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Taxes Lead Angry Birds Maker Rovio To Consider Move To Ireland
jones_supa writes with this news, straight from The Irish Times: "Rovio, the Finnish company behind Angry Birds, is considering moving its headquarters to Ireland, chief executive Mikael Hed has said. Rovio employs approximately 400 people, mostly in Finland, but Rovio is in contact with IDA Ireland about establishing headquarters here. The reason for the move would be corporation tax rate, which in Finland is 24.5%, while Ireland's rate is 12.5%. Companies such as Google and Facebook have also set up European headquarter operations in Dublin for the same reason. Hed said that if the decision was made to move to Ireland, the company would then decide exactly what elements of its operations would move. 'If we did make that decision then it would be a natural thing to do to have some production [in Ireland] also.'"
I wonder if they will approach the level of condemnation that Saverin received for giving up his USA citizenship first before the IPO?
State governments here in the US try to raise revenue by luring companies to set up shop in their states using tax incentives. The net result is a sort of tragedy of the commons - overall tax revenue is lower and even though politicians try and claim they're "creating jobs" they're really just stealing them from other states.
When governments (collective entities) try to act like businesses (competitive entities) it seldom works out. Usually only a few who are able to take advantage of the situation benefit.
Every store I go in to seems to have Angry Birds figures, cereal, watches, and adult toys. They are all made in China already. Why not just finish it off and move the whole company over their if that is their top brand?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
My country has done pretty much nothing for me. They tax the heck out of anything I make and the government wants to basically strip-search me anytime, anywhere without a warrant or explanation. If I every made it rich I'd be out of here. Strike that - I'd be gone if I ever made enough to move to another country. Loyalty. It works both ways.
This is an example of a benefit that only goes to corporations and the very rich, one not available to us regular suckers.
I wish I could simply declare that I live in Florida or some other state with no income tax, and still keep my same job/income/benefits/lifestyle, but I can't. But society has decided that it's OK to allow corporations to do exactly this.
I need to start living more selfishly.
They benefited from the system all their lives but when it's their turn to pay in, they leave. For what? A 10% reduction on taxes on profits? Currently, Rovio has a net income of 48 million Euros according to Wikipedia (for how long is anybody's guess, Angry Birds won't stay popular forever and that's the only game for modern phones that they have, the rest appears to be old J2ME games, none of which gained any real popularity), so that means saving about 4 million euros in taxes, while at the same time dealing with both a perception of greed which can certainly hurt them among conscious consumers as well as the costs associated with moving the operation to Ireland.
how do you pronounce Hämäläinen , Räikkönen , or Jääskeläinen in Gaelic?
will you assholes in the rest of the world just speak the American language please?
it's like a goddamn Lord of the Rings movie in here
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
And they only have two games (three with the space version), and one of them was bought.
And people wonder why Ireland has become the basket case of Europe.
The EU is very fond of harmonising the pain to its citizens. It should have a minimum corporate tax rate to ensure that companies pay their dues...
While Antartica has the lowest tax rate they have not signed any tax treates, so the local goverment could charge full taxes.
That being siad, I don't like corporate taxes for interantional companies. There are too many source (where is the corporation located) / residence (where is the corporation making money) issues, they are easy to game, etc.
I think the world would be a better place if more of the corporate taxes were shifted to a source only method. USA would get a cut of the corporate profits when I bought a Angry Birds games - not sure why Finland should have a cut. The profits would then float to corporate headquaters and paid out to the employees / shareholders - which I am assuming are Finish. Then Finland could charge a income / dividend tax and get it's cut. Much simplier.
I'm on the fence about corporate tax, because I consider it triple dipping. After all, people buying Rovio's products are spending their post-tax income. Rovio's employees pay income tax. Why should that same money be taxed yet again at the corporate level ? Does the Finnish gov't do anything of value with those taxes ? Mine does not (Canada).
On the other hand, I loathe any modern corporation that amasses vast amounts of wealth and doesn't create jobs to spend it. We see far too much of this happening in North America, with the wealthiest companies playing investment games and showing growth on paper, but never feeding any of that wealth back into the system. That numbers game drives up inflation as stagnant wealth does not serve anyone.
I still don't think corporate tax is the solution. It is clearly a stop-gap measure that has proven ineffective at stimulating societal growth.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
For better or for worse, betting on self-interest over altruism usually wins.
Don't bet on it yet. The government sponsored benefits in Finland are much better than in Ireland. If management (and possibly staff) move to Ireland with their families they'll be giving up things they take for granted at the moment. This could result in higher salaries and benefit costs. It may not rise to the 12.5% they'll be saving on corporate taxes on profits, but it will surely eat into it ... and affect their quality of life.
The real issue with states giving tax breaks to entice companies to move there isn't simply them "stealing jobs from other states rather than creating them".
The reason such measures usually fail is a state's failure to demand specific goals as part of the deal.
Time and time again, companies took advantage of huge tax breaks only to plunk down some sort of office or warehouse that doesn't actually hire more than a few dozen employees. That, or they may only stay as long as the tax break continues, uprooting the whole operation after the 3 or 5 year deal ends.
IMO, there's nothing inherently wrong with state trying to encourage businesses to set up shop within their borders. Even though we're a group of 50 United States, each one still competes with each other internally, much like corporations with multiple divisions often operate each division so it competes with the others.
The PROBLEM is, states need to get a clue about such deals, ensuring it's beneficial for both parties. (Most likely, corrupt politicians simply don't care, because they're getting some kind of kickback or garnering support they need by making the deals happen, at any cost to the citizenry of the state.) Any such arrangement should include contingencies, such as "You will lose the tax break AND owe back taxes from the time you moved here if you don't consistently keep X number of people employed, at wages no less than $Y per year." and "Moving out of the state for a period of 10 years from the time this tax break expires constitutes breach of contract, and again, is subject to back taxes."
A company who genuinely has a desire to move to the state (with a belief it really benefits them in the long-haul) would still gladly accept such an arrangement, IMO. The ones who complain it's too restrictive were likely just trying to milk the system to the state's detriment anyway.
If my colleagues are any measure, they're all playing Angry Birds all day.
Come to the US and buy some congresscritters. Ask GE and the lot..hell.. if you play the game right theyll pay you to be here and even give your employees revolving jobs in the administration making laws for yourself.
I can attest to that. I lived in Ireland for six years. I'm now back in Scandinavia and is more then happy to pay my tax here again.
Why should that same money be taxed yet again at the corporate level ? Does the Finnish gov't do anything of value with those taxes ? Mine does not (Canada).
Depends what you consider value. Some things that might be worth the extra tax rate: Infrastructure, public healthcare, well educated workforce.
What?
U.S. States that are currently a hub/center for some particular industry were not alway so. American history is full of migrations from one state to another to follow jobs. Why is it all of sudden wrong to do so?
I am not sure your tragedy of the commons argument applies here. Some state governments have become terribly inefficient and somewhat parasitic of their traditional industries, California may be an example. Why should some company or industry be forced to stay put to prop up such a mismanaged local government? Implicit in your argument is the "all other things being equal" caveat, but things are not equal. Some states will have an inherent advantage due to access to transportation and distribution systems, access to natural resources, access to energy sources, access to a trained work force, access to universities, an appealing climate, etc.
Good government seems to rely on a system of checks and balances. I think we need to have company mobility to some degree as a check/balance against the mismanagement of local government. A lack of competition between states may be just as bad as too much competition.
Corporations have many of the same rights as citizens. Why shouldn't they have some of the obligations?
You say your government does nothing of value with the taxes it collects. Do you ever use the health care system, the legal system, the education system or the transportation system? Those are paid for mostly by taxes at various levels. Most research in Canada is funded from taxes, because the corporations won't. The government does a lot of things with my money that I don't like, but in the main, they are reasonably well spent.
If you employ a plumber does he not have to pay tax on his fee because you already paid it on your salary?
One man's spending is another man's income. The same money isn't being taxed again. A new transaction is.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is where a world government would make sense. then you would have a flat tax no matter 'where' the company is set up. they can set up where ever they want to get the best workforce, not to just get the best rate depriving people of jobs in some cases.
