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Obama Proposes One-Time Tax On $2 Trillion US Companies Hold Overseas
mrspoonsi writes with news about a new proposed tax on overseas profits to help pay for a $478 billion public works program of highway, bridge and transit upgrades. President Barack Obama's fiscal 2016 budget would impose a one-time 14 percent tax on some $2 trillion of untaxed foreign earnings accumulated by U.S. companies abroad and use that to fund infrastructure projects, a White House official said. The money also would be used to fill a projected shortfall in the Highway Trust Fund. "This transition tax would mean that companies have to pay U.S. tax right now on the $2 trillion they already have overseas, rather than being able to delay paying any U.S. tax indefinitely," the official said. "Unlike a voluntary repatriation holiday, which the president opposes and which would lose revenue, the president's proposed transition tax is a one-time, mandatory tax on previously untaxed foreign earnings, regardless of whether the earnings are repatriated." In the future, the budget proposes that U.S. companies pay a 19 percent tax on all of their foreign earnings as they are earned, while a tax credit would be issued for foreign taxes paid, the official said.
This is clearly aimed at companies abusing the "Double Irish" system. Seems like the rate should be set much higher, so that companies are punished and lose more than they would if they did the right thing and repatriated profits and paid the normal tax rates on them.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
...then this would be a reasonable idea (until the GOP-led, mostly corporate-controlled Congress says no thanks). Without it being balanced, in about 2 years that $2,000,000,000,000 or so would be gone in the black hole of growing, irresponsible debt.
Just alter the tax code to make it punitive to those who take money out of the country.
Offer double salary to poach the top accountants at the richest 100 corporations in the country, get them to explain every single tax avoidance scheme they've implemented, and make sure those schemes are not profitable anymore.
Which will be to shit all over this idea. Mind you, I agree that so-called "windfall taxes" are a bad idea, but corporation that profit from shipping jobs overseas, hiding assets overseas, etc., are nothing if not "un-American", a label the hypocrites of the far right are very fond a throwing about. So yeah, another populist idea that is going to go nowhere.
Weapon of massive capital destruction by a Constitutional enemy that is already damaging and destroying the US middle class.
People forget that the United States has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, and we impose it on American companies foreign-earned capital if they should bring the money back to the States. If you are responsible to the shareholders to be stewards of their investments, you have to take whatever measures you can to avoid heavier than necessary taxes. Hence people park their money off American shores.
This seems like a cash grab to me, where the better option is to really reform the tax code to be equitable within and outside the United States; then the responsible steward of their investors money would feel more free to have that capital here. 20% of 10 million is a lot more than 35% of zero.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
A number of U.S. based companies have already purchase, merged with, and become subsidiaries of Irish companies. That makes profits made in the U.S. "foreign income", and everything outside the U.S. untouchable, because it will never be "repatriated".
The price of companies incorporated in Ireland is going to skyrocket even higher than it has.
I have altered the deal, pray I do not alter it further?
There is no such thing as a one-time tax.
Because hiding your profits overseas is some sort of essential liberty, right?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Whether it's a voluntary repatriation holiday or an involuntary repatriation holiday it is still a tax holiday giveaway to large corporate donors if you discount their tax rate from the usual 35% down to 15%. Ultimately this would still "lose revenue" because it would finally prove to corporate boardrooms that if they park enough earnings overseas then sooner or later the government will give them another half-price deal.
Take that back and use it. Why should we pay the bank robbers twice?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
The tax should be closer to 25% - 31%. If they get taxed then Billionaires and Millionaires don't want to keep their monies overseas like Corporations. We little guys get taxed to death while GE pays 0% Tax and Oil Industry get $Millions of Dollars every year for Free. Republicans are passing a law not to include real science for the Department of Energy.
In the future, the budget proposes that U.S. companies pay a 19 percent tax on all of their foreign earnings as they are earned
I wonder what the legal basis of this would be. Multinational companies that are interested in minimizing their taxes (and let's face it - who isn't?) already are incorporated elsewhere, and their earnings on U.S. operations are already taxed in the US. So, exactly what "U.S. companies" have substantial "foreign earnings"?
For example, if a corporation is incorporated in Switzerland, pays taxes it earns on Swiss operations to Switzerland, pays taxes on its U.S. operations to the U.S., and pays taxes as required by Swiss law on earnings made elsewhere, what else is there for the U.S. to tax?
....they never took Obama's budget proposals seriously. I'm not sure why the rest of us should even bother paying attention.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
How does this not drive more Burger Kings into Canada? If they go after McDonalds and not (now Canadian) Burger King, they drive corps out. If they go after BK, then can any country do that, tax USA based corporate assets? It's probably better than a VAT, I guess (which is why USA corporate taxes are relatively high, it makes up for lack of Value Added Tax).
Gently reply
Consumers are going to be paying more for products to pay this tax. Who do they think they're fooling?
Is registration enough? Are there advantages to being a US company? What does Apple, which I assume is a US company lose if it suddenly became a "UK company?" Anyone know?
Actually essential liberty is not having your property and earnings stolen from you by any government. In this case, however, the government in question is trying to steal money it doesn't even have physical access to and the money that were not earned in the USA. It's trying to steal money that was earned from foreign operations from foreign customers. Back to the international form of socialism for Obama, I take it? Well, foreign earnings will not come back to USA at all ever of-course and all the companies have to do now is start moving their headquarters from the USA. Production lines are already moved, they just have to take the next logical step.
You can't handle the truth.
... and he has zero pull there... so... he can write executive orders and talk to foreign leaders and engage in 'police action' wars... but... he cannot pass tax policy.
If he ACTUALLY... seriously... wants to pas a tax bill... then he has to talk to congress first. And... he hasn't done that in awhile.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
The elephant in the room just lifted his leg and ripped a big one. It almost sounded like: "Brrrrfffffffffft fix incorporation law! FFraaappt bribing congress members should be illegal!"
I don't know, that's what I heard anyway. But I guess I'm one of the 0.0000000000000000000005% of Americans that actually bother to look at the elephant.
I thought it was the corporations stealing by leeching off society and then not paying the membership fees. If they don't want to pay any tax they are free to leave society and stop stealing our free education and training, healthcare, roads, police and judicial services etc.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Well, foreign earnings will not come back to USA at all ever of-course and all the companies have to do now is start moving their headquarters from the USA.
Yes, that's exactly what will happen.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
all the companies have to do now is start moving their headquarters from the USA.
That has already begun. Even with some high value biotech companies for example.
Go ahead, US.... drive all your companies outside the US jurisdiction. The rest of us will thank you.
So this was initially proposed by Ted Cruz. Don't buy the liberal bullshit...
maybe its good maybe its bad, but when bureaucracy is involved there is no such thing as one time.
lose != loose
I take it Apple 'leeched of the society' by creating production lines and products that provide them with all their earnings around the world? :)
Yeah, they have the money because they made it, they made it by creating products people are buying and by creating enormous production lines while at it. Only individuals / companies create the economy and governments are the ones that leech off of that productivity, not the other way around.
Of-course companies that are under government protection leech off of that productivity as well (like certain bailed out banks, military industrial complex and such).
Any company that creates a product that is then voluntarily traded for by the people in the market is an economic engine and a productive member of society before even a single cent is stolen from it by a government and socialists that want and vote for that money to be stolen.
The actual leeches are government employees and the mob that provides those employees with the power to steal.
You can't handle the truth.
Does Obama huddle up with a flashlight and a copy of Atlas Shrugged under the covers every night thinking that it's some kind of instruction manual? Every time I start to warm up to the guy a little, he pulls this kind of nonsense to remind me why I voted against him.
1.The Republican Congress will never approve this idea. Never. 2. Europe closing tax havens? Africa is ripe to be next with new tax havens and super cheap manufacturing centers.
where, again, does the president give the state of the union adress? o yea, that's right.. in front of congress.
and its in the budget, the budget gets passed in one big shot, and if it's in there, they'll vote for it if there's enough pork in it to satisfy the congresscritters' bosses (err, i mean lobbyists).
Oh, dont want to pay it? Well just sell your products in China Europe & Russia then.
Good luck with that.
Yes, but one of the examples there is Burger King and most people don't understand something about that company, it was not American even before it moved the headquarters to Canada, it was mostly Brazilian. That company has a complicated history but Americans think for some reason that the company, whose majority owner is a Brazilian conglomerate is an American business... they are uninformed.
You can't handle the truth.
So, you want them to stop "leaching [education, etc.] off society" by.. discontinuing hiring people here?
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
talking at congress in a televised media event is not the same thing as talking with anyone.
as to the budget... both houses need to pass it or it doesn't happen. And congress has not been passing budgets for some time. They've been passing little extension budgets that are short term and the president is not going to veto one of those because they didn't include his pet line item.
So... no and wrong.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
What a joke...
Everytime a politician says the taxes will be used for "the infrastructure", they are lying.
Just check. All the roads in America could be paid with the taxes the Federal Government has collected. This is a false hope for all the users of infrature.
With Obama, it is just another way to fund his friends companies. Every Obama project was been extremely costly and ineffective; completely fraudful.
Nobody's talking about "taxing other countries".
US law says that, if you're a US citizen, you're liable for US taxes. Doesn't matter where you live or where your money comes from. However, it also recognises that it's not nice to subject citizens residing overseas to double taxation--so if you live in $country and pay $country's taxes on your income there, the US will often accept this as having fulfilled your obligation. But if you've income that you're not paying taxes on, anywhere, and the IRS finds out, they will come calling.
What Obama is apparently intending is to extend this philosophy to US corporations, which currently enjoy a much better deal than you or I. They pay US taxes on profits reported in the US. They don't pay US taxes on profits reported in other countries--and here comes the important part--even if they report those profits in $nation, which happens to have negligible or even zero corporate taxes. Whereas, if I move to $nation and they don't make me pay income tax there, then I get to pay it to the US.
So corporations currently get a huge overseas tax dodge that you and I don't. Quoth TFS,
In the future, the budget proposes that U.S. companies pay a 19 percent tax on all of their foreign earnings as they are earned, while a tax credit would be issued for foreign taxes paid, the official said.
So in other words, US corporations making money overseas would be subject to taxes on it in a manner very much like how US citizens are already subject to their overseas earnings, and with same proviso that they won't be doubly taxed.
Okay, go ahead and explain how this is "retarded" or unfair. Seems pretty smart and fair to me.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
I thought it was the corporations stealing by leeching off society and then not paying the membership fees.
People working for the company already pay income tax, and people buying the company's products already pay sales tax. Any additional taxes will just be added to the sales price, so there's no point in having them.
Aw, crap, that should have been "very much like how US citizens are already subject to US taxes on their overseas earnings".
(And I even used Preview, dammit.)
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You can hire who you want, but first you pay the fee for their education. Or educate them yourself, up to you.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why wouldn't getting more money be a good idea regardless?
Because hiding your profits overseas is some sort of essential liberty, right?
The profits were earned overseas, mostly from products and services created by non-Americans and sold to non-Americans. There is no rationale reason for America to be taxing these profits. No other country has this kind of extraterritorial tax. Most economists agree that it is counter-productive, and just encourages companies to base their headquarters somewhere other than America. Business taxes should be based on where the economic activity occurs, not where the business is registered.
Anyway, this proposal has ZERO chance of passing a Republican Congress. This is about electoral politics, not tax policy. The loser here is Hillary Clinton. To win in the general election, she has to position herself as a moderate centrist, that can win in the Midwest, and maybe even pick off a Southern state. But by steering the Democratic party into hare-brained anti-business claptrap, Obama is diminishing her ability to do that.
Pull your head out of your rear end.
You are talking about the people that threw George H.W. Bush out of office because he violated his word on "No New Taxes"
You are talking about the people that force their candidates to sign pledges not to raise taxes.
Okay, go ahead and explain how this is "retarded" or unfair. Seems pretty smart and fair to me.
US citizens living abroad don't benefit from most things that are paid with their taxes.
The primary reason for companies using and keeping money overseas is that it isn't taxed (or to a MUCH lower level... by taxing it the benefit is lost and many of these companies will hopefully rethink their strategies.
The one time thing is good but the ongoing tax us what we REALLY NEED.
I'm sorry but these companies should be paying their fair share, especially since they are getting the rights of being a person in the eyes of the law.
What the heck is liberal about this? If anthing, it is socialist (tax as much as you can).
Man I wish I had it that good...
Last I checked the majority of education, road, police and judicial costs were paid by local and state taxes, not federal income taxes.
Mark my words, as we get closer to the election, he'll start breaking out the big guns. I'm sure he's already planning to talk about reproductive rights and race relations at some point along the way. I'm surprised he played immigration as early as he did but I'm sure it's going to come up again. I have to admit he surprised me on Cuba. Definitely didn't see THAT one coming.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
As long as you don't expect said government to back your claim to said property or earnings, fair enough. And are willing to build and maintain your private financial system, of course - anti-counterfeiting efforts aren't free, after all. As well as your own road system, your own communication system, your own military defence...
No, having all your living expenses paid for by others so you can have more disposable income is not an essential liberty. Pay your taxes and pull your weight.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Government 'education' is about as useful as government 'phone'. The next bubble to burst will be the government bubble, the bonds, the fiat currency and the entire idea of centralised governments that will be proven to be outdated and bad for society as a concept altogether. Hell, it is already proven to be a horrid, inhumane, oppressive, economically destructive, cancerous hazard to the individual well being around the world, it's just the masses haven't really understood this yet, so they will have to accept it on an instinctual level rather than on an intellectual one (they are incapable of understanding it intellectually, after all 'government provided education' oxymoron hits hard there).
You can't handle the truth.
Any additional taxes will just be added to the sales price, so there's no point in having them.
Sure there's a point. It becomes a hidden tax rather than a visible one, and voters don't get as pissy about those even when they disproportionately affect the poor.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Exactly. We will see a rush to move corp hqs offshore. HP makes most of its sales offshore.
All taxes are ultimately paid by individuals either in the form of higher prices for products or services, lower dividends/earnings to shareholders or lower wages to employees. Politicians use the system to extort contributions from companies for preferential tax treatment. Stop the madness www.fairtax.org
1. Americans working overseas shouldn't have to pay US taxes either.
2. Corporations can, and will, move their headquarters to another country.
I welcome all American corporations moving their headquarters overseas to avoid Obama's theft proposal.
