers pensions if we had a smaller military. Much of the national debt is military expenses from wars we didn't properly fund (we're still paying off the first gulf war and Reagan era cold war expenses, as well as the more recent stuf
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Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, the stupidity and naivete of what you say is staggering.
You people who believe you'd run a functioning society without taxes and the things it pays for are completely deluded.
You would not end up in some libertarian fantasy of a self regulating society. You'd end up in a shit hole of a society in which things like roads and schools don't work and don't get funded.
Blah blah blah. Everything you say is pure fantasy, and doesn't mean anything other than your overly romanticized notions of a world which never was, and which never could be.
I swear, Libertarians (and the idiots who read Ayn Rand) are some of the most deluded people around, second only to religious people who reject science because the facts contradict their stupid book.
If you think a modern society is possible without taxes and some things being paid for by society, you really are a drooling idiot.
Re:Most taxes are legalized theft (Score:5, Funny)
You'd end up in a shit hole of a society in which things like roads and schools don't work and don't get funded.
So about the same but with less taxes then?
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A Libertarian society would have *NO* schools? What are you smoking? I don't think even the statiest of statiests would say that if they are in the least bit intellectually honest. That statement doesn't even deserve a sincere rebuttal. I'll just chuckle and shake my head.
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You people who believe you'd run a functioning society without taxes and the things it pays for are completely deluded.
In a taxless society, there would be no one to run it other than those with wisdom and experience. But they wouldn't "run" the society as we understand it today.
You would not end up in some libertarian fantasy of a self regulating society. You'd end up in a shit hole of a society in which things like roads and schools don't work and don't get funded.
Again, I think you're missing the point. Roads? Why would there be this need for roads? If you walk through the forest a path will naturally develop. And schools? Why would we need schools? Do parents get paid to teach their kids now? I mean, in this taxless society that we're talking about, the need for a lot of things that
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Obvious counterpoint to your ideological statement: without taxes all theft is legalized.
The construction of a an idea of theft exists as an artifact of a social system. To pretend that something is "yours" without a legal delineation of ownership is silly.
Obvious counterpoint to your pragmatic statement: details of budgets need to change more rapidly than taxes.
Additionally, combining surpluses and deficits from different programs minimizes overhead.
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General forms of taxes are legalized theft anyway. When the government just takes money away for their "general bucket", it is nothing more than stealing.
Once in a while it is time to go pedantic.
Words have meanings. We can string words together without regard to their meanings, and create an aphorism that sounds good, but it leads to logical incorrectness and a misunderstanding of how things work. It would be better if you were just gibbering.
Taxation is not theft. The two words describe different circumstances and processes. The outcome may be the same (your stuff is gone), but they are two different words with different meanings.
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Taxation is not theft.
Well, the dictionary [reference.com] disagrees with your:
to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force
The government is taking my property without my permission, and it gives itself the right to do so. The government partially does it secretly, and if I don't comply I will go to jail.
But you took my words out of context. I am talking about "general forms of tax". For example income tax, sales tax and all taxes that have no specific purpose. Buy an airline ticket? You pay security tax. Fine, fair and square. I choose to buy an airplane ticket and the government has
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The link is to the word "steal", but because theft is the act or result of stealing, we should go with "steal"
steal:
to take (the property of another or others) without permission or right, especially secretly or by force
See the part about "without permission or right". It's "without permission" and "the right" part (among other things) that makes taxation and theft two different things.
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It's "without permission" and "the right" part (among other things) that makes taxation and theft two different things.
See, this is the interesting part. I think we'll both agree that the permission part depends on me giving permission, so we won't need to discuss that. The next part is more difficult.
I have a two year old. We're weaning her off the pacifier, but occasionally, she manages to slip into her bedroom and finds a pacifier. When we ask her who gave her the pacifier, the reply is "I gave it to myself!".
The government is doing the same thing. It's the government that grants itself permission to take away my pro
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Whats with the aside? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why tack on the Micro Focus news? That is news all on its own and only remotely related to this topic.
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Soulskill wants you to know how he feels about the deal.