Fire 400 workers, move headquarters, save what 4-6 mil? get new workers, new office space, move all your shit, dwindle savings down to about 1 mil then watch your one and only hit fasty fade away into fad history
sounds like a bunch of effort for little reward, and honestly your a 1 hit wonder, there is no long term benefit
What is it with people that take advantage of the high social development afforded by higher tax rates only to run off to a low tax rate area when they become rich?
We really need to make sure people understand that ALL wealth comes from government. Government makes sure your employees are educated instead of brain-dead religious morons, that roads/trains/airports exist to deliver your products to customers, that the banks holding your money don't have disappearing bank accounts, and on and on.
None of this would have been possible without a government paid for by taxes.
The richer you are, the more dependent you are on government, as a larger portion of your wealth came about because government made it possible for you to be wealthy. You can't be rich in a libertarian paradise like Ireland or Somalia. Does anyone even know any rich Irishman? Do they even exist?
It seems people become libertarian AFTER they become rich, as they have the mistaken belief that they somehow made their wealth themselves. They have no idea the kind of infrastructure and work government put in to get that one dollar to travel into their hands in the first place. No, the wealthy didn't magically conjure up that dollar into their pockets.
It's only "double taxation" if they double the tax rate. Government has to take in enough money to provide the services people democratically asked for (maybe they shouldn't have, but that's a different argument). Whether they tap the economy at one location, or two, or three, is just spreading around where the "damage" is done - income taxes, sales taxes (general, on all sales, or special taxes on gasoline, etc), user fees, inheritance taxes, financial-transaction taxes ... it all has to add up to the total money needed. Some get hit with more - progressive income tax hits on higher incomes more; sales taxes hit on people who buy more stuff rather than saving, and inheritance taxes hit people with rich Dads. Corporate taxes just hit at the production part of the cycle rather than the income phase; no different than tapping your left arm for blood rather than right.
You can tell that corporate taxes aren't doing much damage, in an economy where almost all economic production is through bodies corporate, because individuals that don't *have* to incorporate to make money, do so anyway ... for the tax BENEFITS. Your dentist is probably a "professional corporation", and these days your private electrician is probably losing business to the corporation that employs ten electricians and has one phone number and ad campaign.
Ireland's low corporate taxes made it a conservative darling, the country that was doing everything Right - and it crashed anyway. Now it's had over 2 years of the harshest austerity measures - and hasn't revived. If it gets this head office, yay, but it's still in for years of high unemployment and pain. Clearly, low corporate taxes are no panacea.
I'd rather drink Bushmills and Guinness than Finnish fermented reindeer milk.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
Want to fix the problem with international corporations? Easy, tax wealth transfers between legal entities. It is easy to calculate, audit, etc, and you'll end up with tax structure that has almost no way of being anything but transparent.
Here's how it would work. First, we eliminate ALL corporate income taxes, as they are too easy to avoid (e.g. GE). Then we set up a system where wealth transfers by corporations to other corporations are taxed, perhaps at %.5 (half percent). Then when Entity A transfer wealth (payment for services, products or licensing) to Entity B the transfer is taxed. This will eliminate the need for shell corporations used to avoid paying taxes. Basically, you'll be taxing the velocity of capitalism. This will cause the government to support all sorts of reforms designed to increase the velocity of wealth so that they will increase revenue in the process. This will in turn get the economy rolling to maximum efficiency and there is no penalty for success, nor reward for failure.
Government should have no role in the economy, it is too easy for politicians to curry favor via tax policy and economic incentives (Solyndra) to garner campaign contributions.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Taxes are infinitely dipped. You get paid, and 1/3 goes to taxes, then you buy a car and (aside from paying sales and registration taxes) the dealership pays taxes, then the dealership owner gets his profits and pays 1/3 of that in taxes and then buys a boat and (aside from paying the luxury tax and sales tax) the boat salesman gets his commission and pays taxes, then buys dinner and (aside from liquor and sales and meals taxes) the server gets a tip (and won't claim it, so won't pay taxes) and the restaurant makes money, and the restaurant owner gets his profit and pays 1/3 of that in taxes...
The taxes on a single dollar could, taken this logic, cost $10 in taxes for a year. The point is that for every transaction, someone has benefitted from the protections and advantages afforded by the programs which are government funded. It might be safety from invasion (military), or maybe the person spending the money is on welfare (money straight from the gov't), or the land you own is protected through zoning laws from being used in a way that is incompatible with your business, or the item you sell (like a car) would be useless without government-maintained roads, or you sell American Widgets, which are protected from foreign competition by the Widget Importation Limitation Act.
Every time you buy or sell stock, or a home, or anything that uses a broker, the people who made that transaction possible get paid. Twice, actually, since the buyer and the seller pay their brokers respectively for the same transaction, even if that broker is the same person/entity. The government works the same way, after a fashion. The idea being that if you are benefiting from the governments services, and you have the resources to pay (i.e. you make money), you are expected to put a certain percentage back in the master kitty.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Amen. Lower taxes often means lower services. I bet Nigeria has fairly low taxes, but I also bet most US companies wouldn't want to move there. Tax brackets are not the only factor affecting business profits, lets not forget that.
Does the Finnish gov't do anything of value with those taxes ? Mine does not (Canada).
Really? Roads, policing, rubbish collection, the legal system, the military, healthcare etc. are all worthless?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Your first paragraph could easily be reworded to show that personal income tax of the employees would be the "triple dip". This would make more sense since people have physical bodies with physical needs and thus taxing them hurts the whole socioeconomic system more than taking the money of a bodiless, nebulous entity that can exist on unicorn dreams and pixie dust.
You say you loath corporations that amass wealth without giving back, but that's exactly what a corporation is for. The entire idea of the limited liability corporation is to create an entity that functions to realize far more wealth than it produces while shielding it's owners from any loss it might incur if what it does turns out to be a bad idea.
The crux of the problem with corporations is that everyone and everything exists inside a economic system which requires constant maintenance, both in the form of policy shifts to take into account changing conditions, and in the physical form with the maintenance of infrastructure (transportation, communication etc). Governments at various levels generally perform this maintenance and need funds to do so. Taxes are how these funds are raised and as such function as a fee on participation in the system that enabled profit in the first place.
A properly functioning corporation will never voluntary give up wealth. At the same time, maintenance of the economic system needs money.
Taxes on corporations need to be strictly enforced and extensive enough to ensure corporations pay for what they've benefited from. The alternative is exactly what you loathe: giant corporations that exist simply to capture and hold as much wealth as possible.
Canada has 15% corporate tax rate (http://www.canadabusinesstax.com/corporate-income-tax-rates/), 52 week combined maternity/parental leave, free health care, and federal pension plan.
There is no reason the US cannot provide the same level of benefits except for political bickering and the close to 2 billion *per day* the US spends on its military.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
That does not work this way. They will not move, they will create a subsidary in Ireland (a "ghost company").
The Finnish company will sell Angry Birds and whatever they produce to the Irish ghost company, to the point of getting no profits (or even getting loses, if that gives them any advantage). The Irish ghost will then resell to the real customers, getting a tax cut.
Meanwhile the management of the company keeps enjoying finish welfare, at the expenses of their compatriotes.
Later on, probably they will complain about their country public deficit and how "politicians have ruined it".
Why can't
They're still taking though - they still ship their product in the nation they just left. They just don't pay *any* taxes there any more.
Even if they were taking, they gave *something* back, like complements on a first date.
You may not like this kind of venue shopping, regulatory arbitrage, or whatever you call it. Consider the alternative:
One world government and "harmonizing" laws so that all countries are the same.
You don't have to be a conspiracy nut to oppose that. It's easy to see what's wrong with it directly. If you have only one system it had damned better be the right one otherwise everybody is screwed. Competition is good, and that includes the policies of nation-states.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
All money is taxed multiple times. Any time a person makes money, they are taxed for it. If you earn money, then hire a person to do something for you, you will both be taxed. So why should corporations be exempt, if they have nearly all of the advantages of a physical person (and a few extra)? If the owners don't want the extra taxes, they can close down the corporation and run the business as individuals.