Embassies? Military protection? Original education, roads, and infrastructure that got you overseas, rather than keeping you in a hovel in a ghetto? If you don't want to support the country, give up your citizenship. Then you don't need to worry about the US or its taxes or laws unless you come back.
That is all.
Actually essential liberty is not having your property and earnings stolen from you by any government. In this case, however, the government in question is trying to steal money it doesn't even have physical access to and the money that were not earned in the USA. It's trying to steal money that was earned from foreign operations from foreign customers. Back to the international form of socialism for Obama, I take it? Well, foreign earnings will not come back to USA at all ever of-course and all the companies have to do now is start moving their headquarters from the USA. Production lines are already moved, they just have to take the next logical step.
Strange. The only major incident I can recall where the Founders of the USA actually made an absolute stand on taxes was the Boston Tea Party incident, and even then, it wasn't a "Don't 'steal' from me", it was "Taxation without Representation is Tyranny". Implying that they didn't object to paying taxes as much as they objected paying taxes to the wrong people for the wrong reasons and without any say-so in the matter.
Then again, I suppose that getting a free ride on government services back in the days when a Spanish, French or Dutch warship could show up in your harbor and steal from you in literal truth, to say nothing of impressing able men into service and declaring your fair city to be their latest colonial possession would make you look really bad to your neighbors who had be paying King, then Country to provide opposing forces.
Actually counterfeiting is what governments around the world are actively involved in, that's all the 'QE' crap, paper money printing is all about.
Roads, education, health care, communications, etc., none of it should have anything to do with government in the first place, unless of-course you want to have a monopoly on such things and have it protected with government military (which is why government military is also a horrid outdated idea).
The only way to 'pull your weight' in a society is to be a productive member of it and to work in the private sector. Government is the economic leech that destroys the productivity and wealth, it doesn't add anything to it. All real productivity is done privately, all that governments do is theft (and in many cases murder), nothing else.
Taxes shouldn't exist and they are not paying for civilization, they are paying for destruction, monopoly power, murder. All legitimate economic activity is mandatory, nobody should ever be forced to do anything as a group by thugs with guns.
You can't handle the truth.
+10000
I don't know why the so-dubbed "best, brightest, smartest" science minded folk on this board conveniently look past the *simple*, observable fact that NO corporation pays taxes no matter what the rate is. YOU pay corporate taxes in the form of higher priced products and less employment opportunities. Period. End of Case.
Sorry, but that's the truth. Everyone is so blinded by their utter hatred and disdain for BIG {insert corporate bogeyman here} - when it applies to products they don't like that they fail to see the truth AND who is responsible for the problem.
If they don't want to pay any tax they are free to leave society
Wrong. They are not free to leave. The Obama administration prevented AbbVie from leaving, and is fighting efforts by other companies to leave.
stop stealing our free education and training
So if an Italian buys a car from a factory in Britain, he is "stealing education" if he doesn't pay tax to America?
ah roman_mir, you're always reliable.
Keep on believing in your anarchic paradise.
Every time I start to warm up to the guy a little
obama hasn't opened his mouth in a while, maybe he's an okay guy.
Because the tax on citizens is already retarded and no other country is that retarded. The fix is to get rid of that retardation, not spread it to corporations.
I can see that as an intended consequence - Obama makes history as the first black President, then gets overshadowed by first woman President. Does it make sense for him to enhance his place in history by making sure the first woman doesn't come along for another dozen years or so?
Or am I just off my meds today, and seeing conspiracies everywhere? And what are you looking at me for?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Because the tax on citizens is already retarded and no other country is that retarded. The fix is to get rid of that retardation, not spread it to corporations.
*That* is an argument that is very possibly worth making.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Stolen, huh? So I assume you would rather the government dissolve, leaving no infrastructure, no property rights, and no justice system? You'll have to staff your own protection, since you don't want police or military defense. I guess the biggest guy wins... hope you like that new dictator.
But then I suppose you wouldn't care for that so much. You might at least want to form an alliance with your family and neighbors. Perhaps you'll agree not to steal from each other, and have the toughest men keep watch over the town and keep the dictator's army out. But they need to eat and can't keep watch all day while also worrying about growing their own crop, so the town decides that everyone should give part of their goods in exchange for the protection.
Then your town and others nearby might decide, we are reasonable folk and aren't each other's enemies. So you form an alliance and pool your resources to focus protection on the outer borders. Oh and since one town has a great market for clothing, and another has a nice oil well, and yet another has fertile land, now you need roads to travel between the towns. You pool your resources to help built those roads.
This is a system of government, funded by taxes. It is the inevitable outcome of humanity, and will continue to grow bigger so long as the people are mostly satisfied with that government.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
In the US, did you know that 1 in 3 dollars of state funds come from Federal Revenues?
http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/analysis/2014/04/21/federal-funds-provide-nearly-1-in-3-of-state-revenue
So yeah, maybe not a majority, even in Mississippi, but states are certainly dipping into the Federal pie to cover a significant portion of their budgets.
So it would only take the feds paying for a relatively narrower slice of the costs for education, roads, police, and court systems on their own direct behalf to cover the majority of expenses.
And there is a LOT of jurisprudence occurring in Federal Courts.
Indeed, companies collect taxes from consumers, they don't pay taxes.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
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Inventors, both native and foreign born, live in the U.S., after being educated in U.S. universities, using U.S. infrastructure and support networks. They land jobs with U.S. companies to invent, develop and sell products to U.S. citizens. The U.S. patent rights on those products are sold to a foreign company which then charges the U.S. corporation a high royalty. The patents are only valuable because of the extensive U.S. patent system which protects the intellectual property of inventors and their corporate assignees, foreign or domestic. The foreign shell company makes all of the profits in a small country with tiny or non-existent taxes. The U.S. company claims all the royalty payments as expenses, wiping out U.S. profits. Here is one example of many. http://www.usatoday.com/story/... Then, tax attorneys educated by U.S. law schools prepare U.S. corporate tax returns that legalize all of this under laws written by corporate lobbyists for the benefit of U.S. corporations. Then the U.S. corporations control their media subsidiaries (ABC, NBC, FOX, CBS), to try to justify all of this. It isn't a perfect plutocracy, so they must pay P.R. firms, pundits, and think tanks to convince people like you that Barack Obama is a socialist trying to steal their money, and that his 14% tax proposal to pay for U.S. highways is wildly unfair double taxation.
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But by all means. Go ahead and keep watching Fox "News". It is your right. Rupert Murdock's interests are undoubtedly aligned with the long term interests of U.S. citizens. I'm sure the republic will limp along just fine if all its citizenry are too busy to discover anything resembling the truth. And don't worry your little head. Obama's proposal has zero chance of being passed by either the corporate-controlled House or Senate. Even if I changed your mind (which I am certain I have not), there are millions upon millions out there who will listen to corporate sponsored political commercials and vote to keep either the corporate-backed republicans or corporate-backed democrats in power. I can't convince them all. They won't see this post, or visit my website. It is simply TLDR. You have won the argument. Congratulations.
Join the IParty!
Someone forgot about Ex Post Facto being an amendment. This is close enough to qualify in any court. Instead of retro-taxing them, how about passing a law that says from now on profits that they're pretending are made overseas are taxable in the US.
Embassies charge us to use their services. Why am I paying twice? Even renunciation costs 2 thousand bucks. The U.S. military protects america's borders (when it's not off playing in the sand, anyway), so what benefit do I get there?
I also have a higher cost of living here than you do in the states. Yet somehow, the U.S. government sees it as just to decrease my expendable income in comparison to my coworkers, putting me at a disadvantage and actively discouraging me from moving abroad.
As soon as I can renounce, I will; it could well be that the next proposal that comes by is to tax all expatriates an extra 2 trillion. But I can't do that until I've spent long enough abroad to get another passport.
Personally, I think this citizenship-based taxation was a mistake; whoever created the law probably didn't think through the implications it would have on non-resident Americans (no other country aside from Somalia does this!). Since discovering they had the ability, though, the government has been keen to steal income from expatriates, knowing there is little we can do about it.
If I'm a shareholder of a US corporation, I expect to have corporate earnings on their way to *me* (my pocket, from dividends). Sure it takes a while for earnings to trickle down to dividends or higher share price, but that link is there.
If earnings are systematically never coming into the US, how the heck am I (the shareholder) supposed to benefit from those foreign earnings? We're not talking about a company headquartered abroad (or owned primarily by foreigners). We're talking about *my* shares earning profits that I won't have access to unless the damn company pays taxes.
No, the arguments of "if you don't like that, don't buy the stock" doesn't work. The whole point of shares is a say, a vote, not the option of not to play.
Not just socialist, National Socialist. All money belongs first to America, and all money belongs first to the state.
Thank you for highlighting to most of the petite progressives here that the President is not, in fact, a king.
The odious practice of bypassing checks and balances via executive action fiat can and will cut both ways. Don't be surprised when the next conservative president revisits this approach to bypass a Democratic majority in congress.
Oh, but that's another day, right? And there's *no* way that the Republicans or anyone right of center will have power again...
This is a rare occasion for me... I actually agree with the President on this. This will force US corporations to re-invest in jobs and infrastructure.
When all citizens run their own business, nobody needs to pay taxes! That's great! Just set up some quick-start-process to enable that and you will have instant happiness!
Yes, this is DOA to a Republican Congress. As for rhetorical [d]effectiveness, please consider the irony of the Feds trying to impose a property tax or alternatively an ex-post facto law (retroactively taxing past earnings.)
If a former professor of Constitutional Law could shred it without so much as a passing mention, what does that say about the man's character?
The very idea of a corporation or trust is another loophole.
The stock ownership should be pass-through and the corporation's "citizenship" should derive directly from its ownership and control, always ending in living people who have citizenship somewhere. The corporation should be, e.g. 52% US and 48% Chinese if that's who owns the voting stocks, and it should be subject to all taxation as such, regardless of where it is registered or its headquarters located.
It should be impossible to have a corporation whose controlling ownership is unclear. Abuse of proxy ownership should be exposed and punished aggressively too. The controlling owners are those who influence business decisions, not those poor saps that are listed in a company registration somewhere but have no control and get no benefits from the company (a typical third-world style business structure).
Ultimately the stock holders will pay the taxes. If $1 in untaxed overseas earnings is repatriated, that money belongs to the stockholders. The govt will skim off 15 cents, then the company will likely pay out 85 cents in dividends (or buybacks, which effectively bumps up the stock price). The stock holder then pays a 15 per cent capital gains tax on earnings or 13 cents. In the end the govt gets 15+13 = 28 cents on the dollar.
Liberty means no ex post facto laws. Earnings made before passage of any such law (which, let's face it, will NEVER pass with the current Congress - whether you agree with them or not) should be excluded from this. If the Government can retroactively tax your profits, then why can't they retroactively tax the earnings in your 401K? Change your Roth IRA to be taxed when you pull out funds when you retire? Decide to take any money you've saved in the past and tax it at a high rate in the future? Is that liberty?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
..world. This way US companies won't have to shelter their assets overseas.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Yes, the BEST way to get things is to have someone else pay for them. Force companies to pay additional taxes to give people free stuff - that's a great solution, and will really increase the perceived value of that free stuff!
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Stolen, totally correct. I would rather have no government, but I can settle for the 19th century American style government, before the income taxes finally were crammed through onto the population with various tricks, that involved setting up the people into the various branches that were supposed to keep each other in check and not let unconstitutional laws and amendments to usurp power from the individual and to the government.
Infrastructure is not a government concern, neither is education, health care or money itself for that matter. IRS and the Federal reserve bank (and it's not an independent private institution, it does everything the government wants to prop up spending that cannot be paid for by any level of USA productivity), FBI, EPA, FAA, FCC, FDA, DHS, departments of education, housing, transportation, energy, commerce, interior and pretty much 99% of what government does today in USA (and the rest of the governments are doing around the world) is anti-human, anti-freedom, anti-social.
Government is not the definition of society, government is the definition of oppression, theft, destruction and murder. Justice system and property rights do not require centralised governments, each locality can deal with it however it wants, and I am of an opinion that individuals working in their best interest as individuals and not as groups that are set up to steal from individuals is what builds the most prosperity and a stable economy and by extension the most moral (MORAL) society. Morality is of a concern if we are interested in a stable and healthy society, governments are immoral, companies are amoral. I prefer amorality of any individual and of any company to immorality of any government.
Democracy is dictatorship, I don't see what the difference is between a dictator who wants to own your productivity (thus your life, to make you into a slave) and a dictatorial mobocracy, which is what democracy is. Democracy is a dictatorship where the dictatorial power cannot be diminished by simply destroying (attacking and taking down, killing) a dictator.
Democracy is a dictatorial hydra, where no heads can be cut off to reduce the oppression.
No, I do not believe that taxes are at all needed to build a society, not even a tiny sliver of taxes, however services that you mentioned have to be provided and that is what the free market does best: creating systems that are needed by voluntary market participants. People have to pay if they want services, the most important question is: what is virtue?
Virtue is non-initiation of force, and there are many economic systems that are voluntary and not initiating force, but they do require your payment if you want certain services to be available to you and thus if you want to use a road or have protection against attacks by bandits, that's your responsibility to hire your protection and to pay your road tolls. If you are in fact a productive member of society, you will be able to handle that little bit but you don't have to be slave to a centralised oppressive government to achieve it.
You can't handle the truth.
I can understand trying to get companies to stop gaming the system by shuffling their US profits to overseas holding companies to avoid taxes, but is this what this proposal is actually doing? If it is I'm all for it, but somehow I wonder if this is trying to tax overseas profits from overseas sales simply because the company is US owned. There was a raft of articles a few years back about US citizens having to renounce their citizenship because they were being taxed at obscene rates despite the fact that they didn't live, work, vote or even visit the US. Maybe its my latent paranoia but I wonder if this is the corporate version of this.
How about simplifying the tax law for everyone, instead of creating more interesting bonus work for Apple's and Google's accountants, lobbyists and lawyers?
The smaller companies will end up paying the price for this one once again, too.
I don't watch Fox news or any TV for that matter, I don't like to waste time and I have no time to waste, I run a business and I hire people in more than one country to do it as well.
My take on centralised governments is right here, so is my take on income taxes.