Not the only strategy (Score:4, Insightful)
you are badly informed (Score:5, Insightful)
"The US has the second highest effective business tax burden in the world"
Wrong. The U.S. has the second highest nominal business tax rate in the world, around 35%, but thanks to loopholes and other tax breaks no business pays that rate, instead it is less than 15%.
"I wonder why businesses born in the US look to mitigate that in whatever ways the law allows"
Wonder no more, businesses _everywhere_ reduce costs of all kinds in whatever legal ways possible including offshoring revenue and relocating headquarters. This is far from unique to the U.S. except that our laws accomodate offshoring/relocating more than a lot of other countries.
"there will simply be more companies actually moving, entirely, to places with a lower burden"
Bullshit. Companies will not simply drop out of the biggest market in the world just because they don't want to pay any tax at all.
They will still get rich, just not as rich as they might have otherwise.
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Re:Not the only strategy (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a race to the bottom, my friend. You don't out-compete countries with less than a few million inhabitants and no significant social programs.
You mean, like Canada? It has a 26% rate, compared the US's 40% rate. Yeah, third-world hell holes like Canada always whore around with those low numbers, right?
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Rather than address the underlying problem (Score:4, Insightful)
the tax thieves aak "regulators" make new rules. Why not put some thought into changing the tax codes to be on a par wtih Ireland, Switzerland, etc instead of trying to preserve the high tax state?
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In this competition the involved countries will only lose.
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And may I repeat: Historically low total tax as a percentage of GDP. Far lower than during the 50's and 60's, when we experienced the fastest sustained GDP growth rate of any first world country *ever*. So any Laffer Curve argument you want to make would just make you sound ignorant.
Really? Doesn't seem that that far out of line [taxpolicycenter.org]. Now taxation per capita, adjusted for inflation, is way up. And spending is even growing faster...
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Really? Doesn't seem that that far out of line.
Really? You're not very good at math. Average from 1950 - 1969: 17%. Average over the past five years: 15.22%. (17 - 15.22) / 15.22 = 11.69%. Twelve percent higher seems like a lot to me.
Now taxation per capita, adjusted for inflation, is way up.
So is income, which is why I, and the chart you linked to, and anyone who understands economics, uses percentage of GDP.
And spending is even growing faster...
By all means, cut spending. I'm all for it. Until we get ther
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If someone pays you to borrow money, you'd be stupid not to take it.
Yea, cause it's unthinkable that interests rate would ever go up.
I don't have the data handy, but I believe that the term of US debt has been shrinking as the debt has gone up, so we actually have to refinance a pretty substantial fraction of our debt every year. So when interest rates start to rise, we're screwed...
Perspective (Score:4, Insightful)
A company has to convince people to hand over their resources.
A government just decrees its income under threat of violence.
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Not really. A government just "deccrees" it's income as a responsibility of doing business within it's borders. Unless you're talking about 3rd world dictatorships or warlords, Violence has nothing to do with it.
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tax collectors or their enforcers will eventually show up with guns if you don't pay. the guns imply that force will be used if you don't comply. force == violence. it happens everyday in the United States. just because most people submit when they are arrested, doesn't mean the threat of violence isn't always there.
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GP, just like the corporations, would exist and be generating just as much revenue even if there were no government. They were all born fully-formed and educated, capable of traveling long distance without the use of roads, generating their own power and clean water*, and enforcing agreements and fairness all on their own without the help of those scum called government who want to leech off the money generated by their hard work.
*You should have seen GP running his desalinization plant, made all by himself
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Corporations are constructs of the state. They are chartered and incorporated under provisions the state created.
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Yes, people willingly hand over their money in exchange for the goods and services that they value.
Education, transportation, sanitation, power generation, water management, contract enforcement (or "justice") are all just industries; there is nothing magical about them—specificially, there is nothing magical that government brings to them, unless you consider the forcible appropriation of resources to be "magical".