The only reason for corporate taxes to be abolished would be taxing the stockholders.
You own 1% of Microsoft? Ok here is the bill for 1% of their income tax. Have a nice day.
Yes, I bet Rovio would have had trouble finding suitable programmers, designers (or even electric power) had they been in Somalia. Don't you think?
And then that crappy government dares to ask something back! How can they!
Why can't
IIRC it's not that simple - my former employer did the same thing and they were very keen on making sure that not only were they legally based in Ireland, they moved as many functions to Ireland as they could so they could demonstrate they really were an Irish company. The former head office effectively became a branch office with only one function.
The corporations would counter by merging into a single huge company, with no wealth transfers and no taxes. A better solution is to tax all income where it's made, with all forms of income (pay, capital gains...) taxed at the same rate.
I have played all the Angry Bird games and have really enjoyed them, but I find it hard to believe that it takes 400 people to bring Angry Birds Space to my tablet. I guess I could imagine that it takes a group of 5 people to construct the game and then another 5 to support/manage them. But 400?
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It would be even better if Harper wasn't spending $35b CDN on fighter jets we don't need.
I can attest to that. I lived in Ireland for six years. I'm now back in Scandinavia and is more then happy to pay my tax here again.
So you said fin to Ireland.
like so many others, another asshole who just wants to take and not to give. For the likes of him there should be an island where there are no taxes and consequently nothing what is made possible by taxes - just a bunch of other greedy assholes who all want to get richer by taking the money of the others.
Society would be a better place without people like him.
I'm on the fence about corporate tax, because I consider it triple dipping.
Help me understand what is bad about that taxes coming from multiple sources.
Money moves around like water. Why does sucking it from one spot sound like such a great idea to some folks? [play jeopardy theme]
The total amount of water being sucked out is a different issue. Even then, some people pretend that water just gets sucked out and ejected to outer space as if the Boeings, LHM's, Raytheons, General Dynamics, etc etc etc of the world don't pay high salaries back into the system.
They grow and prosper with taxes when they are a weaker and smaller corporation - yet with success they no longer can afford to pay taxes? PURE BS.
Corporations benefit and prosper in their home nation and their success is in part due to the employees they have at the time. It is clear betrayal to screw over the people that contributed to success and to the nation which helped facilitate it in the first place.
It is betraying your fellow countrymen by taking their tax-payer-funded infrastructure, workforce, education, and corporate welfare (includes the bankruptcy system that encourages risk taking.) The public (their government) should BILL the traitors for services rendered.
Welcome to the race to the bottom.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
benefit by being situated in a country where (I presume is like the average European country) where good education and healthcare is quite accessible.
I don't know about healthcare in particular (although this being a Nordic Economic Model country, it's most likely good) but Finland's education is the best, even beating Fellow Nordics.[1]
It's level[2] is frequently top three, if not the first. And that's a country with NO private schools, and with system that does *not* urge absolute competition between students.
Got to admit, despite their other possible faults, Finns got this education shit covered.
Links:
[1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8601207.stm
[2]: http://stats.oecd.org/PISA2009Profiles/
I am an ACCA student. Got a query on Accountancy/Finance? Maybe I can help!
Canada has 15% corporate tax rate (http://www.canadabusinesstax.com/corporate-income-tax-rates/), 52 week combined maternity/parental leave, free health care, and federal pension plan.
There is no reason the US cannot provide the same level of benefits except for political bickering and the close to 2 billion *per day* the US spends on its military.
Canada can afford to do all this with a piss-poor military. With a population of just over 30 million, Canada's military is so small that it's barely adequate to protect one quarter of their territory. The truth is, part of that 2 billion a day you lament the US military is spending goes in part towards providing military security to countries like Canada that don't spend enough on their own defense.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
The USA is so corrupt; they can just be the next contractor with NYC to write their employee management software... NYC needs one and I bet the politicians would have a warm view of the Angry Birds maker who unlike previous contractors can actually FINISH something... plus bribes (aka campaign contributions.)
With the republicans taking back the government (like they ever really lost power with Obama) they probably would love to throw more money at the military. Romney wants to put in a Trillion more into the military and he can probably see how Angry Birds could be used by our military somehow... With our increasing stupidity we'll need those kind of easy interfaces so our future soldiers can operate the weapons.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
But in that company, they can at least claim it's software testing.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
It paid for the education of Rovio founders and employees. Education in Finland is free up to and including university level.
Oh well, the country doesn't fall from a few leeches showing their true colours.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
State governments here in the US try to raise revenue by luring companies to set up shop in their states using tax incentives. The net result is a sort of tragedy of the commons - overall tax revenue is lower and even though politicians try and claim they're "creating jobs" they're really just stealing them from other states.
Lower "overall tax revenue" is hardly a tragedy. In fact, it's a triumph for everyone who works and produces anything rather than living off the work and production of others. As more governments compete in this way, there will be more opportunity to get a productive job and less opportunity to sell your vote for a cut of the loot taxed from the producers.
It's only a tragedy for those who want power over their neighbors and the ability to spend money they didn't earn.
Ireland is widely considered to be in the same boat as Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. They'll need to balance their budget at some point, and I wouldn't bet on the corporate tax rate to stay this low when they do.
Rovio is probably trying to pull a bluff to get a local tax break.
Finland, the subject of this Slashdot post, offers some evidence against this common claim. For decades Finland refused to joined NATO, managing its own defense. Nonetheless, it has built a welfare state comparable to its Nordic neighbours while at the same time maintaining one of the stronger armies in the world.
Your informative statement is at best an anecdote. I realize that I have the whole of the internet to research what you attest to, but you could at least provide some idea of which Finish benefits are better and why.
Finland has a much higher personal income tax rate that Ireland. If the income of Rovio employees is above average, they're financially much better off having a lower income tax rate and paying for the services they used to get from the government themselves.
Sorry, but government services don't come from the tooth fairy.It doesn't matter whether you use corporate income taxes or personal income taxes, ultimately, the only entity that pays for them is the real people living in that country.
Why would I want a Canadian-style health care and retirement plan when I already have a better private plan in the US?
Because he would not have gotten the Government help he received to start the company.
Finland has social programs to start companies. And he used them to start his.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
That's right. Defect from the country that provided you with outstanding developers who were the end product of the best k-12 (and 12- 16 AND into adulthood) educational systems in the world
http://www.oecd.org/document/60/0,3343,en_2649_201185_39700732_1_1_1_1,00.html
and who were willing to work for start-up wages and take risks because they weren't burdened with student loan debt:
From Wikipedia:
The Finnish education system is an egalitarian system, with no tuition fees and with free meals served to full-time students.
The present Finnish education system consists of well-funded and carefully thought out daycare programs (for babies and toddlers) and a one-year "pre-school" (or kindergarten for six-year olds); a nine-year compulsory basic comprehensive school (starting at age seven and ending at the age of sixteen); post-compulsory secondary general academic and vocational education; higher education (University and Polytechnical); and adult (lifelong, continuing) education.
The Nordic strategy for achieving equality and excellence in education has been based on constructing a publicly funded comprehensive school system without selecting, tracking, or streaming students during their common basic education.[1]
Part of the strategy has been to spread the school network so that pupils have a school near their homes whenever possible or, if this is not feasible, e.g. in rural areas, to provide free transportation to more widely dispersed schools. Inclusive special education within the classroom and instructional efforts to minimize low achievement are also typical of Nordic educational systems.[1]
Yes defect from that system you benefited from so you can save a measly 12.5% on taxes :
FTA:
The corporation tax rate in Finland is 24.5 per cent, while Ireland's rate is 12.5 per cent.
Yes do defect . Because that's coke n' whore money you could be putting up your fucking nose instead of giving it to the most effective and civic minded governments the world has ever known and supporting one of the most egalitarian societies the world has ever achieved. .