Governments are an impediment to progress, they are actively destroy economies and oppressing individuals (stealing from them and murdering them), only individuals build productive economies, governments are leeches, feeding on the blood of the productive members of society.
You can't handle the truth.
Because hiding your profits overseas is some sort of essential liberty, right?
The profits were earned overseas, mostly from products and services created by non-Americans and sold to non-Americans. There is no rationale reason for America to be taxing these profits.
No, there's plenty of rationale for such a tax. There are one trillion such reasons - our annual cash deficit. The President simply wants more money to spread around, to buy more votes and influence for those he cares about (and to punish those who oppose him). It's a highly immoral and illogical rationale - but it's a rationale, nevertheless.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
What exactly is their "fair share"?
That term doesn't actually say anything, other than perhaps warm fuzzy feelings...
So if Apple builds iPads in China and sells them in Australia, you think the U.S. Government should get a cut?
If so, why would Apple want to remain a U.S. based company again?
Unemployment is dropping, the problem is underemployment. There's no wage growth because corporations are hoarding wealth rather than rewarding good employees with decent raises. Like the 1% they take and take and can never have enough. The only solution is to tax them all at high levels to fund a basic minimum income, universal healthcare, and free 4 year college for all high school graduates with 3.0 GPA. So that way people who actually do the work can cope with stagnant wages. Of course, that would take a strong willed president, like an LBJ or FDR to shove that through. Unfortunately Mr. Obama turned out to be the second coming of Carter instead of FDR.
Fix the outdated laws that let big companies legally dodge taxes.
"In 2014, job growth averaged 246,000 per month, compared with an average monthly gain of 194,000 in 2013."
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm
This is somewhat more than the ~150,000/mo which is needed to account for the increase in the number of employable Americans.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/j/jobsgrowth.asp
In other words, there is definitely job growth. As for wage growth, there isn't any. but this appears to be a long-term trend:
http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/
Corporate taxes are paid on profits, not revenue. The largest companies will pay more taxes. If there isn't any room in the market for price increases now, why would there be after a tax?
Nobody's talking about "taxing other countries".
US law says that, if you're a US citizen, you're liable for US taxes. Doesn't matter where you live or where your money comes from. However, it also recognises that it's not nice to subject citizens residing overseas to double taxation--so if you live in $country and pay $country's taxes on your income there, the US will often accept this as having fulfilled your obligation.
Only up to a fairly moderate level. After that, even if you pay taxes on that additional income in your resident country - you also get to pay US taxes on the same funds. That's why most companies will pay a "tax bonus" to its overseas US employees to compensate for the extra tax they will have to pay. And of course, there is the FBAR forms, and lots of other additional paperwork required since you are overseas - and the US Government wants to ensure it gets every penny (and then some) from wherever it can... Even if you live outside the US for the entire year (essentially using zero of the US Federal resources).
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
If the cost of renunciation is too big for you to contemplate it, then by definition having a US citizenship is worth more than the rather low cost of renunciation. If $2000 is all that is keeping you from renouncing the citizenship, then you are obviously not that much worse off for having to pay taxes on your earnings abroad.
The USA is one country that does go out of its way to protect its citizens abroad, probably to the point of pissing off a lot of other countries, and that costs money. If you would rather not have that, then renounce.
Besides, I am sure there are arrangements to ensure that you don't pay more tax than you would if you were living and working in America e.g. due to the use of tax credits.
Embassies? Military protection? Original education, roads, and infrastructure that got you overseas, rather than keeping you in a hovel in a ghetto? If you don't want to support the country, give up your citizenship. Then you don't need to worry about the US or its taxes or laws unless you come back.
Give up your citizenship, and you get to pay a tax on all assets immediately payable at that time. Even if those assets were 100% earned AND held overseas. Even if they were "received" via marriage. Marry a wealthy foreign citizen and decide to change citizenship? You get to pay an expatriation tax on their holdings they had before your marriage when you give up your citizenship...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
None of his liberal proposals have become law to date. Now he's just trying to pretend to be a liberal so we won't pin the conservative laws that he has signed on his presidential legacy.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Where you earned? Yes.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Infrastructure is not a government concern
Infrastructure is a property rights concern. Property rights is a government concern.
Justice system and property rights do not require centralised governments, each locality can deal with it however it wants
So property rights is a government concern, just not a centralized government concern? I can see that logic. But then how do we deal with a citizen of town A owning land and things in town B? And how does the justice system handle the case of someone in town C coming to town B to steal things from the citizen from town A?
We could set up treaties between the towns, and have a documentation system to provide proof of citizenship and other details that matter. As for me, I like being able to drive to the next town to shop or eat or whatever I do, without needing to go through border checks.
thus if you want to use a road or have protection against attacks by bandits, that's your responsibility to hire your protection and to pay your road tolls
Golly, that's just what I want! To pay a body guard to ride with me in my Hummer with machine guns. And to have to stop to pay at every - single - entrance into every road, and from every road.
Actually no, that's not at all what I want. I want my 10-mile commute to take 15 or 20 minutes, not 3 hours waiting in lines at toll booths. I want to pay a reasonable amount of money for my drive, without having to pay by-the-hour for some guy to protect me as I drive down the road.
I don't like everything about our society. I don't care for many things our government does. I would change a lot of things if I had my way. But at the end of the day, I feel that all of that is relatively minor compared to truly horrible dictatorships where the people have no rights, no freedoms, poor health and are daily in fear for their lives and for the lives of those they care about. We should fight to make sure our society doesn't degenerate in that direction, but its useless to throw it all away just because it's not perfect.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
No, there's plenty of rationale for such a tax. There are one trillion such reasons - our annual cash deficit
Arbitrary and confiscatory taxation will indeed raise money in the short term. In the long run, it will push businesses, investment, and jobs, out of America. America is a business friendly country, and we have prospered because of that. But many other countries are working hard to be more business friendly, while America is moving in the opposite direction. We are in the process of killing the goose that lays golden eggs.
America as a whole, should learn from what happened in California. It used to be one of the most business friendly states. But California pushed more and more taxes and regulation on to business, and ramped up social spending. Today it is considered one of the least business friendly. Most semiconductor manufacturing is gone, many moves are made elsewhere, businesses are leaving, and unemployment is stuck several percentage points above the national average.
Wait. I thought the SCOTUS ruled corporations were people, too?
Make the corporate tax rate ZERO. Nothing. Make it apply to corporations exclusively headquartered in the US, with at least 51% board members being US residents, and at least 51% of upper management (defined as vice presidents and above) being US residents. You'll see every major company in the world immediately relocate to the US - and most of their higher end employees either relocating or hiring new ones here. Massive gain in income tax (given that these folks tend to be in the top 1% of income earners, and they tend to pay nearly a 24% income tax rate).
My back-of-the-envelope calculations say we'd easily replace the $450 billion or so that we get in corporate income tax - especially since the top 1% already pay about $370 billion in income taxes alone. Double that number of people (which is about what would happen if you brought over most of the top 1000 companies worldwide), and you'll more than double the taxes paid by the top 1% - income tax, excise taxes, taxes on their employees, etc.
Encourage companies to move here and grow our economy, rather than penalizing success overseas. Become the ultimate tax haven, the best place to do business - and watch the economy roar.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Stolen, totally correct. I would rather have no government,
Virtue is non-initiation of force, and there are many economic systems that are voluntary and not initiating force, but they do require your payment if you want certain services to be available to you and thus if you want to use a road or have protection against attacks by bandits, that's your responsibility to hire your protection and to pay your road tolls. If you are in fact a productive member of society, you will be able to handle that little bit but you don't have to be slave to a centralised oppressive government to achieve it.
Ok Mr. mir_roman. What modern country has an economic system preferable to that of the USA, in your opinion?
Your preference for an Old, Wild West is understandable, given that you have no idea what it was actually like. In the real world and the present though, you need to be able to keep drunk kids with matches, much less machine guns off your isolation nation, as well as the off property 1,000+ meter snipers hired by the parents of any you kill for their drunken idiocy.
That means no cereal crops for you, because, hey, I wanna see it burn.
That means no accumulation of portable wealth, because a bullet is a cheap way to take you out and get it for myself.
That means no clean drinking water for you, because I can frack the land next door and just dump the toxins on the edge of my lawn. Don't like it? You build a clay dam to protect your land, but keep it off mine. Or the new Pinkerton's will have you killed.
That means you can't be productive in the field, as anyone who wants to kill you can do so with a modern sniper rifle from concealment just off your property (or on it). The day you leave your Mad Max pope-mobile is the day you die. Just so we can see what it's like. It wouldn't cost much. I'd bet that $20 would be enough if you add a cheap trophy to the shooter.
Better hope your wife and kids aren't attractive to anyone else either, as they might fetch a good price on the free market. As my trade goods. Over your dead body? Fine by me.
Do you know why that isn't happening right now? It's not because of some idiots in Texas* with .22's. It's because the government will put a stop to it if it happens too often. If there is no vastly more powerful group to enforce social contracts, and there is no longer an American Frontier to get free land from, why wouldn't I kill you and take your land? Morals? Ethics? Killing you on some pretext is a rationalizable good , moral and ethical thing to do if I juxtapose it with the alternative of my wife and kids starving to death or being enslaved by force or debt.
Nuts like you think you can change one variable in the civilization equation and somehow force all others to hold constant, or, even more delusionally, you think you can choose which variables will shift so that your preferred equilibrium would be established. It won't. It will be mine, because I'll have a bad day and want to watch the world burn. And without a fire department, paid for by government imposed taxes, that's exactly what will happen.
* Partially because few people in TX bother with a little .22, but the caliber isn't the key here.
All government is coercive. The most practical definition of government is, "a local monopoly on the use of force". The Code of Hammurabi says why, "so that the strong might not harm the weak."
By removing coercion from government you actually get anarchy. However, it's an unstable system, because any two people who gang up against a third start the cycle of government again.
Individuals are like single atoms. They're mostly an abstract concept, and the only time that anyone cares about them is when they're interacting with their fellows. A photon streaming through the void without ever interacting with anything may as well not exist, and likewise with humans. Yes, societies are composed of individuals, and molecules are composed of atoms, but we don't do chemistry based solely on the properties of single atoms. It is the group interaction that is the basis of law and of chemistry, and it is from that that we derive the properties of individuals. The idea of a form of government where the individual is supreme is self-contradictory, and your philosophy is fundamentally unsound.
You haven't thought things through well enough. You imagine that you can pay for "protection from highway bandits" and that this is somehow different from government. Wake up. That is what government is. Protection from highway bandits. If you somehow managed to convince everyone to eliminate the U.S. government, then the question of roads would immediately pop up. Without roads you can't get to work or deliver products to markets. You can't have markets, because thieves and bandits would raid them. So, you would pay for your own private guards. Pretty soon, you would find that there are businesses providing protection. You would hire them, and so would other companies. But they would fight each other. Somehow, the fighting would ultimately get resolved. Either some warlord would emerge from the fighting as victorious leader who would impose order, or people would get together and vote on rules so that private protection companies would not fight. Rules, and a rulemaking process would evolve from your garden of eden of liberty. You can't avoid it. There are other people living on the planet. You have to get along with them. It isn't easy. You can't just say, "hey, this is my stuff, everyone keep their hands off of it" and expect everything to be fine. Again, wake up. Where did you get the stuff? Were you born with it? Did God pre-ordain that you own it? You don't think far enough ahead, and think about what will happen if you get rid of government. It will evolve again. And again. Everywhere. You can either react to it like it is some alien creature, or you can plan ahead, and try to optimize the rules that eventually evolve. Because rules will evolve, by force. It can either be a democratic force, or a dictatorial force. Or some mixture. But try not to be so simplistic in your thinking. It is frustrating to read.
Join the IParty!
Worker productivity has more than doubled over the last 20 years and yet, worker pay has gone down.
These businesses have been screwing us and yet, the conservatives stick up for them.
Voting for republicans is shooting yourself in the foot.
We have structural problems in our economy and the Republicans want to keep the status quo.
I think off shore money should be taxed at 90%. I think Obama should grab all that money and pay off all of our student loans. Because student loans are really a corporate subsidy - a handout. We go into debt to get an education to get better jobs and American businesses get free trained people.
See? The billionaire class and corporate America are the ones who are getting all of the government handouts but they have been so effective in brainwashing people, that conservatives keep up the looting of our money and time by the business elite.
Eisenhower tax rates. And everything over $2 million is taxed at 100%. Nobody works for that kind of money and nor do they deserve it. They got by being a cheat.
State of the Union was January 18, 2015.
Roman, go spend some quality time in the library (at taxpayer's expense, mind you) and read up on some history. Look at how well neo-anarchists have provided for the 'general good'. Look up some actual, functioning examples of libertarian philosophy.
And if you find any, come back here and tell us about it.
Yes, capitalism is pretty screwy. Doesn't work well. Not a stable system, needs lots of inputs to keep from feeding back on itself and destroying everything in sight. No, this 'civilization' will not last forever and has a number of major issues with it at the moment.
But your goofy system won't work beyond a 12 pack of brownies.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
heheheheh...
oh wait he was serious....
HAHAHAHAHAHHAHA!!!!
Paying for a service, choosing to pay for a service and choosing what service to pay for is entirely different from being coerced and oppressed by the mob to pay for nonsense that I have 0 interest in, actually less than 0 interest. It's even much much much worse than that, every dollar and cent that is stolen by government from the productive society and diverted to various government initiatives destroys the economy, the market, the society, every dollar that government gets has an untold multiplier attached to it. That's the dollar that goes towards increasing government power, that's the dollar that is taken out of the productive economy, out of savings, out of investments and is worse than wasted: it's wasted and it is used to create more government oppressive structures that end up stealing more from the individuals in the productive economy.
No, paying for a service of your choice and being forced to give up your own life and fruits of your labour to the thugs with guns with the authority provided to them by the mob cannot be compared even slightly to voluntary market exchange.
You can't handle the truth.
The primary reason for companies using and keeping money overseas is that it isn't taxed (or to a MUCH lower level... by taxing it the benefit is lost and many of these companies will hopefully rethink their strategies.
Indeed. They will rightly reconsider having a head office in the United States.
I'm sorry but these companies should be paying their fair share,
Indeed. It is unfair that they currently have to pay more than that and this proposal would make that even worse.
especially since they are getting the rights of being a person in the eyes of the law.