Maybe society would have more money for those things if resources weren't instead forci
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Somalia is the result of a failed state, what was formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, which was governed under a single-party, Socialist rule. The resulting mayhem has nothing to do with libertarian or anarchist principles, particularly the Non-Aggression Principle. Indeed, warlords are still governmental; they forcibly appropriate other people's resources under threat of violence.
In areas of civilization where governmental organizations have not been terribly imposing, Somalia has shown massi
double non-taxation (Score:5, Interesting)
For those that were unaware, this is my explanation (it should be mostly correct)
double non-taxation, otherwise known as a "Double Irish"
It takes advantage of weakness in Irish law that allows companies to not pay taxes on subsidiaries that are outside Ireland.
So a large multinational corporation, located the United States, needs to subsidiaries for this to work.
They open one subsidiary in Ireland.
They open a second subsidiary in a low, or no tax country like Bermuda.
The Irish company owns the Bermuda company.
The Bermuda company owns the US Companies IP rights for outside the US.
The Bermuda company licenses those rights to the Irish company.
The Licensing fees the Irish company pays to the Bermuda company are as close to 100% of the profits the Irish company makes as possible. Everything over that amount gets changed at the Irish corporate rate of 12.4%
The profits all get transferred to the Bermuda subsidiary where there are no corporate taxes. So they avoid all taxes on that money and other governments can't come after them because there are treaties between most countries that prevent them from charging a company based in a different partner country for taxes. This is to prevent situations where you'd pay taxes in both countries for the same money. Bermuda isn't a part of those treaties but Ireland is. So this loophole in Irish law is upending the entire Global tax system.
Re:double non-taxation (Score:5, Insightful)
You are way off on this.
First,
It takes advantage of weakness in Irish law that allows companies to not pay taxes on subsidiaries that are outside Ireland.
IIRC, the US, Ethopia, and Eritrea are the only countries that charge taxes on foreign subsidiaries, so it is not a weakness exculsive to Ireland. And if you think about it, it is rational not to tax the foreign subsidiary. If a profit is earned in country X, country X shoudl get the tax. If not you get the complex and ineffectual of the US.
Second, what you are talking about about abusive transfer payments, not about the "Double Irish", which this treaty is trying to fix. Ireland is not some great "loop hole", just low taxes. And by "Double Irish" I think you really mean the "Double Dutch", which requires a Irish and Dutch subsidary - they recognize income differently. This is, since they have different standards on when to declare income from whom they can structure income so it is never recognized by the tax authority. That is a true loop hole.
Re:double non-taxation (Score:5, Informative)
There is an easier way to sum up the "Double Irish".
Ireland taxes companies based on where they are managed, but the US taxes companies based on where they realize profits and loses (as do most countries). A US company will set up an Irish subsidiary but manage it from the US, or anywhere else outside of Ireland, then transfer it's intellectual property to the subsidiary, who licenses use of said IP back to the parent company. The parent company realizes no profits in the US after paying licensing fees to the Irish subsidiary, so the US collects no taxes. The subsidiary is managed from a foreign company, so Ireland collects no taxes. That's it in a nutshell.
There are further complications where a second Irish subsidiary will be formed plus a Bermuda based shell company, but those are just for dotting the i's and crossing the t's. A further trick can be used with a Dutch company, aka. a "Dutch Sandwich", to minimize taxes even more.
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I guess I over complicated it by simplifying it? lol... anyways, yes, what you're saying is what I meant to get across. My goal was to clarify how this works to whomever may stumble across it, and figured I'd have errors that replies like yours would correct. Thanks!
Not that hard to fix (Score:3)
1) If a country is owned by more than 50% by citizens of X country, then it must pay taxes on all it's profits of the entire world, under Country X's laws.
2) (This one I really like) If a company is not incorporated and paying the majority of it's taxes within a country, than it can not under any circumstance: A) lobby in that country, or in any way attempt to affect legislation or rules of that country B) nor can it t make any political - monetarily or directly - on any political subject for the 8 months preceding any primary or general election.
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So, any serious multinational can have the stock distributed enough to get past your first law....
As to your second, at least in the USA, you're going to be blocked by the First Amendment to some extent. After all, "lobbying" is done by people no matter where the money comes from. As is "political activity".