In truth, this happens all to time to Finland . Sports stars, recording stars etc etc defect to a low taxation country. They know about it and build in an allowance for it. They STILL like their society better , and as far as the loss of "talent" goes, they know how to print that shit on demand:
"Finland has reached number 1 or number 2, with very high rankings in reading literacy, mathematics and science. If one could make a calculation of the total, comparing different fields, Finland would be number 1. The country received very high marks in this international comparison of students," Finnish Ambassador to Thailand Sirpa Maenpaa told The Nation recently.
"Furthermore, the results that come from Finland are uniform. They do not come from some top students, but from the performance of all of the students," she said.
from:
http://www.nationmultimedia.com/2009/09/28/national/national_30113177.php
For anyone interested in how the Scandinavians think about taxes, this is a great listen from Planet Money:
Quotable quote- an incredulous interviewer asks a woman "would you like your taxes to be even higher??" to which she replies "...mmmm .. what will I get for my money?"
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2010/01/podcast_tax_me_please.html
Maybe you should lay off that medication. They seem to really mess you up.
What?
Just another race to the bottom. Corporations are going to end up tax-exempt and we're all going to end up living in a Neo-Feudalistic society where instead of an aristocracy we've got C-levels and their retinues while national governments sputter out with less and less tax revenue coming in and become more and more irrelevant.
The saddest thing in all of this is, though, that there will be a sizable number of middle- and lower-class people out there cheering the shit, even as their own well-being is threatened directly by it. When you've got people in trailer parks arguing that taxes do nothing but punish success and cheering on the dismantling of the social programs they're actively using (such as Medicaid, welfare, public schools), you know that we're fucking doomed...
Oh please, that only happens in your imagination. The tax burden is very high. Medicaid and public schools are not being dismantled.
Where do you get your info from?
If management (and possibly staff) move to Ireland with their families they'll be giving up things they take for granted at the moment.
The decision makers won't move. They'll set up a skeleton headquarters that is barely more than a PO Box and an 'executive' assistant. Then they'll stay where they are and find other tax dodges for their personal income. Like $1 salaries with huge benefit packages.
The jobs that will get moved are production staff. The current holders of those jobs will either have the choice to move or find a new job. In Ireland they will hire enough replacements to convince the governments that they have an ongoing permanent presence in the country.
Another day, another update to a Google android app.
For better or for worse, betting on self-interest over altruism usually wins.
Actually, GM opposed a public health mandate during the Truman administration. Over the years management has come to regret this decision greatly. Public health care in Canada has been repeatedly cited by management as one of the reasons why they still have operations in Canada even though the hourly rate is by now higher in Canada. They make the savings back by not having to directly fund healthcare for their employees.
Why would I want a Canadian-style health care and retirement plan when I already have a better private plan in the US?
For the time when you get fired from your current job.
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Corporate taxation is just rabble rousing. It should be ended entirely and instead tax capital gains/dividends at normal tax rates.
If you or I packed our assets into a suitcase and tried moving them across borders, Customs and the Infernal Revenue Service would stop it right there. Duties must be paid and (if you are an American or from a few other totalitarian states) taxes must still be paid on income it generates. Even overseas.
But convert those assets into intellectual property and them move across borders unimpeded. Poof! They disappear from one tax jurisdiction. Voila! They appear someplace else (with lower tax rates). Note that this magic trick can only be performed by a fortunate class of people: Corporations.
Have gnu, will travel.
Most natural thing to do will be to move production to country where production costs are cheaper. It won't be Ireland. He might have popular game, but he still has to get more experience in cost management.
Why should the Rovio founders and employees have to pay back those costs 20 or 50 or 100 times over? Why isn't is ever, ever enough?
Of course it is. So is the fact that I wake up every morning and go to work. Why are you implying this is some sad truth or something?
Today we are insane; highly profitable businesses who are charging high prices due to high market demand are minimizing expansion if not shrinking in actual size while bitching about the small taxes they can't CHEAT out of paying. Naturally their "profit" goes down because that is actually tax money owed to the public and they've been STEALING from us. They DO NOT need to raise prices to pay their taxes! They have the tax money already in their pockets which they misrepresent as profit!
Corporations need MORE police and MORE fire protection. They benefit MORE from educated citizens than parents do (unless you have more children than the corporation has employees.) Corporations use more resources and government services. Welfare programs for corporations are some of the biggest programs in existence; almost always far exceeding what an individual can receive from the welfare programs for people.
If corporations are "people", then they should pay as much tax as I DO. I don't know anybody who would not be extremely upset if their neighbor was paying almost no taxes while making way more income.
Operating expenses are part of the equation of any business; if taxes raise their prices that is the REALITY they must work with. DEMAND DRIVES GROWTH. If they cost too much and the market demand will not bare the costs, then they go under. tough luck... take your publicly funded bankruptcy protection and go start another business. Somebody wanting money will start a business, there is never a shortage of people willing to earn money.
It is a red herring to simply cite the fact corporations employ people as if that is a legitimate answer.
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Oooh, good argument corky! You sure stuck it to The Man with that one! I think you know the answer and think you're being clever. If it was safe and they had the infrastructure to move there I'm sure they would.
No, instead our grown with stagnate or go backwards a bit until India/China/South America and others catch up a bit more. What moron doesn't grasp this already?
Sorry, but Finland is not Scandinavian, it's a Nordic country, according to us Scandinavians. You will find multiple definitions out there, but none matter more than that of the people concerned.
The Nordic countries, which we Scandinavians use to describe our region, includes the three Scandinavian Kingdoms; Denmark, Norway and Sweden, as well as Iceland and Finland.
The reason being that Finland does not belong to the same ethnic or linguistic group as the others. To put it simply: the Vikings came from the three Kingdoms, while Iceland was settled by them. Finland however was later conquered by Sweden and partly colonized.
Finland was, ipso facto, defended by NATO. While, notionally, NATO would not have intervened in a Soviet invasion of Finland, the truth is that it would have only been part of an invasion of the entire peninsula, and the Finn's proud refusal to join in NATO means that they would have been incapable of effectively integrating the remains of their army with NATO to defend the rest of the peninsula. In other words, they cheap'ed out, for fear of antagonizing their neighbors to the east.
And this story is about a company that is looking for a way out of that messed up government system, that forces people to give up their earnings, as if they are actual possessions of the government.
Finland is losing the companies now, in the global world, they will lose their gravy train of having a closed system of monopolies created by the government, as more and more is outsourced elsewhere, as the capital searches for ways to make things cheaper and make more profit, and the socialist welfare system that was overtaxing the population will collapse and I am going to enjoy watching it collapse if I am not dead in the next 10-15 years.
You can't handle the truth.
The shortages are nowhere near as bad as they're made out to be; but there are people who can't always get the care needed right away.
Ontario, at least, is quite forthcoming about wait times and their efforts to improve them. I have relatives also in Quebec but know less about the current state of their healthcare.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Wait, what?
What security does Canada need? The only viable threat to their territory is the United States.
So are you seriously asserting that the US spends millions, if not the best part of a billion, to protect Canada from itself?
Are you crazy?
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Meanwhile the management of the company keeps enjoying finish welfare, at the expenses of their compatriotes.
Don't worry what they are not paying in corporate income taxes, will be paid in individual income taxes due to higher salaries and increased dividend payment. Because Individual tax rates are almost always higher than Corporate rates, Finland could easily see a net increase in tax revenues because of this maneuver.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
And as for their "free" health care don't forget the doctor shortages and waiting lists. I live right near the Canadian border and a significant portion of the hospital staff are Canadian. It's also not uncommon for Canadians to come over here to have procedures done because there's no one who will do it or the waiting list is so long they'll be dead by the time their "free" health care is able to treat them
That's just nonsense spread by Republican based spin trying to discredit any government sponsored heath care. If you are in critical need the procedure or service you will get it right away. No one has ever died waiting for a procedure. Pure nonsense.
but in spite of what you've heard about Canada, their system is not as perfect as you think
No its definitely not perfect but its a hell of a lot better than the US system that will drive you bankrupt if you get sick.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
The truth is, part of that 2 billion a day you lament the US military is spending goes in part towards providing military security to countries like Canada that don't spend enough on their own defense.