They aren't. The law treats companies completely differently to persons.
Yes, but one of the examples there is Burger King and most people don't understand something about that company, it was not American even before it moved the headquarters to Canada, it was mostly Brazilian. That company has a complicated history but Americans think for some reason that the company, whose majority owner is a Brazilian conglomerate is an American business... they are uninformed.
roman_mir is wrong all over the place today. You mean this Burger King? [from wikipedia]
Trading name
Burger King
Type
Public
Traded as NYSE: BKW
Industry Restaurants
Genre Fast food restaurant
Predecessor Insta-Burger King
Founded
Insta-Burger King: July 28, 1953 in Jacksonville, Florida
Current company: 1954 in Miami, Florida
-----
So it clearly WAS an American company. It doesn't matter who owns the shares, then or now. The company WAS American. So now we have the past established. Let's move on to the present.
Does it exist in the USA? Yes. Does it have a corporate and or physical presence in the USA? Yes and yes. Do any American people or business/trusts own shares? Yes on all counts. So clearly it IS still an American business.
Now let's move on to the last corner of your thesis, how would most Americans answer the question: What is the nationality of the majority shareholder of the company incorporated as "Burger King"?
I'd guess "I don't know." is the most common answer. We can go to wikipedia and see that 3G capitol, a brazilian founded investment group is the current owner, as of 5 years ago when they took it private.
So really, your misleading statement is more accurately stated: "Most people don't BK wa bought by Brazil in 2010."
No shit, most people don't know Pepsi soda and Frito chips are the same company, either. This just in frm the "Water is Wet" news desk: "People are ignorant about things they don't have direct experience with..."
The thing is: The money this tax is aimed at is not in the US and - by international law - was not earned in the US. To impose such a tax, the US must do some combination of violating signed treaties and forcing foreign jurisdictions to subject themselves to US domestic law. The US might have been able to pull something like that off, say, during the Cold War. Now? After the 2008 banking crisis? After the total muck the US has made of the Middle East? After Snowdon and the NSA revelations? Forget it, the US has lost too much credibility for such a naked power/cash grab to ever work.
Option a: The current US administration really is this clueless. Sadly, a real possibility, given the other idiocies they have shown.
Option b: This is a distraction. Just like a magician - attracts your attention with one hand, while, the other hand...someone is getting his pocket picked.
The US is bloody bankrupt, with current debt approaching $20 trillion and unfunded liabilities of around ten times that amount. It's all about cash, to keep paying for the bread and circuses, so that the political elite can put off the inevitable reckoning just a little bit longer.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Why do we have to give corporations anything? The US is the one with a friggin army. Go in an sieze the friggin funds and tell them tough fuckin cookies. And at the same time cut back their HB-1 visas and start negotiations. They can either start moving jobs back and hiring LOCAL developers and LOWER C-level wages, or we are going to continue to play hard ball.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
I for one am proud to pay more in taxes to provide the general infrastructure that corporations need in order to make their profits here. Shame on anyone who thinks that corporations should have to pay for this!
It is unfair because the profits of a corporation get taxed anyway during outflow, through the taxes on dividends and capital gains. Corporate income tax thus brings double taxation on that money. Those countries which have little or no corporate income tax are taking this into consideration and are being fair, unlike this money grab by Obama.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Anarchists are mostly irrational leftists, who want to destroy what they don't understand (property rights for example).
Clearly I am not with any socialist ideas, not on any level, not even slightly. Free market capitalism is not anarchism and anarcho-capitalism is not anarchism either. Maybe you want to read some of those books, I have had my share by now.
Capitalism is only private ownership and operation of property, there is nothing that makes it 'not work well', what screws things up is government oppression, be it dictatorial oppression or mobocracy. Free market capitalism has provided the biggest economic success in the history of the humanity in the 19th century USA and in the late 20th, early 21st century China, in Singapore, in Switzerland, in Hong Kong. It's ironic to see former communist dictatorship in China embrace so many capitalist ideas and reduce government power to provide a much freer market system, but it is working as it is supposed to, increasing the wealth within the society by removing so many government imposed constraints that the society used to face.
Growing government power is what is destroying USA and European economies, not abundance of individual freedom.
You can't handle the truth.
http://www.boxer.senate.gov/pr...
This is somewhat related to the anti-vaccination idiocy that is going on. This is the epitome of rich, fat, clueless idiots who are all for benefits of society but are too stupid to realize where the benefits come from.
All they can think of is how they can be more "free" without realizing that with freedom comes responsibility. Otherwise it degenerates to animal-like behavior.
I suppose you can consider living a caveman like existence, with a stockpile of guns and food, on 24 hour watch to protect yourself from others who want to take away either/both, is some sort of freedom but I am almost positive these idiots aren't thinking of this type of freedom.
Wow Roma-mir what a stupid argument. Go ahead now and signup for the one way trip to mars. You obviously have no place in our society. Don't worry from our perspective, societies, we can accommodate your anti-social ilk. In fact we have made great strides in creating a society that even has space for anti-social assholes like yourself. I am all into self-organization, people freely and autonomously working together to solve problems. But there is no relationship between autonomous self-organization and anything "private". To argue that individuals take care of all their needs privately, ie. With sole and exclusive claim, is borderline fascist. Have a great day.
I'm not talking about corporations like GE using various schemes to reduce their tax liability. I'm talking bottom line: corporations don't pay taxes. Taxes are a budget line item to be passed through to customers and/or labor.
The CBO wrote a report entitled "THE INCIDENCE OF THE CORPORATE INCOME TAX".
According to the CBO:
"A corporation may write its check to the Internal Revenue Service for payment of the
corporate income tax, but that money must come from somewhere: from reduced
returns to investors in the company, lower wages to its workers, or higher prices that
consumers pay for the products the company produces. Understanding the mechanisms
through which those tax burdens are transferred is crucial in determining the
economic effects of the corporate income tax."
The report goes on to say:
"Although economists are far from a consensus about exactly
who bears how much of the burden of the corporate income tax, the existing studies
highlight the significant types of economic mechanisms as well as the empirical
estimates necessary for further quantifying the burdens. CBO's review of the studies
yields the following conclusions:
o The short-term burden of the corporate tax probably falls on
stockholders or investors in general, but may fall on some more than
on others, because not all investments are taxed at the same rate.
o In the very long term, the burden is likely to be shifted in part to
labor, if the corporate tax dampens capital accumulation.
So, increase corporate taxes tends to lead to depressed wages.
The US corporate tax code is labyrinthine, costly to enforce, and doesn't do a very good job in capturing revenue. Business spends $1+ for compliance costs for every $1 they remit in taxes. That is, corporate taxes suck about $600B out of the economy so that the government can "earn" $250B.
The US could win a lot of business by eliminating the corporate income tax altogether and allowing the revenues to flow through to shareholders and labor. Since the double-taxation layer would be gone, CG and dividends could be taxed at normal income rates with out too much negative impact. Personal income taxes have a lot fewer loopholes and is much more efficient at garnering revenue.
Of course, far too many people think the purpose of taxing corporations is to punish them.
Now that he has no hope of seeing *any* pass, he just throw a lot of laws he knows will never pass. Why not having done all those laws back in 2010 ? or 2012 ?
Once an assets is declared to a government entities to be at a certain place under a certain laws, it should be valid for all government entities, and any change to that to a different government entities declared as fraud. If you declare in the US that your tax is in ireland, then in ireland declare it in the US, then that alone should be enough to declare you a tax frauder in the US. Or in ireland.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
A tax is not stealing. Period. You might be in favor or against it but the present deal is that you do not pay upfront for every consumable, e.g. roads, defense education of your workforce: instead you pay through taxes.
You lack the sophistication to explain why you disagree with taxes and falsely equate a levy with stealing to cover up for this.
Your malicious argument is like raping the readers (see what i did there?). Go back to the drawing board and come back when you can explain why a government that is running a deficit is according to GOP-types overtaxing rather than undertaxing.
He's proposed lots of shit. It won't get through congress, so... Hey, I'm glad he's framing the debate. I'm glad he's putting this out there. I'm glad he's forcing people to say "No, I'm against lots of common sense stuff that all the people want to do."
I'm a little bitter though. Where has this shit been the last couple of years? The cynic in me thinks there's an election coming soon... Hey, I could be wrong. Maybe he actually just now realized the Rs aren't going to work with him and he's wasted the last couple of years trying to "reach across the isle".
Because hiding your profits overseas is some sort of essential liberty, right?
The profits were earned overseas, mostly from products and services created by non-Americans and sold to non-Americans. There is no rationale reason for America to be taxing these profits. No other country has this kind of extraterritorial tax. Most economists agree that it is counter-productive, and just encourages companies to base their headquarters somewhere other than America. Business taxes should be based on where the economic activity occurs, not where the business is registered.
First of all, the profits were NOT made overseas as you claim. They were BOOKED overseas by "Me" billing "I" millions/billions in "licensing fees" to use "My" name. Essentially, they pay accountants (and Ireland) 2% to avoid paying actual taxes. Second, yes other countries do have these kinds of taxes, Australia on their citizens for one. Three, most economists don't agree on anything, just like "most" of any other non-hard science group. Physicists mostly agree on G and climatologists agree on AGW, but there's a pretty steep drop off beyond that stuff.
Finally, I think we can agree on the last point, but differ on interpretation. You appear to be saying that whatever third world hell hole (Sorry Ireland) their accountants claim is there "home" is what matters. I disagree. Where does Apple, Microsoft, etc sell the majority of its consumer products? Is it Ireland? Nevada? I don't think so. What is the citizenship of its majority stockholders? What country spends the most on military power, which is used to enforce and defend their intellectual "property"? I think those are the most salient points.
If Somalian based black flag maker "Ukata Dung Flags" makes his flags and sells them to local pirates, I don't the US should be taxing him. No one here who isn't trolling would suggest that. But if Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the Koch Bros were to suddenly claim they were based out of a dock in Somalia, I don't think we should say "Oh, cool! Yeah that $40Billion dollar licensing fee to "Legitimate Licensing Company" in Somalia is a legit business expense, no profit or tax for your American business necessary. Roads, Courts, Police and Fire all free on US! Plus warships to protect your IP, for free, of course."
A common thread I see in these anti-tax schemes is complaints about the current status, but I never a better solution being offered by the "Boo Government!" aka "Boo Taxes!" crowd. Plenty of wishful thinking along the lines of "Me and the boys have rifles and don't need cops!" crowd, all of whom would die to toxic inhalation from arson from more depraved versions of myself in a crisis, providing me with a ready stash of guns and beans. That or they reveal themselves to be cowardly murderers who kill anyone within sniping distance.
You are quite a successful example of the so called government 'education' system. Comparing individual responsibility to fascism? Fascism? Special interests (elite based factions) within government structures, ensuring the absolute authority of the state over the individual lives is in your little mind equal to individual freedom, freedom of association, freedom FROM the state? :) The government 'education' has done its job well on you, congrats.
You can't handle the truth.
Obama is not interested in revenue. Taxes are a cudgel with which to club people and organizations he dislikes, under some twisted concept of "fairness".
GIBSON: All right. You have, however, said you would favor an increase in the capital gains tax. As a matter of fact, you said on CNBC, and I quote, "I certainly would not go above what existed under Bill Clinton," which was 28 percent. It's now 15 percent. That's almost a doubling, if you went to 28 percent.
But actually, Bill Clinton, in 1997, signed legislation that dropped the capital gains tax to 20 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And George Bush has taken it down to 15 percent.
OBAMA: Right.
GIBSON: And in each instance, when the rate dropped, revenues from the tax increased; the government took in more money. And in the 1980s, when the tax was increased to 28 percent, the revenues went down.
So why raise it at all, especially given the fact that 100 million people in this country own stock and would be affected?
OBAMA: Well, Charlie, what I've said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.
Theft is what tax is, period. Roads, education, defence, health, food, transportation, energy, waste management, any service at all does not even closely require government, the only reason governments are all over these is because there is so much money that can be stolen by the power hungry who end up in government positions. Taxes are theft, they are actually slavery, as they are theft that is backed by initiation of violence that is seen as 'legitimate', since the mob supports it by participating in these systems.
You can't handle the truth.
Liberty means no ex post facto laws. Earnings made before passage of any such law (which, let's face it, will NEVER pass with the current Congress - whether you agree with them or not) should be excluded from this. If the Government can retroactively tax your profits, then why can't they retroactively tax the earnings in your 401K? Change your Roth IRA to be taxed when you pull out funds when you retire? Decide to take any money you've saved in the past and tax it at a high rate in the future? Is that liberty?
Exactly! How dare they take away my property! This kind of BS is just awful!:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_United_States_Constitution
The examples you've cited are not ex post facto, which means after the fact, arguably excepting the Roth. The Roth should be excluded because you ALREADY paid the taxes on it since it is funded with post-tax funds. All other IRAs will be taxed at your current rate when you make the withdrawl. That's neither retroactive nor ex post facto.
Oh, by the way, talk about 'lack of sophistication'. A government that is running a deficit is overtaxing, since it is adding those expenses to the debt that has to be paid with interest and/or is inflating the currency supply (printing money), thus destroying value of everybody's earnings and investments, thus destroying investment opportunities and quality of life. I do not expect you actually to understand it, but just because you do not does not make the problem go away.
You can't handle the truth.
All income from corporations is eventually distributed to individuals, which ends up being taxed on personal income returns. Wouldn't it be easier just to abolish coporate taxes and increase the capital gains tax?
Can you cite anywhere where the Founding Fathers didn't believe in taxes? They're point want that taxes shouldn't be levied, but rather that there should be no taxation without representation.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Well then you're fucked, because no society like that has ever existed, or ever will exist.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Yes, you are irrational idiot, who want destroy what you don't understand.
But go on, keep working here for free for rest of your life, sucker.
And you're a product of sociopathy and idiocy. You're selfish, wvul and vile, and yet clearly enjoy the benefits or the society you revile. Worse than a moron, you are a hypocrite.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
These companys love using our patent system and enforcing it with our court systems. (east texas anyone?)
Oh but when it comes time to pay the tax in this country...
Ok. fine. They are not us companys anymore. Invalidate all their patents and tell them to stop wasting our court time.