IN other words, you need to think the problem through a little more carefully...
By the by, are you aware that if Google (for example) were paying ZERO taxes in the USA now, and the laws were change
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Large corporations are owned by these things called shareholders. It takes a LOT of work to make a company so multi-national that it's stock will not be 50% held by one country.
Secondly my law is NOT blocked by the first amendment, unless you are claiming that the US first amendment applies to non-citizens? Because I hate to tell you it doesn't work that way. The 1938 Foreign Agents Re
relevant article (Score:3, Informative)
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Of what use is a paywalled article?
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You are a moron. Even a blind squirrel finds a nut. But more importantly, you should never infer guilt by association and discount anything because of preconceived notions that are not even relevant.
Grow up.
About time - next up - exemptions (Score:3)
About time this happened.
Next up: removing tax exemptions and tax exclusions for corporations.
Corporations aren't People.
People pay taxes and go to jail.
People have AMT (Score:3)
Corporations can do whatever they can to show no profit, and therefore, no taxes.
If rich people were to try to make enough charitable contributions or whatever other deductions to drop their taxes to zero, they'd still get hit with the Alternative Minimum Tax. (those with a low enough income can still get away with this)
Why don't we have an AMT for companies? A sort of 'if you're making over a billion dollars in gross receipts, you still have to pay the U.S. 10%' or simply 'then these deductions aren't a
'Pass it on to the consumer' (Score:2)
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Ideally, that's a good thing because it just opens up opportunities for smaller competitors to offer the same service at a cheaper price, either because they have less overhead or have figured out a more efficient way of doing it. For industries that are near-monopolies, that's what happens.
The main problem is that the big companies know this, and so they are quick to purchase any upstart competitors, to keep actual competition from thriving. THAT is a problem that needs to be dealt with.
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If that is true, then the taxes won't cut into profits, so the businesses won't raise any objections to the taxes. Is that what you're predicting?
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If that is true, then the taxes won't cut into profits, so the businesses won't raise any objections to the taxes.
Of course they will, if they're competing with companies that operate elsewhere with a 15% lower tax rate.
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Why does business exist? (Score:4, Insightful)
Fundamental question with what should be a simple answer. We pursue enterprise to benefit ourselves and profit. Not to serve as revenue generator to the state. The state is supposed to serve the people; not the other way around, but we keep coming around and forgetting the lessons of history and the basic nature of man.
If the state were not exceeding its mandate to serve the people, taxes would be acceptable and nobody would put that much effort into avoiding them because their result would continue to appeal to our interests. But there's never enough money for the state to be all the things it is promising to be, so the states are inventing structures for self-preservation of systems fundamentally doomed to fail.
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Fundamental question with what should be a simple answer. We pursue enterprise to benefit ourselves and profit. Not to serve as revenue generator to the state. The state is supposed to serve the people; not the other way around, but we keep coming around and forgetting the lessons of history and the basic nature of man.
If the state were not exceeding its mandate to serve the people, taxes would be acceptable and nobody would put that much effort into avoiding them because their result would continue to appeal to our interests. But there's never enough money for the state to be all the things it is promising to be, so the states are inventing structures for self-preservation of systems fundamentally doomed to fail.
Fine we implement your libertarian paradise and taxes drop drastically.
You've done nothing to fix this problem because you misunderstood it.
Corporations don't avoid taxes because they're too high, they do it because it's profitable. Corporations compete by competing at the margins, if a competitor in your libertarian paradise goes from a very low tax rate to a slightly lower tax rate then you'll have to follow otherwise you'll be at a competitive disadvantage. If you are a libertarian this shouldn't be a su
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In highly competitive markets the competition will eventually force you to use every tax avoidance trick that your competitors use in order for you to stay in business, unless the corporate tax rate is something negligible.
One solution would be to not have a corporate tax and instead try to go after the owners themselves with capital gains taxes and inheritance taxes and what not.