The actual truth is the US is spending $2billion to fix their own mess they created with their moronic foreign policy.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Why would I want a Canadian-style health care and retirement plan when I already have a better private plan in the US?
I have insight into both health care systems. Unless you are rich and are paying for everything yourself, you definitely do not have better health coverage than we have in Canada.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Because it is nice to live in a country with good infrastructure, proper education and healthcare? Where you know that when someone comes of age he'll be taken care off, regardless of how lucky he got during his life? When you fall ill you won't be bankrupt?
Is it really that bad to pay 33% tax when the regular employee has to pay 50%? Sure 1 year of that 33% may be more than an employee pays his whole life, but that's not the fucking point. Everyone does his share and if you strike it big, it means you end up paying more but you still end up with a whole lot more.
As others have mentioned, the 12.5% isn't even the best rate around. Moving to Ireland is more generally about the Double Irish whereby you form two companies in Ireland, one based in a true tax haven like the Caymans. Ireland then lets the company in the tax haven not pay Irish taxes, so it sells "IP" to the other company at whatever price they want (no transfer pricing rules), so while one company banks all the revenue, it pays just about everything over to the shell "IP" company where it is basically all untaxed profit. In practice this means the company chooses it's real tax rate in Ireland by deciding how much of it's revenues it doesn't ship out to the tax haven.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Except, now that they've already paid Finland back many, many times over, they're "greedy" and "leeches" for wanting to use legal means to start to pay less. So it's never enough, no matter how much they pay. They're still evil for not paying more.
BTW: I can't get that deal where I pay taxes and get decent infrastructure, education, and healthcare in return. My taxes all go to freeloaders, overpaid government workers and pensioners, lawyers, and corruption. Infrastructure crumbles, schools cheat children out of an education, and my healthcare is not included. I only have "smaller" government or "corrupt, useless, giveaway" government to choose from. There's no "efficient, you get what you pay for" government in California. So "smaller" is the only rational choice for anyone not on the payroll.
I bet at least 1/3 of the USA has not caught up with you. You have an optimism bias. Equilibrium will not happen.
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Sure they're deals.... But a set of tax rules uniformly applied to everyone doesn't entice anyone new to move to your state, if they're doing just fine where they're at (a state with a lower tax rate).
All I'm saying is, it doesn't seem unreasonable to me for a state's politicians to take an interest in attracting businesses/jobs from other states, and a limited time exemption from the normal tax rules is as good an incentive to offer as any.
So no, the fact it's a "deal" doesn't automatically strike me as the core problem here. The problem is, just as you say, with politicians acting for their own personal gain vs. having their own state's best interests at heart. The solution? Well, that gets into all sorts of arguments and possible scenarios -- many of which aren't too likely to happen since political status-quo power is so entrenched. But IMO, you should at least subject any such tax break measure to a vote by the citizens of the state. If the people don't believe it's a good deal, there should be no way to just "push it through anyway".
A better answer probably involves removal of politics as a career job... Make it a volunteer position which only pays a small salary (at least something to cover one's own costs of volunteering, such as travel expenses involved), and frankly? I think re-election shouldn't even be an option any more. It encourages too much corruption, and diverts the energy and attention of politicians from the issues at hand to concerning themselves with self-promotion for a re-election.
Some would say "Only the wealthy would ever be capable of volunteering." -- but I'd argue that #1, our nation was FOUNDED by such people in the first place, so that's not necessarily a bad thing. But more importantly, #2, I'd imagine with such a volunteer system in place, a willingness to do so for a term would look very good on one's resume. Just as broke college grads are known to go off and do volunteer work for a while for the sake of the experience, some would do the same with politics.
Let me point out two things.
First, we currently do tax wealth transfers. What happens? We have companies like GE who just leave thier profits abroad. Mind you, it's at a lower rate then 0.5%., but still.
Second, you don't want to encourage "faster" wealth transfers. That is just going to encourage hot money to flow in and flow out of countries lookings for short therm gains. You want long term stable transfers.
A better answer probably involves removal of politics as a career job... Make it a volunteer position which only pays a small salary (at least something to cover one's own costs of volunteering, such as travel expenses involved), and frankly? I think re-election shouldn't even be an option any more. It encourages too much corruption, and diverts the energy and attention of politicians from the issues at hand to concerning themselves with self-promotion for a re-election.
Term limits don't solve the problem because re-election isn't the only way of compensating the politician for the favors he/she conveys. The quid pro quo can come after leaving office. Remember this story? It may not go directly to the politician, but rather to his/her friends or family members. If you accept that crooked people will find ways to trade favors at the public's expense, the most effective deterrent is to take away their ability to do favors, i.e. minimize their ability to treat people/companies unequally.
Is moving for a job beneath you?
No, but it might be above some people. As I understand, people are expected to find their first job near where relatives live so that they can build up enough savings to move.
There is no reason the US cannot provide the same level of benefits except for political bickering and the close to 2 billion *per day* the US spends on its military.
Has it ever occurred to you that many nations, notably Japan and South Korea, but also the European nations and North and South America are able to make do with far less military spending than would otherwise be necessary because the United States maintains a large and powerful military? What do you suppose would be the result of many roughly equal military powers scattered across the globe with every incentive to attack their neighbors for material gain, but with none of them strong enough, either individually or even collectively, to quash regional conflicts before they got out of hand? There would be many more regional wars and much less scientific process and other positive developments as individual nations or small groups of nations constantly fought wars or prepared to fight them with their neighbors. It would be tremendously wasteful and inefficient; much more wasteful and inefficient than even current US military spending. Look at any period of world history before WWI and WWII. There were lots of wars, lots of famines and limited scientific, cultural and technological progress with frequent presses of the reset button as empires were conquered, people scattered or put to the sword, and much progress lost with each iteration. You may not like the present state of world affairs, but it could be far worse without a stabilizing force like the United States.
a sense of humor
an important thing in life
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
In an article in Finnish Taloussanomat Rovio denies it is going to move to Ireland:
http://www.taloussanomat.fi/informaatioteknologia/2012/06/09/lehti-rovio-harkitsee-muuttoa-irlantiin-yhtio-kiistaa/201231199/12
Somewhere on the Earth, an economist had an aneurysm... The cost of taxes is calculated exactly as such. Cost is a well-defined word, it's the value of the next most highly valued alternative. So the cost of a tax is the total value of goods were not produced because of its existence, and since value is subjective, we exchange it into something which has a broad demand, like dollars, from the good's price. But the very first problem with this isn't even that, it's your arithmetic: 30% off a product already 30% off doesn't add up to 60% off, it's about 50%.
Wonder what the public key field is for?
And this story is about a company that is looking for a way out of that messed up government system, that forces people to give up their earnings, as if they are actual possessions of the government.
They'd have more sympathy if they started "looking for a way out" before they actually became successful. You know, like the real Randian supermen, proudly standing up and going forth on their own merit alone, with no social welfare net or free public education system to prop them up with "stolen" money.
Perhaps because universal free education for all is made possible because some of those thus educated pay back several times its worth, propping the rest?
Are they "greedy" "leeches" if they only pay it back 10 times over instead of 12? How much is enough?
And who says "universal" so-called "free education" is ideal anyway? If parents had to try to get their kids an education, they would value it more. If parents had to try, they'd find a way to get their kids to behave. And then all the other kids could learn too.
I don't know about Finland, but in US schools one of the biggest problems is that all the kids who want to learn are locked up together with apathetic or disruptive or violent kids. So the kids who want to learn lose much of their opportunity to learn. And the ones who don't want to learn don't get educated anyway.
By wanting it to be "universal", we lose much of the "education". And no one who earns a paycheck thinks education is "free".
They are NOT Randian, they are just doing business. They never had the money before to care about the issue, now, in my case, I moved my business before I started making any real money with it (as a contractor I was doing well for myself, but I didn't want to have the business stuck in a system where taxes and regulations are absurd). I don't call myself 'Randian' either, I am a libertarian, these days closer to an anarchist, she was not.
You can't handle the truth.