Pick one... you cant have it both ways which is what they are trying to do.
Roman, you will be beaten by your master if you not make enough posts today?
You are getting services and you pay for it through taxes. This does not fit any sensible definition of stealing. I can see that you are one of those libertarians that operate under the pretense that we would be better off with highways built by private parties for which you would have to pay a fee just like a tax to the government but with the difference that you have no say where it is built.
Fine, you are welcome to believe that. It still does not make takes theft or slavery. They are democratically agreed to and you get something in return for them. Let me know when a robber gives you back something in return for the stolen goods. That is how false your analogy is.
Actually my position is that we are in the early stages of developing that society, given that the next bubble bursting (as far as I am concerned) will be a government bubble. Government bonds, government fiat, government power and promises, government wars and murder and theft and destruction of individual rights.
As a humanity we have always been oppressed but over time we are moving from higher levels of oppression to lower levels (per individual) as our numbers are increasing, the ability to oppress individuals will diminish with a more global, more open society.
I actually am not pessimistic at all on this, I am quite optimistic where it concerns the future of individual freedoms being increased and government power being diminished.
You can't handle the truth.
You go to a restaurant and you do not cover the entire dinner bill. I.e you underpaid and ran a deficit. The restaurant then allows you to run a tab and charges you interest over the balance as it is done by any and all financial institutions. Now you are trying to use this as an argument that you "overpaid" the restaurant bill?
Try that in front of the court together with all your "sophistication" and you can write to me from jail telling me what the judge thought about your reasons for not covering the entire restaurant bill because you "overpaid".
The difference is that corporations (US C Corporations) are the imaginary invention of people, and this is also why they should not be taxed.
I imagine that all my corporations are in tax-friendly, business-friendly domicile. And if such a domicile does not exist, then imagine harder! This is the present state of corporate earnings management.
People, on the other hand, receive all the benefits of corporations. These benefits accrue as transactions, wages, dividends. Transactions and, to a degree, wages and dividends, are real, tangible things.
This is why taxing transactions (i.e. sales tax) can strive to meet standards of fairness and smartness, but taxing corporate profits will always lead to ridiculous outcomes.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
The most glaring point is of-course that there is no provision for income taxes by the Founders, in fact a number of times income taxes came to existence in USA and then were abolished. The latest attempt succeeded in 1913 (and coincided with the creation of the Fed and destruction of money). I wrote previously that income taxes are illegal and are collected illegally, maybe it is not the most eloquent expression presented there and I should rewrite it and make it easier to read, but it's there.
You can't handle the truth.
Corporate taxes are really just a way to tax individual shareholders, employees and customers, but without any of them noticing that the money is coming out of their pockets. Taxes are necessary, but hidden taxes are evil. Taxes should be visible, so the taxpayers know what they're paying and can weigh it against the value they receive, to decide if they're getting good value for their money, and vote accordingly.
This particular proposal is a great example. Obama wants to go after this particular pool of money because to American taxpayers it appears to be "free" money. It doesn't cost them anything... or at least that's how it looks. I suppose to the extent that this is taxing foreign income generated by foreign workers producing goods and services for sale to foreign customers, it is "free". The only Americans who will be hurt are the Americans who are shareholders in the targeted companies, and there are also plenty of foreign shareholders. So to the extent the money is all foreign, it's taken from foreign taxpayers, which is, if anything, even more insidious.
We do need to maintain our infrastructure, and we should pay for it. But up front and in the open.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
Wrong, services that I WANT to buy I can buy on my own and they would be much cheaper and in more abundance and with more options if governments weren't creating monopolies to support inefficient companies in many sectors. Private roads, private health care, private energy, private transport, private food, private insurance, private education, private money, private law, private protection, private anything costs less and can be paid for as needed and in private sector nobody is forced to pay for anything they do not require or wish to use. There is a gigantic difference between voluntary purchase of services and being forced into group slavery by the mob and the power hungry politicians who get their power from the tacit complicity of the mob.
Democracy is mobocracy, it is dictatorial oppression of the minority by majority (in case if the majority votes) or at least of a voting majority and it is not in the best interest of an individual, it is slave ownership by proxy.
You can't handle the truth.
"oppressed by the mob to pay for nonsense that I have 0 interest in, actually less than 0 interest."
You can never exist in this state as long as other humans are alive. TF2 sniper said it best.
"cause at the end of the day, as long as there are two people left on the planet, someone is gonna want someone dead."
Even if you have 0 interest in something, others in the closed system have interest in you. It is inescapable. Make the best of it, ignore it at your peril.
Good-bye
The next bubble to burst will be the government bubble, the bonds, the fiat currency and the entire idea of centralised governments that will be proven to be outdated and bad for society as a concept altogether.
Yes, capitalism is pretty screwy. Doesn't work well. Not a stable system, needs lots of inputs to keep from feeding back on itself and destroying everything in sight. No, this 'civilization' will not last forever and has a number of major issues with it at the moment.
Silly ColdWetDog, you don't have a clue what you are talking about!
- fiat currency and centralized banks != capitalism
- all the "not a stable system" things in the U.S. over 100 years or so
have not been "capitalism" at all.
There are many problems with the U.S. and there are many problems with capitalism.
To say the U.S. is capitalism just shows your lack of understanding.
I would rather the current government not only be dissolved but replaced by a fully transparent institution that actually protects everyone's rights equally.
If a person seeks to wield a position of great power, affecting everyone in their society directly, even sending men to die, they themselves must be willing to make significant sacrifices in order to ensure accountability. Ultimate positions require ultimate accountability.
The sole purpose of a republic is to defend the rights of all without bias.
The new conditions to the game:
- fully transparent legislative body: 24/7/365 monitoring of legislative entities while in office. This will filter out everyone but the idealists to argue among themselves.
- socialized legislative body: no member of the legislative body is to own anything. All things required will be provided by the people via an unlimited credit card. All purchases are fully, immediately published. All purchases belong to the People and are not taken out of office. Politicians are not to receive gifts of any sort.
- recenter local legislative bodies within the heart of educational institutions and bring all forms of educational institutions into one central hub. This ensures our youth have easy access to overseeing government discussion forums and observing the members of their government in-action.
Almost all of the design and administration of Apple is done in California. But surprisingly the "Company" is a foreign company where they have no factories, no designers, no corporate officers and just a bank account.
So yes, by using the talent and ingenuity of US workers and then claiming that they're an Irish Company they are stealing the value that US Society has invested into its workforce (and supplied the infrastructure for that workforce to get to the job site etc).
Personally I believe that we should tax not based on where they are located but where most of the value is created. If you are Microsoft and 90% of your workforce is in Washington State but you are incorporate in "Nevada" because you have a PO Box there then you should be taxed at 90% Washington 8% California and 2% Nevada tax rates. Similarly if 80% of your operations are in the US then you are 80% a US company and 80% of your revenue is taxable under US tax law.
Everybody knows that Apple is a California company. To say otherwise is dishonesty. It might legally be correct that Apple is a subsidiary of an Irish shell corporation but they're cheating the system and doing something that doesn't pass any sort of sniff test of truthfulness.
Funny you mention healthcare, where we have abundant data from all over the world that conclusively prove government provided healthcare is cheaper than privately provided one.
We have similar data for private energy, highways, and public transportation. For others the private sector is more efficient.
Those are the facts, the rest is foaming-at-the-mouth ideology.
I am completely against any sort of tax system where the government does this. If you do not like the corporations using loopholes in your laws close or heavily tax the loop holes. But don't just randomly throw a tax at people. The government should not have the power to randomly tax anyone it wants, any amount, at any length of notice it wants to give. If these assets should be taxed, then tax them annually.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Thank you.
Or how about changing the tax code to treat corporations like citizens. Wasn't it the Citizens United decision by SCOTUS that gave them rights. It would be reciprocal and the IRS could companies like citizens and go after every cent regardless of where they live or where they have their money.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
You don't know what you're talking about. Americans are the only people on the planet subject to double taxation. They must pay U.S. taxes on income over $80,000 earned overseas, even when it's taxed by the country of residence.
I wish I had said that.
Just like all of these other revenue generating schemes by Democrats, they miss the most likely outcome. US companies will become foreign companies. It's the main reason we're shipping profits overseas; to avoid the highest corporate taxes in the world. It's also the reason our government is controlled by lobbyists filling campaign coffers in return for loopholes in our ridiculously huge tax code. Stop taxing corporations, bring jobs back to the US.
Bear in mind that even those of us who are citizens by birth and have never used the resources of the USA (for anything!) are still expected to file tax returns both in the USA and where we are resident. Taxation without representation.
Most of us just don't ever file US tax returns and hope they never find out, but we're obviously very careful not to say so too publicly. Hopefully they will bring in RBT as soon as possible so we can put an end to this farce and stop the nervous palpitations we feel whenever we cross the border to visit relatives.
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons...
I think the world ought to tax USA for all the war damages they've wrought.
well, yeah, why wouldnt it be? why should the US get access to funds NOT even in the country? thats plain robbery
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
You're batshit fucking crazy. Take your meds, fool.
This is the kind of thinking that made Detroit what it is today. Brought to you by the political party that made Detroit what it is today.
Actually wrong, there are very few places that do not have government hands all over health care, education, transportation, energy, everything. The places where government hands are not elbow deep in these services are rare, but they exist. Singapore has very little involvement in health insurance, there is a basic required minimum insurance and everything else is voluntary. They also have no minimum wage and highest per capita earnings.
You can't handle the truth.
I take it Apple 'leeched of the society' by creating production lines and products that provide them with all their earnings around the world?
They certainly do avail themselves of the protections of intellectual property law, ultimately enforced by government intervention. Apple's owners also avail themselves of the protections of a corporate charter, provided by that same government. "Free market" is truly nothing of the sort, and there's always a line that free market advocates aren't willing to cross when it comes to getting the government completely out of the market. It's like the people that scream to "keep the government out of my Medicare!".
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Again, all of the western world provides government healthcare more efficiently than private health care in the US. This is an undisputed fact. By the way, of the public/private portions of healthcare in the US the government ones are the ones that provide the most bang for the buck. This has been confirmed in numerous studies, going all the way from medicare/medicaid/armed services insurance to Obamacare today.
I know you will refuse to believe it. It is clear you care more for ideology than reality.
I am an individual first of all, I act with my own self interest in mind, that is simply a fact. Everything else is your opinion and it's not an informed one. However I am far away from a hypocrite, I actually do as I say as much as I possibly can, from the way I structure my business to my personal life, I am quite good at following my own advice.
You can't handle the truth.
The US's stupid tax laws being extended into new areas is not a good thing. We should be trying to get the part where you have to pay on money earned in other countries repealed, not extend it.
If this goes through, expect more countries to move their headquarters out of the US. It's not like moving to escape our stupid tax laws hasn't already started happening.
You are correct about one thing: there is no way to ignore the system, the only real question to yourself is what are you doing in your life about it, how do you ensure that your losses are minimised in this socialist/fascist nightmare of a system (and I am quite positive things are actually getting better over time, not worse, in the last 300 years markets have been freer than ever and individual property rights have been exercised more than ever before, of-course the last 40 years, since the default on the gold dollar the things went downhill quite a bit in the American and European parts of the world, but they have been getting better in Asia and parts of Africa).
You can't handle the truth.
so wouldnt the right thing to do is stop shipping money to washington to divy up around the country?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Western world is seeing its economies being destroyed and not in small part due to welfare state policies of that world. The government and health care or insurance should not be mixed. Same applies to everything, including military at this point as far as I am concerned, at least if the idea is to keep peace rather than increase violence and murder. The reality is the problem for you, not me, you don't actually pay attention to the reality and the reality is bigger than only health care, it is the entire state of economy and health care is not outside of the economy. I prefer to use private health care specifically because of much better quality and given choices people would take that option, their choices are removed from them by their governments and by the declining economy, which is again, resulting from their government growth and destruction of free market capitalism.
You can't handle the truth.
Ok, now take your analogy and add the following: if you are constantly eating on 'the tab', while you are no longer being productive, you lost your job, you ate through your assets, you have nothing left and your skills are deteriorating, the restaurant would be full-hearty to keep feeding you there, thinking that you would ever pay any of that debt back.
You can't handle the truth.
If these capitalist leaders are given a one-time tax that they'll fight in court, screw them -- give them a tax every year. Because while it's a capitalist success to buy the legislature and write laws that allow you to keep huge profits out of the US government's hands, it's unpatriotic to screw America for billions in uncollected taxes only gained by successfully manipulating our legislature and screwing American workers.
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
And then there is a simple penalty.... You don't have a headquarters here in the US you don't sell a product here.... there are all sorts of cat and mouse games that can be played.
The us is one of the biggest with the most expendable income. It's financial suicide to not sell a product here. And as has been seen in the past.. when one company leaves here... another will spring up to do it's job here.
This package Does Not Contain a Winner
You are now changing the subject. since you cannot deny that government provided health-care is cheaper, so off you go about the economic crisis, the welfare state and other side issues.
Thanks for participating dude. So much for your (false) assumption that private healthcare is cheaper.
And then there is a simple penalty.... You don't have a headquarters here in the US you don't sell a product here.... there are all sorts of cat and mouse games that can be played.
Really? :)))) That would make for one EMPTY WalMart, wouldn't it?
Go ahead, think through that once more, you like your stuff that you buy every day in any store in USA? Most of it was NOT made in America.
You can't handle the truth.
If I'm a shareholder of a US corporation, I expect to have corporate earnings on their way to *me* (my pocket, from dividends). Sure it takes a while for earnings to trickle down to dividends or higher share price, but that link is there.
If earnings are systematically never coming into the US, how the heck am I (the shareholder) supposed to benefit from those foreign earnings? We're not talking about a company headquartered abroad (or owned primarily by foreigners). We're talking about *my* shares earning profits that I won't have access to unless the damn company pays taxes.
No, the arguments of "if you don't like that, don't buy the stock" doesn't work. The whole point of shares is a say, a vote, not the option of not to play.
Yes--there are much better ways of structuring the tax system, but there's a huge amount of institutional momentum behind the current system.
For example, if you used pass-through tax for corporations like you do for LLCs and partnerships. The corporations would then have to distribute money in dividends to cover their tax liability, the government would collect income taxes from the owners (the shareholders).