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Yes. I like all those things. I don't like having to feed children I didn't have the pleasure of making (in addition to my own), and then told I'm not compassionate because I should feel sorry for them and their irresponsible parents. I don't like paying for contraceptives for people who want to have sex. If it's not for procreation, it's for recreation, and I don't go to work every day so you can exercise your crotch. I also don't like buying $800 hammers for contractors, or $800M tanks for dictators.
Re:Why does business exist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately for you, your well-being is not dependent on just your own efforts and choices. It's also the result of the collective efforts of the society of people around you. Otherwise you could live better in Somalia than you do here.
But you can't. So you are stuck with the distasteful (to you anyway) idea that your welfare depends on having a healthy society to live in. To get that you are going to have to contribute.
Sorry.
Will not EVER happen. (Score:3, Insightful)
The companies involved also PAY for the campaigns and prostitutes for the "elected" officials. So this supposed "crack down" will never happen. In point of fact these tax dodges were created by and endorsed by said "elected" officials.
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The OECD has no power to change anything here, so instead they did something they have power to accomplish: they wrote a report. Bravo.
Dutch Sandwich (Score:2)
Does this mean (Score:2)
America Cannot Compete (Score:2)
If the US, the most developed country in the world, with all its advantages of a functioning economy, education system, infrastructure, mineral and agricultural wealth, moderate climate and fundamental rights, cannot compete with the rest, things have come to a sad pass. The America war cry goes up "It's not fair!" and the kind of corporate shenanigans we deplore are now to be deployed on a global scale - protecting a doddering and clueless incumbent from the nimble upstarts, to the detriment of the common
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Certain country's tax codes are upending the world trade structure.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D... [wikipedia.org]
The way things should work: profits made in a country are taxed in that country.
The way things should not work: a company doing business abroad pays taxes both at home and abroad.
The way things break: subsidiary company makes "no profit" (no tax) because it pays hefty license fees (100% net income) to my headquarters company in Ireland. Ireland does not tax licensed technolog
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It reminds me of the car dealers complaining about Tesla selling their cars directly to motorists. It reminds me of taxi drivers complaining about Uber. It reminds me of AT&T complaining about Netflix.
A bit of upending is clearly needed.
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Like Ireland, Switzerland, Singapore and New Zealand? The new Tories are fossilizing the USA.
"Avoidance" == following the rules (Score:2)
How do you "crack down on" people following the rules and doing exactly what is best for them, paying the least amount of taxes?
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Corporations do not pay taxes. They simply pass along the money from consumers to the government.
Yes they do and no they don't.
See here. [slashdot.org]
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Oh my, changing things is complicated and doesn't always work?
No, but seriously, you're wrapping a clear possibility in a blanket of cynical forgone conclusion.
Governments aren't actually interested in no one collecting taxes on their corporations.
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"a business should not be classed as a person for legal purposes and that no taxation should be levied on industry or business at all"
You nailed it. And no, I'm not for letting the rich off easy.
By taxing corporations, that helps make them into people. Taxation without representation. We used to think that was a big deal.
I think corporations have way too much representation now. And yet they can't vote. Corporations are all owned by people, who can vote, and are legitimate tax targets.
Another thing; income
Re: (Score:3)
Companies use infrastructure to deliver goods to their customers ... Companies benefit from local education systems to provide knowledgable people (arguably).
But the company doesn't do anything with the money except spend it on growing the company, or in compensation to employees and investors. When those investors or employees take money home from the company, it's taxed. And if those same people take that already taxed money and invest it that or another company, and it makes money, they get taxed again.
The company doesn't benefit from services and education, etc., the people WHO TAKE HOME THE MONEY do (at which point it's taxed). They other group that ben
Re: (Score:2)
Yes but at a lower rate. Investment income is taxed lower than standard wages.
Right. Usually, that's because:
1) We want people to risk their money making investments to start and grow businesses. That creates economic activity, which is taxed.
2) If the person risking their money on such an investment loses it (as most do - most new businesses fail), they do NOT get to write that loss off on their own income taxes. It's just gone, goodbye. 3) The lower rates only apply if you let the investment site for a good long time. Those who throw money in and yank it back up pay a much h