It paid for the education of Rovio founders and employees. Education in Finland is free up to and including university level.
Oh well, the country doesn't fall from a few leeches showing their true colours.
The purpose of tax is to provide "free" services?
Why do people become "leeches" for using this "free" service without paying anything back? Is the service not really "free"?
Or is the problem that someone else pays for this "free" service? Aren't the taxes supposed to work like that?
the country that was doing everything Right - and it crashed anyway.
The country was definitely NOT doing everything right, the government allowed a massive property bubble to develop, and most of Irelands crash was caused by the popping of said bubble. Putting the brakes on such a bubble should have been an easy thing for the government to do, they just didn't have the guts/brains/(insert other body parts here) to do it.
I'm on the fence about corporate tax, because I consider it triple dipping. After all, people buying Rovio's products are spending their post-tax income. Rovio's employees pay income tax. Why should that same money be taxed yet again at the corporate level ? Does the Finnish gov't do anything of value with those taxes ? Mine does not (Canada).
For a place that prides itself on being smarter than the average person, there sure are some really crazy attitudes about tax in here. How do you think schools and hospitals are paid for? If you want a easy demonstration, go to your nearest zoo and climb in the lion's cage. That is how life works with no tax or government.
... and lose access to your job-sponsored benefits. And hopefully you don't have a "pre-existing condition" that keeps you from getting good coverage ever again without paying through the nose.
People looking for their first job should have the LEAST amount of stuff to move
But they still need money to rent a place to sleep while interviewing at multiple companies to secure that first job.
You may not like the present state of world affairs, but it could be far worse without a stabilizing force like the United States.
So you do realize that the current Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan wars were all created by the US foreign policy of selling arms to either or both sides in the 70's thru 90's in an attempt to destabilize the region? Read you own history first and then come back and comment please.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
With a population of just over 30 million, Canada's military is so small that it's barely adequate to protect one quarter of their territory.
Well, there's a huge amount of territory and not much in it. Imagine if someone tried to invade the Northern Territories. If they were fortunate enough to invade in summer, they'd get eaten alive by midges, but survive. Once winter came, it would be a massive logistic effort to maintain a base and for what end? To trudge through thousands of miles of snow to attack a city?
Canada doesn't really need to defend most of its land. The land defends itself pretty well.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
There are jobs in Ireland - but the construction bubble effectively lured a generation into trades when what it turns out is needed is professionals. A number of labs closed down as well as everyone consolidated. There are fields where every position has several people with the skills and experience applying for it leaving graduates in the lurch.
On the flip side, anyone with any kind of decent development experience will have a job in no time. All the major software companies have development centers in Ireland, and it's not just for the 12.5% corporation tax rate. Hiring people here is expensive, the Employer PRSI is high, the income tax is pretty high and the VAT is very high indeed.
The tradespeople got badly shafted by the bubble bursting. Construction is non-existent now and many of them had set up as sole traders and weren't paying their employers PRSI so they don't qualify for anything but the most basic social welfare. Many have left for Australia and Canada where there is demand for their skills.
On the corporation tax: the thinking behind this tax rate was sound. The government at the time cut way back on exceptions to the tax rules so everyone paid the same. As was mentioned above, France's effective corporation tax rate is 8.2% against a headline rate of 33%. There isn't a corporation in the world paying headline rates so what should be being compared is effective rates. Ireland's effective rate is pretty close to the 12.5% headline rate, and is unlikely to change.
Rational thought is the only true freedom
Canada can afford to do all this with a piss-poor military. With a population of just over 30 million, Canada's military is so small that it's barely adequate to protect one quarter of their territory.
Against what?
And who says "universal" so-called "free education" is ideal anyway?
A comparison between the societies in Finland and U.S. seems to indicate a correlation.
...that the height of civil disobedience for a Canadian was writing a testy letter to the editor of the local paper. It would appear that the height of Libertarian activism is to debate a misinterpreted post on Slahdot to death.
I wonder if it would even work. Here in Denmark, there's a rule that if the company is still run from Denmark, it has to pay Danish tax, no matter where the on-paper HQ is registered.
I'd attribute the current overall peace more to nuclear weapons which allow a country to be an effective threat with a significantly smaller army. The nukes of China and Russia are enough to scare away the US's significantly more expensive and advanced military. Some other conflict hotspots (Israel vs neighbors, India vs Pakistan) have remained relatively cool due to the threat of ICBMs preventing any major war. Europe has been at peace for possibly the longest stretch of time in its history.
A super-sized conventional military may be necessary for attacks but for defense you can get away with having enough to give you time to launch the nukes.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The problem I see with your idea is it would encourage massive vertical integration. To minimise taxes a company would want to do everything from raw mining of the ore to assembly of the final product within one corporation so that the only wealth transfers that happened were the purchase of the mining rights and the sale of the final product. Smaller companies who could only do one part of the value chain would have a massive tax disadvantage over megacorps who could do all of it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The russians could easilly bomb canada without flying over any other country.
Of course they won't actually do that because they know the US would not stand for it.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
150 Canadians...out of a population of 35 million...had to come to the US for care between 2006-2009.
So only 0.004% of their population slipped through the cracks of their system in 3 years' time. Woopie do. Sounds like a fantastic system compared to what we have, especially considering Canada spends only 2/3 of what we spend on health care as % of GDP.
There are a huge number of yeast infections in this county. Probably because we're downriver from the bread factory.
The higher income and the money I saved in taxes in the US allowed me to save more than enough money to retire and take care of my health care needs myself. Thanks, but I'll take private health insurance and private retirement over a government program any day.
No, sorry, that's not supported either by experience or evidence. With my insurance plan in the US, I can see any doctor I want any time. Furthermore, statistics show that people in the US get better treatment than most other places, including Canada.
The higher income and the money I saved in taxes in the US allowed me to save more than enough money to retire and take care of my health care needs myself.
I call BS. If you contract a chronic condition your expenditures would be in the millions of dollars, which cannot be covered from savings from a regular salary. So either you have private insurance and you are hoping they won't drop you, or you will have to rely on medicare which is a government program.
Thanks, but I'll take private health insurance and private retirement over a government program any day.
The US spends about twice the amount of money for the same health outcomes as the rest of the developed world. Why would you prefer this system to a more efficient government program defies all reason, though you seem to be quite content making such an illogical choice purely on ideological grounds.
I never said that wars would be eliminated by the existence of great powers, that would be impossible. My argument was that the presence of a clearly dominant superpower tends to limit the number, scale and scope of the conflicts and minimizes to the extent possible the negative consequences of those conflicts. The fact that wars still occur in no way invalidates my other assertion; namely that higher US military spending permits correspondingly lower spending by allied nations without loss of protective value. I was trying to illustrate that just because some nations get by with lower military spending, due to promised or implied backup of the US military, doesn't mean that lower military spending across the board will yield the same results as the present situation where higher US military spending effectively subsidizes the defense of those other nations. It would be a mistake to think that Europe, South Korea and Japan would not have to increase their domestic military spending if the US were to withdraw its protection.
The gold standard of deterrence has always been the nuclear triad of land based ICBMs, submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) and inter continental strategic bombers combined with a satellite network for early warning and launch detection. The only two nations which currently meet this standard are the United States and Russia. The Chinese currently lack a credible SLBM threat and their satellite capabilities are still limited at best when compared to either the US or Russia. The Chinese will get there eventually, but they still have a ways to go before they can be ranked with the US and Russia in the top tier.
Yes, and I could become a millionaire overnight by winning the lottery.
Note that I specified viable threat. I don't think the Russians quite qualify as that in their current state.
Mart
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
Note that I specified viable threat.
And i'm saying the only the only reason that most threats are not viable is that the US wouldn't stand for it. Their security comes not from any active action by the US military but by potential aggressors knowing that if they attacked Canada they would find themselves dealing with the full force of the US military.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
I'm not knocking infrastructure, but the country is in the middle of a growing crisis concerning rampant corruption. Giving these crooks more money right now would not provide citizens with better services, it would only serve to widen the income gap and enable further heavy-handed borderline-fascist activity.