Government provided health care is not cheaper. FDA is not cheaper, government laws and taxes and regulations do not make things cheaper, they either make things impossible or much more expensive than otherwise.
You are full of statistics, aren't you? Private health care, actually private, without government intervention cannot be beat by price by any government health care at all, given that TAX AND REGULATIONS COSTS ARE HIDDEN FROM SIGHT.
You can't handle the truth.
Without the government, apple wouldn't be able to exist.
There is nothing to stop widespread theft of their IP by other countries (can you say "Patent protection for 0 years).
There is nothing to stop widespread copyright infringement of their products.
There is nothing to stop people from kidnapping and/or murdering their top employees.
There is nothing to stop people from attacking apple stores and destroying product.
The roads fall into disrepair.
There's no guarantee of the quality of gasoline in their delivery vehicles.
A functioning government is necessary for businesses to exist.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
. Implying that they didn't object to paying taxes as much as they objected paying taxes to the wrong people for the wrong reasons and without any say-so in the matter.
I know its not relevant to what the guy you are replying to said, but this line is a perfect fit for the issue at hand. The issue is that the feds want to tax something that they have no legitimate reason to tax, meaning money that was made outside of the country.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Republicans have sold their souls to their corporate masters. That does not mean we should simply accept it and sit tightly. We should make it obvious to people where the loyalties of Republicans lie.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I'm not interested in providing healthcare efficiently (which tends to mean, the greatest benefit for the greatest number of people for the least cost). I'm interested in what provides me, personally, the best healthcare services for the least cost to me, personally. I specifically am NOT interested in my funding the healthcare services of others not part of my own family, even if it's done efficiently.
You are now arguing that deficits are bad, which is a different topic.
Presently we are running a deficit, which is the mathematical definition of underpaying, not overpaying.
This proposal is an unconstitutional "bill of attainder."
> Atlas Shrugged...some kind of instruction manual
Ditto 1984.
Is that how you justify to yourself ignoring indisputable facts from the world over as well as the USA?
Whatever it takes just so you don't pop your ideological bubble that everything private is cheaper even though facts speak to the contrary?
Okaay.
I run a business and I hire people in more than one country to do it as well.
Is it a sole proprietorship? If not, why not?
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
Yes, deficits are bad. Yes, running deficits and adding to debts means higher future payments due to interest on the debt and it means higher future taxes.
In order to restart economic activity debts have to be paid off and/or restructured, debts have to be minimised and deficits have to stop.
Running deficits means taxing future earnings at a higher rate than the current tax rate, that's because debts cannot be accrued forever and it's not fake 'borrowing ceiling' that governments don't care about, it's the real lending ceiling that will be imposed by people who will no longer subsidise your economy with their productivity.
Cutting taxes and increasing debt based spending or inflation based spending is not cutting taxes at all, which is why Bush never actually cut taxes, he increased them by increasing spending.
USA is now the biggest debtor in history of the world and his happened since Nixon defaulted on the dollar in 1971 and the inflation started wiping out USA economy.
You can't handle the truth.
Yes, hypocrisy is amusing, however there is no hypocrisy with a company that earned money in a foreign country not bringing its profits to USA so they can avoid paying those taxes.
As to the corporate charter provided by government - this shouldn't exist.
There shouldn't be intellectual property law - this shouldn't exist.
Free market is exactly absence of government creating monopolies, destroying competition, taxing income and profit and wealth, meddling with businesses, passing labour laws, etc.
There shouldn't be any government and there shouldn't be such a thing as 'limited liability' provided by government corporate law.
You can't handle the truth.
One time tax? You mean for this week. Next year comes and there will be yet another "one time tax"
Apple would exist just fine, government wouldn't exist.
Government shouldn't be protecting anybody in business for any reason, including 'intellectual property' nonsense.
As to murdering and kidnapping - this is a private matter, it is up to any given locality how to deal with such nonsense, personally I prefer completely private security and private courts for handling any criminal activity.
Roads do not disappear if government does not usurp power by oppressing people into submission, roads should be completely private as well.
Gasoline quality and whatever other quality, all of it is up to private brands to maintain and compete upon.
A functioning government is a Mafia and should be understood and treated as such.
You can't handle the truth.
It's not a "giveaway" because it wasn't the government's money to keep or give away in the first place. The money belonged to the corporations themselves, and if the tax law is written in such away that they can take their profits overseas and pay less tax on it, then that's their right. There's no "moral authority" that allows the government to expect a certain level of tax collection beyond the minimum amount that one can justify under existing law--if it isn't in the law, it isn't theirs to collect, period.
It is a set of corporations, parent corporation and a number of daughter businesses set up to minimise taxes and other types of liabilities. It is what I have to work with in the current environment. I prefer bearer certificates personally, they are a bit difficult to set up today. I prefer it if governments didn't exit at all and there was no such thing as a government controlled corporate charter of-course, given that the world is what it is, I come up with the best way of doing business I can in our reality.
You can't handle the truth.
Everything private is cheaper in a free market economy. In a non-free market economy (which is what is set up almost everywhere across the world), private companies can manipulate governments to their advantage by buying influence and thus preventing actual competition.
FDA is there to prevent competition, so is every other law and tax, preventing actual competition creates a skewed market, in which it is impossible to get a true reading on what costs are actually.
Same with any government operation, money is fungible, so government operations are subsidised in more ways than one. Since there are very few actual free markets and that health care is not allowed to operate as a free market almost anywhere at all, comparing private health care in a non-free market and declaring that government beats free-market private health care is in itself a gigantic lie that you prefer to promote, that's your business, but you are not going to fog this issue that way for me.
You can't handle the truth.
This is just one more episode in the perpetual game of cat and mouse between the makers and the takers.
You're completely off-base on the Hillary thing. To help Hillary, Obama need to take the party further left. It relates to the concept of the Overton window , the range of ideas that the public sees as palatable "centrist" positions. If you drag the dialog of the extreme edge further, then it makes less extreme ideas seem more reasonable. The Democrats need to get on this, as the right has been doing this for some time. People like Limbaugh and Hannity push the edges out so their candidates don't have to.
By pushing "anti-business claptrap" Obama gives her room to distance herself from him, room she can use in the election as she sees fit.
Personally, I don't feel that closing tax loopholes exploited by multinationals is "anti-business", more like "pro-fairness", if you allow one business to cheat, you force all to cheat to stay competitive.
It's simply an extension of America's weird world view that they should be owed taxes on money not earned in America. No other country has this odd view, instead, money earned abroad is taxed abroad. The US tax system also has weirdnesses like this for anyone who's a dual national or green card holder... Dual US/British citizen and earning money in Britain? Great, you'll be paying both UK and US income tax on that!
That is a very different issue. That is just about you picking loyalty to a country. When you have dual citizenship, who do you vote for? Who do you fight for in a war draft? Which government is responsible for you?
What is going on here is corporations having a token office and token holding company incorporation papers in whatever country has little taxes or little accounting oversite and exploiting
How Apple avoids paying taxes on iTunes revenue Luxembourg served as one of Apple’s overseas tax havens from September 2008 until December of last year, giving the company a 1.2% corporate tax rate. Over two-thirds of Apple’s European revenue from iTunes was routed through its Luxembourg holding company called iTunes Sarl . Apple has since moved the holding company to Ireland where it pays less than one percent tax on iPhone and iPad sales. http://www.cultofmac.com/30265...
THIS IS A HUGE PROBLEM. Example: We subsidize education with tax dollars so people can get good enough jobs in future to buy iphones and design iphones, then we tax that corporate revenue to pay for the subsidization. This is basically making everyone elses tax burden higher. This isn't a 2 trillion money steal, it is money they would have owed in any rational system anyways,
The free market is an equalizer. The gap between the rich and the poor has gotten smaller, not larger. These data points are picked based on what I could dig up:
The richest man in the US in 1990: Bill Gates, $60B
The median US household wealth in 1990: $98K
The richest man in the US in 2011: Bill Gates, $56B (-7%)
The median US household wealth in 2011: $69K (-25%)
Oh, wait. Data is bitch.
Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires
http://www.census.gov/people/wealth/files/Wealth%20distribution%202000%20to%202011.pdf
"As soon as I can renounce, I will" Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out.
Let's just be like the rest of the world and stop taxing corporations. We'll save billions on trying to collect.
Then, tax capital gains like every other income. And jack up the maximum tax bracket. 50% at 1MM. No tax shelters. None. Only exception is unincorporated small business which can be inherite exempt up to 10MM.
Labor is a poor man's capital. A rich man's capital should be taxed at the same rate.
If the GOP likes the 1950s so much, let's tax them like it is the 1950s.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
It’s part of the budget, which the President submits to Congress. I’m pretty sure that counts as talking to them.
Congress can always strip it out, but there’s nothing requiring the President to sign that modified budget, and then we’re right back to CRs to pay for everything, like we’ve been doing for the past several years.
The profits were earned overseas, mostly from products and services created by non-Americans and sold to non-Americans.
Any evidence to back that statement? When my employer does R&D with US citizens and sells the resulting product in the US (with manufacture in Asia) just about every dime of that ends up getting reported as foreign income.
The wonders of transfer pricing.
If you are responsible to the shareholders to be stewards of their investments, you have to take whatever measures you can to avoid heavier than necessary taxes. Hence people park their money off American shores.
Oh pleaseeee. Where is your sense of civics? If they want to live and work and raise kids in Colombia, then let them. But they want to live in the United States with US citizenship, that made it's self powerful with a expensive navy, that provided a stable government, that gave them peace of mind, etc, etc. Then live with American higher taxes. It's not like the shareholders are going to be staving. And sense only the mega corps can afford these tax havens anyways, it's really just another way to be anti-free market, by playing by different rules. It's people like you that will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Ah, Atlas Shrugged. Written by a sociopath, rule book for the selfish, prized tome to Libertarian wackos everywhere.
Go ahead, you John Galts! Take your ball and leave, like a four year-old throwing a tantrum.
You THINK that you’re special, but the truth is you’re completely disposable. There are a hundred Americans just waiting to take your place with great ideas and hard work. Perhaps they’ll even do your work better than you could.
As an entrepreneur, I relish this mindset, as I don’t have to compete against pouting quitters.
You won’t be missed.
Good lord, you are serious.
You are being irrational. You need to get back in touch with reality before you do something stupid. I'm not trolling or sniping you. I'm serious.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
I would like to be a fly on the wall when this is explained to Tim Cook or Eric Schmidt.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Is taxing a company really a good thing... I contend it isn't. Well, not in the UK anyway where income tax is supposedly universal.
If you don't tax the company and the money is paid to shareholders, then the government gets it's share through income tax.
If you don't tax the company and the money isn't paid to shareholders, then the company has more resources to employ people, expand and do R&D.
So, the only thing you're doing by taxing a company is hampering its growth and resilience.
Discuss.
Liberty means no ex post facto laws. Earnings made before passage of any such law (which, let's face it, will NEVER pass with the current Congress - whether you agree with them or not) should be excluded from this. If the Government can retroactively tax your profits,
This isn't a retroactive tax.
There's no ex post facto involved.
You see, the trick is that technically, all the money held overseas is deferred income.
The IRS said "you don't have to pay your taxes until you bring the money back to US shores."
The corporations said "Cool, we'll bring it back. No really, we will. But how about we pay you less when we bring it back?"
As a result, the incentives for repatriating foreign profits are completely upside down and backwards.
It makes far more sense to dodge US corporate taxes and invest the money overseas.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The last refuge of the incompetent is violence and in your case violent tendencies are expressed in personal ad-hominem attacks.
You can't handle the truth.
Having had a long interest in pottery, I've looked at some of the history of pottery in Japan. Interestingly, in the late 1500s, Japan invaded Korea and while they didn't get much territory-wise, they rounded up a lot of potters and forced them give up their knowledge in Japan. Pottery was high technology in those days. Anyway, kidnapping knowledgable workers is a time honored tradition.
The example I reference is usually called the Pottery Wars, rather than "Ceramic Wars" but there's a short synopsis here: The Ceramic Wars: Hideyoshi's Japan Kidnaps Korean Artisans
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
If the goal is to drive "US companies" completely out of the US, this is the perfect solution.
The profits were earned overseas, mostly from products and services created by non-Americans and sold to non-Americans. There is no rationale reason for America to be taxing these profits.
Bullshit, yes there is. Americans oversees already pay taxes in exactly this way. And guess what? If you're over seas and don't like the tax, you are completely within your rights to adopt citizenship in your new country and give up your rights and privileges as a US citizen. So fuck off with your "I don't own my countrymen 'nothin" attitude. I completely agree with the president here. If these companies want to remain US companies, they should already be repatriating their profits like they clearly want to, but they should pay taxes like every other private citizen (which they don't want to).
It is unfair because different countries tax different economic activity differently. So in one country, you pay to the government via income tax, and another pays via consumption/VAT, which you never see. So if you live in a VAT country, and are a citizen of a income tax country, you are support two governments simultaneously. Even if you live and work between different VAT countries, maybe one country taxes food more and another taxes fuel more. Trying to be "fair" and avoiding double taxation is impossible for mere mortals.
Since each country knowing another country's taxes is difficult and keeping track of taxes that do not exist in another country or are not recorded by both parties to a transaction is unworkable, how about you just pay tax to the country where the economic activity is. If you produce widgets in country A, but are a citizen in country B, then you used country A's roads, markets, legal system, pretty much anything a government needs money for. So why should country B see any of that money?
This 14% to 19% is closer to the USA's 'real' tax rate, which has so many loopholes that it's actually lower than most of the developed world.
People love to harp on the fact that the USA's corporate tax rate is so high, but it truth with all the political rewriting of the corporate tax rate its fairly low.
And then you have companies like Apple doing their all out best to not pay taxes at all.
The last is what Obama is trying to remove. And Republicans/Fox News and it's handlers are going to try their level best to sell the American People that this is a bad thing to fairly tax the poor super-corporations that get away with bloody murder.
No! It's a *SIG*. Keep the Special Interest Groups away! (Con joke!)
Because the tax on citizens is already retarded and no other country is that retarded. The fix is to get rid of that retardation, not spread it to corporations.
*That* is an argument that is very possibly worth making.
I have an even better idea. Tax only the corporations, and none of the natural persons. These artificial entities control the majority of the money, by far. Let them pay the taxes.
How exactly is risking capital to produce products people willfully buy "leaching off society"? Which government service exactly are they skipping out on paying for? Why not send them a bill for that instead of stabbing in the dark at arbitrary sums? When did it become "greedy" to keep your own money, and "justice" to take someone else's?
Whoosh much? I was referring to the strawman kleptocrat government badguys in the book as the source of Obama's inspiration.
If the US imposes this tax, while crediting the company for any tax paid overseas, then the smartest response would be for the foreign taxing jurisdiction to impose its own 19% tax rate and just take the money for itself. The company ends up no worse off, and the country where the money is gets the dough instead of the US. Or maybe US companies will just reorganize and make their foreign operations separate corporations and take shares in them instead of keeping all that stuff under one corporate roof.
Indeed, the competent use violence a lot sooner.
Though I'm not sure how incompetent you have to be to confuse criticism of your irrationality with actual violence.
As a stock holder,which makes me an owner of the corporation this is nothing but theft from a two-bit communist who hasn't done a single positive result for the USA. People voted for his skin and nothing else.
It is hubris to think that the government we have now is going to re-evolve if removed. That implies a degree of fitness that most people would find very difficult to see in whatever government they have, even if it is their preferred type of government. Someone once mentioned something about watering the tree of liberty with blood from time to time. Even if another tree will always grow where one falls, it is wrong to think that this is not better than one tree growing old forever. Whether things like civil forfeiture or a "one time tax" should be enough to trigger that renewal is certainly debatable, but eventually there will be something seemingly benign that does it.
Whoosh much? I was referring to "Libertarian wackos" not "RightwingNutjobs."
You haven't thought things through well enough. You imagine that you can pay for "protection from highway bandits" and that this is somehow different from government. Wake up. That is what government is. Protection from highway bandits.
If you somehow managed to convince everyone to eliminate the U.S. government, then the question of roads would immediately pop up. Without roads you can't get to work or deliver products to markets. You can't have markets, because thieves and bandits would raid them. So, you would pay for your own private guards.
Pretty soon, you would find that there are businesses providing protection. You would hire them, and so would other companies. But they would fight each other. Somehow, the fighting would ultimately get resolved. Either some warlord would emerge from the fighting as victorious leader who would impose order, or people would get together and vote on rules so that private protection companies would not fight.
Rules, and a rulemaking process would evolve from your garden of eden of liberty. You can't avoid it. There are other people living on the planet. You have to get along with them. It isn't easy. You can't just say, "hey, this is my stuff, everyone keep their hands off of it" and expect everything to be fine. Again, wake up
Where did you get the stuff? Were you born with it? Did God pre-ordain that you own it? You don't think far enough ahead, and think about what will happen if you get rid of government. It will evolve again. And again. Everywhere. You can either react to it like it is some alien creature, or you can plan ahead, and try to optimize the rules that eventually evolve. Because rules will evolve, by force. It can either be a democratic force, or a dictatorial force. Or some mixture. But try not to be so simplistic in your thinking. It is frustrating to read.
I like the BR tag.
You can learn to like it as well.
Because hiding your profits overseas is some sort of essential liberty, right?
The profits were earned overseas, mostly from products and services created by non-Americans and sold to non-Americans. There is no rationale reason for America to be taxing these profits. No other country has this kind of extraterritorial tax. Most economists agree that it is counter-productive, and just encourages companies to base their headquarters somewhere other than America. Business taxes should be based on where the economic activity occurs, not where the business is registered.
Anyway, this proposal has ZERO chance of passing a Republican Congress. This is about electoral politics, not tax policy. The loser here is Hillary Clinton. To win in the general election, she has to position herself as a moderate centrist, that can win in the Midwest, and maybe even pick off a Southern state. But by steering the Democratic party into hare-brained anti-business claptrap, Obama is diminishing her ability to do that.
regarding your statement:
The profits were earned overseas, mostly from products and services created by non-Americans and sold to non-Americans.
Then do you agree that products created by Americans and sold to Americans should be taxed as an American corporation?
I ask because what we are talking about is American corporations avoiding taxes on their products sold in America through the use of double-dutch type corporate structures.
You'll see every major company in the world immediately relocate to the US..
No, you won't.
What bizarre world do you people live in, anyway?
Ali Baba will remain a Chinese company. ICBC will remain a Chinese company. China Construction Bank will remain a Chinese company. Agricultural Bank of China will remain a Chinese company. Bank of China will remain a Chinese company. PetroChina will remain a Chinese company. So will every other Chinese company. Fully half of the top 10 of the Forbes 2000 list will not EVER become American companies.
Royal Dutch Shell will remain a Dutch company. Toyota Motor (Forbes says their name has no 's' on the end. Who knew..) will remain a Japanese company. HSBC Holdings will remain a British company. BP will remain a British company. Volkswagen Group will remain a German company. Gazprom will remain a Russian company. Samsung will remain a Korean company. We're now through a majority of the top 20 with absolutely zero chance of relocating to the US, regardless of US tax policy.
That's just the publicly traded companies. Saudi Aramco will stay in Saudi Arabia. They own that government. They ARE that government. The LEGO Group will stay in Denmark. Etc.
When you get right down to it, it's mostly only US corporations that are sociopathic bastards. Many large foreign companies identify with their own nationality and explicitly support it. Do you really think Royal Bank of Canada (55th ranked in the Forbes 2000) is going to incorporate in the US? Really? Don't be ridiculous.
Your back of the envelope calculation is worth spit. A zero US corporate tax rate would simply rob our budget of billions. Billions that, whether or not they are necessary, are already spent, so we'd damn well better not cripple our ability to pay back the loans.
If those companies want to pretend that they are foreign companies, then de-list them from the US stock exchanges.
In my dream world, we don't tax corporate profits anyway.
Taxing profits causes companies to engage in these gyrations so that they can pretend they don't make any money and thus have no taxes to pay.
Accounting firms and tax lawyers love it though.
Why not just tax total revenue? That could be done at a rate that's a fraction of the profits and level the playing field for new or smaller companies.
No seriously man. I wasn't saying it as an attack.
I'm saying it like- seek help. The views you are expressing are very far from reality. This is dangerous to you. You are thinking in a bubble isolated from reality.
Not joking. Not attacking you.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The corporations will just increase the prices on their product to cover the taxes paid.
The better part would be to rescind corporate tax, but make all benefits, golden parachutes, bonuses, etc taxable for the employees.
Then make outsourcing of positions illegal, end H1-B visas, and voilla, our country has more tax money in it's coffers.
Finally, make a sales tax on purchases of stocks - don't force people to pay tax on the sale of the stock, just make it so that you pay 5% for every stock purchase at the time of purchase.
Lastly, if someone buys futures on commodities, include the charges to pay for "storage" and "shipment" of said commodities for the duration they hold the options.
That way the people "selling" these commodities don't lose out by storing the grain / oil / livestock until the investor makes use of those options.
So who do I pay for protection from bandits using civil assets forfeiture?
So now you have no benefits that aren't costing you tax from your salary too. So the value of the benefits plummets and thus people just demand a higher salary instead. Which, believe it or not, costs you more - the point of the incentives is that the person couldn't just earn that amount of money extra and get that incentive themselves anyway, it works by having expensive one-offs that mortals couldn't afford, and them remaining company property, etc.
You can't make outsourcing illegal. It's just a legal minefield and there's always a way around it. It would also cripple any modern economy overnight. This is truly a stupid suggestion in its own right.
End visas? No problem. But there aren't many countries in the world that have put a block on visas because they already have enough in-house talent. Believe it or not, this will make immigration drop which, again, will cost you all money.
The numbers may look bigger on the balance sheet, but the costs go up as well and may not be immediately noticeable.
The stock/futures things? Too complicated for me to tell what would happen, to be honest. Chances are there's a way to scam it to make enormous profit and not pay tax on it.
However, if you just tax the companies properly - a fixed portion of their income earned or brought into the country, and a definition of income that excludes any kind of "pay your own subsidiary" shenanigans - the prices for the consumer may well go up. But equally consumers will go elsewhere.
And maybe, just maybe, like Starbucks UK, you'll find that the prices have gone up because NOW they have to pay the right amount of tax. And if that means they can't be profitable, then their competitors who HAVE been paying the right amount of tax all along will win (e.g. Costa Coffee in the UK), because they can compete on a level playing field finally.
Tax isn't complicated. A fixed portion of what you earn. It's that simple. The problem is that to get their own 10% the lawmakers and accountants make things incredibly complicated to define exactly what you've earned. And they wrap it up in a thousand tiny taxes rather than one big tax.
Can someone explain why it wouldn't be better to have a "personal income tax" and a "corporate income tax" and scrap everything else? It's used for disincentives (e.g. tax on smoking in the UK) but, honestly, is that really worth it compared to just banning it or letting the markets speak?
It took 40 years to get to the point where smoking costs us more as a country than it makes in tax, and now we have a huge legacy of health problems ahead of us and STILL we haven't properly banned it but pissed away money on disincentives like plain packaging, hiding them away in the store, stopping their advertising, removing their capability to sponsor, etc.
I can't help but think that just the simplicity of "half what you earned" (which is about right for most first-world countries) would cut out so much red tape, confusion, administration and difficult enforcement that it would actually get you back MORE than all this complicated mess of exclusions and kickbacks that are in place now.
I pay road tax (road fund licence, technically, but it's a tax on road use the proceeds of which go to road maintenance - no different to taxing road use and the government having to maintain the roads generally), income tax, national insurance (healthcare tax), VAT (sales tax), a specific tax on petrol, a tax on pensions, a tax on insurances, a tax on bank interest and god-knows what else.
"How much money did you make from all sources last year? Give me half" seems to be pretty much the same as we have now, but without all this mess of shit to fall foul of and allow companies to scam.
Except that it is much easier for a corporation to make profits disappear overseas on paper than it is for an individual. I cannot open a "Me Inc." in Ireland and pay Me 90% of my income as a licensing fee on me, the trademark and then deduct it from my taxes here.
Better, more simple idea. Government should live within it's fucking means and stop expanding.
It's not simple to us because we have a more than superficial understanding of the economy.
Many factors go into pricing, but generally prices are set at what the market will bear. Raising taxes might cause prices to go up, or it might cause companies to start laying people off, or it might just cut into a company's profit margin, but whatever it does it won't have a 1:1 effect on price.
The current tax code is a MESS, and the politicians refuse to clean it up becasue THEY made it that way and benefit from it. EVERY single "loophole" was opened-up by a politician responding to the demands of supporters who bribed.... er... "contributed to the campaign of" that politician. Even if you COULD get a generation of politicians to clean it up, the very next wave of elected scum would start adding new loopholes. This is exactly what happened post-Reagan. The tax code in the US was a nightmare in the late seventies. ON PAPER, the rich in America were paying 70%+ on capital gains, and huge amounts on inheritance etc bu IN REALITY the super-rich used lots of lawyers and accuntants to dodge all that and only the middle class actually got stuck with the high rates on their much smaller investments and inheritances. Under Reagan we got "tax reform" that lowered the RATES dramatically AND closed hugh piles of accumulated "loopholes". The economy boomed for 20+ years... but gradually the tax code has re-spawned all sorts of "loopholes" AND the super-rich have been busy creating even more ways to shelter their money from the tax man so that any new reform of the tax code will have to be far smarter.
The big dishonesty of THIS new proposal is this: Tax revenue into the US government is higher today than at any point in US history, and yet under President Obama we have also run the largest deficits in US history. No matter how fast the cash pours in, the current administration spends it faster. (example: Obama has DOUBLED food stamps from approx $40Billion to approx $80Billion per year even though neither unamployment nor inflation had remotely doubled). By proposing a tax to bring in many billions of dollars JUST ONE TIME, President Obama would make his deficit in his last year look tiny, and then appear to balloon way higher when the next president (Republican OR Democrat) gets hit with the first full-impact of all the new Obamacare spending obligations uncamoflaged by BOTH this proposed tax bubble AND the schemes of the ACA that collected the first few years of taxes BEFORE paying-out any benefits (to make the initial years look affordable). Currently, the (non-partisan) CBO projects that our debt will be unsustainable by 2039; there is simply no path forward in which the US can afford Obamacare (and lots of other stuff).
Democrats are being dishonest about all of this, AND so are the so-called "establishment" Republicans. People like the Bushies are just as dishonest about the nation's finaces as Obama is.
Free market is exactly absence of government...
Sorry but that's the Fox news definition.
"Free" - as in anyone is free to participate in the market.
"Market" - A set of rules governing trade, normally created and enforced by governments, eg: property law.
In other words the all too common Fox definition of "free market" is actually an oxymoron.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I don't know about other states, but here in Ohio, Hillary is not popular. At all. Not where I live anyway. That doesn't mean people are thrilled about, say, Huckabee (he honestly believes he has a chance?), but the thought of Hillary is making people vomit. We're also sick of the big-government heavy tax crap, especially since our governor has been cutting taxes, paying off Ohio's debt, amassing a huge surplus, and making unemployment drop steadily.
It really does work. Kasich has been awesome.
So votes Ohio, so votes the nation, as they say. Granted, if she went up against, say, McCain (or god forbid, yet another Bush), she might stand a chance. Maybe. But I don't think it's going to go that way.
At least I hope not.
Dear god, I don't know if I could stomach another Bush/Clinton race. I think I might just kill myself. Nobody should have to live through that again.
Royal Bank of Canada is already incorporated in the US. As are most of the other companies you list, sans most of the Chinese ones (banks, telecoms, and oil companies are State-owned). It would be trivial for them to move their board membership/executives to the US as they are already incorporated in the US.
Alibaba and many of the private Chinese companies are actually based in tax havens like Hong Kong, Bermuda, or Cayman Islands for a reason - to reduce taxation. Most companies are not so loyal as you imply - the actual facts of their incorporation showing as much...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Riiiiight....
because US companies already pay too much in taxes.....http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/25/corporation-tax-rate_n_4855763.html
If the goal is to drive "multinational companies screwing over US taxpayers" completely out of the US, this is the perfect solution.
FTFY
How about stop wasting money and equipment on 'liberation' and 'wars' in countries that will never have any friendship or gratitude to the US? Coudl say many many trillions that would come in handy for work in the USA, dont you think?