Canada's governments don't need more money, they already take a huge chunk of it and piss it away. They need to spend existing tax dollars more effectively.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
The plumber draws a salary, and pays income tax on that.
Corporate tax is a tax on the corporation's income. That's why I described it as triple-dipping. More importantly, the government serves no purpose within the context of that transaction, because it exists only on paper. It's really a midpoint between the client's expense, and the employee's paycheque - at least in well-balanced companies. I don't feel a corporation (in the abstract sense) should be paying for infrastructure it cannot even use. Corporate entities don't need health care. They don't need roads. They don't even need government. Where is the logic in taxing an abstract construct ? They already pay for land use through property taxes, they pay utility bills like anyone else using water, electricity and gas, their employees pay income tax to cover human services.
Using your example, if the plumber were incorporated, he'd have to pay two taxes: corporate tax, and personal income tax. The net result is his hourly rates will increase to cover that extra tax. It all stems from this perverse notion that corporations are almost people. The only difference between a corporation and a sole proprietorship is a few extra signatures on the registration form. Why should that clerical distinction entitle the government to charge more money for the same services ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
My understanding is that corporations are created not for tax benefits, but for liability reasons.
If I operate as a sole proprietorship, screw up royally and get sued, I lose everything. My cash, my property, my personal assets - everything. If I incorporate, the company gains its own little identity which can hold assets, and barring exceptional (criminal) circumstances, liability is limited to whatever the company owns, without spilling over onto me personally. Moreover, if every penny the corporation earns is spent as my salary, or operating expenses, its taxable income is zero. I still pay income tax on my salary so the end result is the same.
Where corporate tax kicks in is for unspent money. It has to file its own tax return, which means any money not written off is now subject to another round of taxation. This corporate entity only exists as an abstract construct. It does not get sick, it does not drive a car, it does not drink the water, and it does not get mugged in the park. Why then, should an abstract construct be paying for infrastructure ?
I get what you're saying, that a government needs tax income to cover cost of services provided. That's not under debate, i'm all for socialized services that benefit all. What I'm arguing is that income should come from the people who can use those government services. If shifting that tax burden back to the citizens means the corporations can keep more jobs inland, that's a win-win.
Pragmatically, the money is already poorly spent, which is the one tenet of the Tea Party that actually carries any merit, but that's a separate issue. Up here in Canada, we've been seeing daily protests going on for four months, initially about tuition hikes, but the scope has expanded to cover a much wider umbrella of corrupt spending. You see, there are some few million of us who feel we're not actually getting 43% worth of our income in services from the government, while the super-rich get rewarded with more tax breaks for their secluded mansions and stockpiles of inert cash. Corporate tax addresses none of the issues and instead creates more avenues for tax avoidance and disincentivizes small business growth.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
To people, all those services is highly valuable.
To a corporation, which is an imaginary concept, they are worthless. Ideas don't get sick. Ideas don't catch fire. Ideas don't get bombed for oil.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Perhaps this is my inner socialist peeking out the window, but I see no benefit in having a company sit on huge stockpiles of cash. Money is only useful if it's moving around. Create jobs, buy stuff, make it work for someone. Our western governments are widely recognized for being grossly corrupt, funneling money to the existing plutocracy. I don't feel giving more money to a government is going to result in more value for its citizens when it so much more easily diverted back to the fascist elite.
Instead of corporate tax, perhaps we would be better served by strict regulation that forces corporate profits to be spent on actual growth. After all, government exists to help us all lead better lives, not just a handful of the wealthiest residents who already have the means to serve themselves.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Right. That education is paid from income taxes, which is great because, at least in theory, the better your education level, the higher your income potential. It's a win-win.
The corporation, that abstract entity that exists only on paper and in our minds, it didn't go to school. It is merely a logical grouping of everyone working together at Rovio. Why should that money be taxed again ? Wouldn't it be better applied toward creating more high-paying jobs ?
Let's suppose the corporate tax rate is 12%. That's 12% less growth for the company, or if you share my cynicism, 12% more cash diverted to the fascist elite, who already enjoy countless tax breaks to build themselves giant mansions where they host lavish parties to curry favour with the political leadership. A.K.A. corruption. I'd sooner trust SMBs with that money, than the government.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This.
This is the root of my argument against corporate tax. Governments have proven time and time again that they cannot properly manage our money. My quality of living is worse now than it was 15 years ago, despite my income having doubled as well as my tax burden. I am paying more to have less rights and less services thanks to privatisation, while the rich get richer at my expense.
I went to college, I'm good at what I do and put in the hours. I am a prime example of someone who's not getting their money's worth from the government. You might look at my hourly rate and think I must be doing well, but in reality I'm worse off than when I was a full time employee earning half as much (on paper). I pay more tax, I get nickel-and-dimed with little fees everywhere, and if I should ever have a bad year, they send an auditor to pester me for a week, further crippling my ability to work. To top it all off, if things really go south and I have to shutter the business, I'm not eligible for unemployment benefits. They won't even let me properly write off expenses, so if I need to replace equipment, that year is almost guaranteed to be a net loss.
The whole damned system seems designed to punish little guys and drive us into debt. There is no reason a guy like me, selling information services, should be running at a loss when I'm working 50 hours a week.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
That's ridiculous. HIV is about $20000/year and even expensive cancers usually cost less than $50000 total. Average lifetime medical costs are around $300000 but with a fairly small variance (even the 95th percentile isn't a lot more). For comparison, that's like saving around $200/month at 3% real interest over the same period as a typical policy. For anybody in the middle class or above, current health "insurance", government or private, is largely a scam; you'd be better off saving the money, with only a cheap insurance against catastrophic illnesses.
And if you think that the Canadian public health service is going to pay "millions of dollars" for your chronic condition, you are in for a rude awakening.
For various reasons, I happen to have private insurance. But even if they were to drop me, I have enough saved to be able to pay for pretty anything that I want to do to myself and my body. If you don't, you really haven't saved enough money.
HIV is about $20000/year
That is the cost today. Five years ago the cost was $70K per year, and five years before that it was over $100K per year.
but with a fairly small variance (even the 95th percentile isn't a lot more).
95th percentile doesn't cut it here. That means there is one chance in twenty that you will require more money than that. Insurance should cover events such as a house fire, or major car accident or rare diseases which have a one-in-hundreds to one-in-thousands chance of occurring.
And if you think that the Canadian public health service is going to pay "millions of dollars" for your chronic condition, you are in for a rude awakening.
They already have. One million dollars and counting for a very close relative. So once again you are wrong.
But even if they were to drop me, I have enough saved to be able to pay for pretty anything that I want to do to myself and my body. If you don't, you really haven't saved enough money.
You are the exception that happens to be wealthy to self-fund your own health insurance and you are trying to use this as an argument to deny the value of treatment to the general population. This proves that your argument is bogus as I claimed.
I can also see any doctor I want anytime. I dont even have to be in the same province. Anywhere in Canada.
Please cite statistics that you get better health care on average than Canadians, because statistics also show that over 16% of US citizens have zero health care at all.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
You're talking about peace through repression and you missed my point. The US foreign policy *created* the current conflicts we see.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
If that is true, then your relative is a dumb, selfish prick who is wasting other people's money. Dumb because he is being ripped off and subjected to unnecessary procedures and expensive new drugs. And selfish because he imposes these kinds of unreasonable costs on others. Society does not owe anybody million dollar medical treatments, even if the alternative is death. I certainly don't want that kind of coverage for myself, and I don't see why I should pay for you or your relative to have it.
No, I'm not wealthy. I just managed to save money from a regular engineering salary. I have lived frugally, paid off my home, saved money. It pisses me off that people like you don't bother to save, make foolish financial and medical decisions, and then expect others to pay for them.
I didn't say "better health care", I said "better treatments". That is, provided you can pay for good health care, you are better off in the US than in Canada. That includes less waiting and better outcomes.
http://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20080716/cancer-survival-rates-vary-by-country
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2231416/
Everybody in the US gets health care, by law. But if you don't have insurance, it will be a lot worse than if you do have insurance. Many of those who don't have insurance don't have it because of choices they made.
The US system clearly has serious problems, foremost the ties of private insurance to employers, and the fact that insurers can weasel out of insurance contracts through excessive rate hikes. But the solution is not to adopt a Canadian system. For the majority of Americans, the Canadian system would be no better than what they have now, and for many it would probably be worse.
Repression, resource competition and conflicts are inevitable. It's simplistic to say that the United States "started it" and ultimately such concerns are irrelevant anyway. We act in our own best interest and others do the same. Sometimes those actions have consequences that cannot be helped. You make your peace with that and move on or else you go through life angry and disillusioned. Could the US have played a better hand at times? Certainly. Does it bother me that our nation must sometimes kill to achieve national objectives? Apparently not as much as it bothers you.
If the US really had better treatments and outcomes, then you would think their life expectancy would be higher than Canada, but it is not: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
Also for the majority of afflictions you are far better off in Canadda than the US: http://www.openmedicine.ca/article/view/8/1
So, for comparable or less outcome, for this the US spends twice the amount per capita and per GDP than we do in Canada.
Personally my child was born 10 weeks premature. He required a top teir hospital and round the clock monitoring for about 8 weeks before being discharged. He also requires a number of medical tests up until he is 2 for monitoring of side effects to check his development. There was no waiting ever for anything that he needed. I've read online of people in the US that went through the same thing and their bill ended up being close to half a million dollars or more. The majority of which would have been covered but still. All I had to pay for was parking.
My father also went to the hospital complaining of weakness. They checked him out and immediately prepped him for surgery for a pacemaker. He received what they said was a $50k pacemaker, top of the line. No wait, no bills.
No the Canadian system is not perfect. Yes there are wait times for non life threatening conditions, so yet it definitely needs improving. But given my experiences with the Canadian and American systems (my sister is American - when she went into labour they would not send an ambulance until she gave them a visa number), makes me firmly believe our system is the correct way to go and I would never trade it for a private system like the US. Obama is on the right track - he just has to ignore the uninformed idiots and keep pushing.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
So you have no problem with your country selling weapons and training foreign military on both sides of a conflict (Iran / Iraq), or doing the same to get a foreign military to overthrow their democratically elected government and replace with a puppet dictatorship (US backed dirty wars in central america among others)? Really?
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
You might think that but you would be wrong. The US causes of lower US life expectancy are not related to quality of medical care but other factors (immigration and higher obesity, for example). When you compare comparable populations in the two countries, US life expectancy is actually a bit higher than Canadian.
Yes, but much of that extra spending is by choice: it's employers and individuals choosing expensive health plans because they like the extra benefits, service, and peace of mind they get.
So, in different words, your father didn't have to think about whether he actually needed the pacemaker or whether a cheaper treatment would have also worked. Maybe he actually needed it, but that kind of approach is the reason costs are rising much faster than inflation. And behind the scenes, there are cost controls and rules that may well end up denying you care you actually need.
No, I do not want a health care system in which there is "no wait, no bills" regardless of your choices. You should have to think about what level of service and coverage you want, choose your insurance plan accordingly, and then live with the consequences. That's the only way to rein in insurance costs long term without completely giving up control over your future to faceless bureaucrats.
The US doesn't have a "private system". The elderly and the poor are already covered by government insurance programs, which make up a large part of total health care expenditures. Most of the rest are covered by tax-exempt employer provided coverage that also really doesn't give people much choice.
Obama isn't trying to move the US to a single payer system and that wouldn't fix anything. Portable private insurance with an individual insurance mandate would be a reasonable system for the US, and most civilized countries have that, not the bizarre system that exists in Canada and the UK. Unfortunately, Obama didn't tackle the biggest problem, namely the link between health care and employment.
Did you read the part where I said that the US might have played a better hand at times? Of course there were mistakes. Of course there were failures. There always are and always will be. We live in an imperfect world with imperfect solutions. The Japanese even have a saying for such things, Shikata ga nai (It cannot be helped). I don't let it bother me.
Usually wealthy get elected more often than poor in USA it seems to me (foreigner) - I doubt there have been many actually poor anyway, but the most important issue is your have is wealthy or not to get elected you need to have wealth - from your party, corporate "sponsors", etc. - I think this is one of the many big flaws in USA political system.
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
So, in different words, your father didn't have to think about whether he actually needed the pacemaker or whether a cheaper treatment would have also worked. Maybe he actually needed it, but that kind of approach is the reason costs are rising much faster than inflation.
Ive already stated the Canadian costs are about half of that in the US. It seems the US is the ones with the unnecessary medical procedures.
Portable private insurance with an individual insurance mandate would be a reasonable system for the US, and most civilized countries have that, not the bizarre system that exists in Canada and the UK.
In reality most western civilized countries have fully or partially funded health care. It is the US that is the exception.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Running arms to both sides of a conflict escalating that war and directly resulting in the heaths of tens of thousands of people can not be helped?? Get a grip.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
Canadian health care costs are also rising unsustainably, just like the US ones.
Yes, and for the same reason: in the US, like Canada, the vast majority of people are part of insurance pools that they don't have much influence over and that socialize the costs.
The question is how to fix it. Going to a Canadian-style system is not a solution. Even if it could achieve cost containment, it wouldn't be acceptable for the US.
Ah, I see, your mind is unmoved by facts. Learn something about the world beyond your borders for a change.
Are they "greedy" "leeches" if they only pay it back 10 times over instead of 12? How much is enough?
And who says "universal" so-called "free education" is ideal anyway? If parents had to try to get their kids an education, they would value it more. If parents had to try, they'd find a way to get their kids to behave. And then all the other kids could learn too.
And what if the kids parents are failures and the kid doesn't get to have proper good education - what is reasonable in that? ;)
Oh, but there is an angry god who will punish peoples sins down to children of 7th generation, or something like that
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
First, reindeers live only in north Finland, I'm not sure they even produce cheese from reindeer milk, but in north they prefer strong spirits, moonshine and beer of course - never even heard of fermented milk, reindeer or otherwise.
Of course you are joking, but I'm writing this reply because you never know what the Yankees, who think we have polar bears in Finland, will take as fact ;D
In capitalist USA corporations control the government.
Canadian health care costs are also rising unsustainably, just like the US ones.
Rising because of increasing and aging population, not because insurance companies are mandated to increase their profits by their shareholders every year. That's why health care in Canada is cheaper.
Going to a Canadian-style system is not a solution. Even if it could achieve cost containment, it wouldn't be acceptable for the US.
Why? Wouldn't the US population go for less of their tax dollars as a whole being spent of health care. Or not having to worry about having to declare bankruptcy if you or your family member got really sick? Or saving the lives of the estimated 100k people that die in the US every year because they cannot afford proper treatment?
In reality most western civilized countries have fully or partially funded health care. It is the US that is the exception.
Ah, I see, your mind is unmoved by facts. Learn something about the world beyond your borders for a change.
Its true. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publicly_funded_health_care:Most developed countries, with the exception of the United States, have partially or fully publicly funded health systems. Most western industrial countries have a system of social insurance based on the principle of social solidarity covers eligible people from bearing the direct burden of most health care expenditure, funded by taxation during their working life.
The only difference that Canada has is only a few things can be two tiered (private). I would like to have the option of private heath care if you choose to pay for it, but also keep the public system. This is how most western countries work. If you think differently please provide examples.
Tesla was a genius. Edison however was a overrated hack who liked to torture puppies.
National health care expenditures are $2.2 trillion, health insurance profits are $13 billion; that is 0.6%. Even if you took all the profits of insurers away, it wouldn't make a noticeable dent in US health care costs.
http://www.factcheck.org/2009/06/pushing-for-a-public-plan/
Socializing the costs for the uninsured also doesn't account for the increases, and neither does the aging population. The reason health care costs are rising much faster than inflation in every developed nation is because people receive more and more expensive medical services. And the reason they do that is because they don't have to pay for it.
The US spent $769 billion on public funding for health insurance. That's about a third of total health care expenditures. I'd call that "partially publicly funded" through "taxation during their working life".