If they were investing it then it wouldn't be profit and people would care less. They're sitting on massive cash reserves, which ties up the money needlessly. It's bad for the country, bad for the stockholders (since it isn't being invested or used for dividends) , and ultimately bad for the companies since they should be investing to grow. But since it looks good on a balance sheet and a lot of investors can't be bothered to look past a quarterly report a lot of companies with crappy executives and boards will keep doing it.
just came here to say ...
undergrad macroecon was several years ago. but one of the things i remember him lecturing on was, that companies don't pay tax.
sure you can levy a tax on them, but in the end it somehow just gets passed on to the consumer.
sure it sounds nice, using big numbers, lets hit up big corp.'s. but it will just raise the cost of goods, and make bigger businesses not want to do business here.
Why do you think companies become "multinational" to start with? And if you run multinationals completely out of the US, then you'll never get ANY tax out of them.
I find it really funny the same anti-business /. community who supports all the screw the business into the ground legislation complains about job loss. If you destroy the profit and equity of a company they cannot employ people, I realize that is a hard concept for techies who think everything should be free to understand.
Company A-USA makes $1b.
CompanyA-IRE charges companyA-USA $1b for services. CompanyA-IRE pays IRE low tax rate on their $1b. CompanyA-USA claims no profits.
CompanyA-USA siphoned a billion dollars of taxable profits outside of the company via legal trickery.
Mod up insightful && informative
Made ?
It's a transfer from a wing of a company in high tax state to a wing in a low tax nation state.
It's a way to claim money was made in the low tax company, while the business was done elsewhere
Smith and Wesson
But there is a reason for this, and it is the same reason that companies are not generally rushing to expatriate themselves: being an American country means that you have the benefits of the U.S. State Department behind you when it comes to international disagreements, and behind them the U.S. Military.
Besides, the other main reason that most companies stay is that if you look at the actual amount of taxes that companies pay in the U.S. It is one of the lowest in industrialized nations. The statutory rate is high, but one you combine VAT and all of the exemptions the U.S. Is a great place to be a business. If you ever hear anyone tell you differently then they are lying, probably to their own benefit (or ignorance).
These companies profit from being American, they should pay for that advantage. That is only fair.
It is unfair. I choose to live and work abroad and participate in a foreign economy. I receive few benefits of US citizenship and I cheerfully pay local taxes to my host country. Why should I have to pay any US taxes? Furthermore, I own a local (foreign) company that employs local people and has nothing whatsoever to do with the US. What business is that of the US government? We are not chattle. If a majority of Americans are willing to allow their government to fund military misadventures by using debt to steal from the next generation, they should pay for their folly, and let those of us who oppose take our business elsewhere. The same applies to corporations. The fact that US corporations are able to evade most taxation means that the way taxes are imposed is wrong-headed. The tax code has been deliberately broken by politicians representing vested interests for precisely the purpose of shifting the tax burden back onto working people. If you really want to make sure everyone, including corporations, are paying their fair share, then the government should fund itself through a tax on consumption (and not income, capital gains, or inheritance). The fact that a 50% VAT would be necessary to feed the tape-worm would wake the electorate up to how misguided government spending and taxation has become.
You mean the U.S. multinational companies that shipped U.S. manufacturing jobs around the world for cheap labor? Let them leave. American policies should reward multinationals that invest in American plants and workers. Not vice versa.
There are several possible answers to that. You can find some of them in Rothbard's "For a New Liberty".
That's a false dichotomy. Far from facing the choice between the imperfect government we have and "truly horrible dictatorships", in fact, our imperfect government is inching gradually closer to those "truly horrible dictatorships".
There are other ways. You do not need a big, powerful, centralized government to ensure property rights, freedom from violence, or economic growth. Quite the opposite: the government we have is a big impediment to all three objectives.
And in what sense are they "conceived and developed here in the US"? A large part of US R&D staff is immigrants to begin with.
Furthermore, if you think that this entitled the US to grab large amounts of taxes on foreign income, companies will do the economically rational thing and make sure that those inventions are "conceived and developed" elsewhere. Is that what you want? Discourage companies from doing R&D in the US?
FTFY. Government is the highway bandits.
People can easily privately pay for physical protection and it works; in fact, most companies already have to do that because police is utterly ineffective in protecting them. The main "highway bandits" people have to worry about these days is patent trolls, bogus lawsuits, and power-hungry regulators; far from being protected from those by government, government is the instrument by which those operate.
If a company was foolish enough to stuff money into a mattress, the money would effectively simply cease to exist; that is, the buying power of everybody else's money would simply adjust to make up for what they aren't spending.
What companies actually do when they don't invest money in the market (which is productive) is buy T-bills and similar instruments; they do that whenever the government promises them a higher rate of return on government debt than they think they can get from productive investment after taxes. That is, they finance government debt with it. And, of course, government debt is a highly unproductive investment vehicle because most government spending is wasted for unproductive purposes.
You want to encourage productive investments? Strongly reduce government spending (and reduce corporate taxes). Ironically, it's usually the same people who spew this bullshit about companies not making productive investments who favor the government policies that cause companies not to make productive investments in the first place!
Let's see if I've got this right:
GM builds a plant in China
They build a car in that plant
They sell that car to a Chinese customer
They turn a profit on the sale of that car... And keeps that profit in China.
Who do they owe taxes to, the Asian country they built and sold the car in, the U.S. Gov't, or both?
Now, different example:
BMW builds a plant in South Catolina
BMW builds a car in that plant in South Carolina
BMW sells that car to a customer in South Carolina
BMW makes a profit on the sale of that car... And keeps the profits in South Carolina.
Who do they owe taxes to? The U.S. Gov't, the German Gov,t, or both?
In the first example, this administration says both... In the second, it's the US only.
Ken
The real issue is that everyone wants services but no one wants to pay taxes for those services. Not the corporations. Not the rich. Not the middle class. The poor will always get screwed no matter what. We borrow and spend, hoping that the check never arrives.
Most of these tax avoidance schemes depend on the fact that corps pay tax only on excess profits. They don't pay tax on income, like, you know, *people* do. Notice that it's always unambiguous where revenue from, so a corporate *income* tax would be relatively loophole-free. Yeah, yeah, we'd have to drop the rates substantially, since corps pay such a low effective tax (relative to revenue) today.
Companies will spend their money more carefully than the government.
It is better to tell companies to spend the money on job creation in the country in which they made the money; everyone should benefit (not just the US).
Maybe ask the companies to invest in last mile internet, or robotic manufacturing, job training for the unemployed, paid internships for highschool students, y-combinator style VC for college students, etc.
You are talking to a guy who seriously believes that Gilded Age was the most awesome period in the history of the USA ever. Don't waste your breath.
How typically American. Rather than have a constructive debate, you respond like a child. This level of educationis why your empire is falling.
You'll note that my post said nothing about the renunciation fee not being worth it - I will gladly pay it to get rid of the toxic blue passport. However, the rest of my post very clearly explained why that's not yet possible.
Anyway, the point was not whether it's worth it to me, but whether it's a fair and just system. As with citizenship-based taxation and the so-called edit tax for the wealthy, I think it's clearly unjust.
I know, scary huh? That's how libertarians tend to think. Basically, "fuck you, I've got mine". Let's privatize everything, yadda yadda. We are rugged individuals, we can take care of ourselves, we don't need no steenking gubmint. If you can't hack it you're a loser and you deserve to die. I could go on but it gets boring and repetitive, so I'll stop here.
I agree this person needs to seek counseling.
Keep on chugging that koolaid. But there's no possible way Apple Australia earns $6 billion locally, with our local 20% corporate tax rate, yet somehow only pays $80.3 million in taxes.
It's bullshit, and everybody knows it. Except you, apparently.
Maybe a lobbyist?
What about the tax shifting and alike that occurs?
A company makes/purchases in Ireland say, light bulbs for 45c, which then sell them to their US parent company for $2.98, which then sells to the public for $2.99.
That's ripping the US of taxes it should otherwise deserve.
Corporations are people my friend - remember hearing from horses mouth?
So those special-people should be taxed for foreign income the same way people are taxed.
No chance of consideration. Unworthy of further attention.
Don't waste your time arguing with libertardians. When the entire human history is proof against their position, what do you think you can say that will change their minds?
Government shouldn't be protecting anybody in business for any reason, including 'intellectual property' nonsense.
Gasoline quality and whatever other quality, all of it is up to private brands to maintain and compete upon.
So brand A maintains good quality gasoline. Brand B simply sells under brand A - because there is no one to enforce the intellectual property - trademark of brand A. So how is brand A supposed to convince its buyers that this gasoline is of the quality that brand A is supposed to be known for?
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Actually essential liberty is not having your property and earnings stolen from you by any government.
Although I admit this is a subjective statement you just made, I still think it's complete bullshit. Not having your earnings taxed has never been an "essential liberty", and I am aware of no major society on this planet that doesn't tax.
... USA. It's trying to steal money that was earned from foreign operations from foreign customers.
Although I presume your'e trolling, you should realize from the article and all of the comments that all of us are actually considering the money that is actually made in America but not taxed (hidden by the double Irish scheme for example).
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
God bless you, sir.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Have you ever been to Southern Mexico? You'll see just how well the absence of a federal government, a functioning Mafia, and private cartels do for a society.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
An American company can make a profit in Norway using Danish workers and pay it out to a shareholder in Brazil, and yet pay US taxes. Also, you might think that corporate taxes are paid by shareholders, but mostly they come out of wages. This paper comes to a figure of 75% out of wages: http://www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/ideas-... . Why should Danish workers and Brazilian shareholders pay US taxes on work done in Norway?
Defining 'profit', never mind 'profit in country x', is difficult and this is easy to abuse. It's not progressive (it doesn't depend on the income of whoever pays it) and is one of the easier taxes to avoid.
A better system would be to use your income tax system to tax the dividends received by your residents and scrap corporate taxes. It removes a whole layer of bureaucracy, avoidance and international tax competition. With a very small number of exceptions, most people will not emigrate to avoid tax in the way that companies do. And it's fairer: labour income is far more heavily taxed than other kinds and there should be some equalization (it should, of course, be combined with equalization with taxes on interest, capital gains and so on).
Ever read the Diamond Age by (Neal Stephenson I think)? It has a very realistic proposal of a future in which the collapse of governments happens due to the inability for governments to collect taxes based on hypothetical Bitcoin technologies. In fact, in this realistic future, people still do continue to exist, and (some of them) do indeed have individual freedoms. The governments of said future are actually akin to collective corporations. The problem is that it's like Atlas Shrugged; it's fiction. In fact, we have proof of the reality of a lack of government: the first 100,000 years of humanity.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Well, the issue that so many Slashdotters are up in arms about is a very relevant issue to the tech industry in America. You say that there is no legitimate reason to tax, but what everyone is arguing is that the business IS done here, but accounting witchcraft makes it seem like it's not.
Now, there are plenty of legitimate arguments about certain topics such as the iPhone which is manufactured elsewhere, but the reality is is that there are a lot of American corporations who pay little to no taxes while making tons of money while benefiting from the American government. Many shades of gray? Yes. Feds wanting to tax something that they don't have a legitimate reason tax? Actually not so gray; there are legitimate problems with the tax system that the feds feel like they need to clamp down on.
Now, don't take what I say to be an approval for high taxes or in fact taxes at all; what I'm saying is that you are dismissing the argument of tax loopholes as invalid when in fact there are serious problems that could be solved and simplified for the greater benefit of both American corporations and the American society.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Oh why do you post anonymously? Great argument.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
Anarchists are mostly irrational leftists, who want to destroy what they don't understand (property rights for example).
How are property rights defended if not with taxes?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
boohoo.. most of the world is un-American, because we don't live there.
Pretty much. it is so stupid that both parties are doing this stuff. They should compromise instead of trying to dominate each other. It is deeply destructive to keep engaging in this behavior and that the dems especially don't acknowledge it is a threat to the republic itself.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
He's not going to veto a budget over this and if he does it will hurt him and his political party worse then the opposition.
This manic berserker invincibility that democrats seem to believe they enjoy is just a PCP delusion. You're flipping furniture over feeling great but you're falling apart. You are ripping yourself apart. You are ripping your tendons and breaking your own bones. You are killing your political coalition. And the longer you stay in denial on the issue the worse the damage is going to get.
Calm down. Wipe the foam off your lips. Be rational. Work within the limitations of your means. You do not have dictatorial powers. Stop pretending that you do.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Both parties are in bed with corporations. Pretending otherwise is ignorant. And in any case they're free to petition the government or express their opinions. To suggest otherwise would be a violation of basic civil rights.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Talking at congress before the media is not the same thing as talking with anyone.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Why a one time tax... I think a one time tax is just extortion... Make it permanent and then companies are paying their fare share.
so that companies are punished and lose more than they would if they did the right thing and repatriated profits and paid the normal tax rates on them.
The only ones who'd get punished are the American workforce.
And since the massive tax hit is the reason why they are keeping those funds overseas, what's to stop them from moving their corporate headquarters overseas to continue avoiding it?
It's not a tax. It's a money-grab. Plain and simple.
Obama's getting pretty brazen in his theft.
This isn't to stop those companies that are abusing the system on any level.
This is to give them a giant windfall for the YEARS they have been exploiting it, to let them come back and "start fresh" again with zero taxes and do it all over again. This is another tax amnesty for those who have exploited tax loopholes.
Will someone please force that goddamned nigger to go back to Kenya before he completely ruins our country?
Fata viam invenient.
There are bad taxes, extremely bad taxes and hideously evil taxes. The inflation tax is the most evil and pernicious of all because it is so subtle and the mechanism so complex that people either don't know it's happening or don't understand how/why it's happening.
The income tax is the extremely bad tax. We should repeal the personal and corporate income tax entirely. You tax tobacco to dissuade smoking. Do you tax income and profit to dissuade working and producing? Replace the personal and corporate income tax with the "fair tax". (fairtax.org).
The least-bad taxes are consumption and use taxes. Want to build infrastructure? Raise the damned gas tax already! Make the people who use the service pay for it.
Despite the conventional economic idiocy, you cannot build a sustainable economy based on consumption when the bulk of the goods you are consuming are imported. The dirty little secret of the U.S. economy is that all of this spending, starting around the mid 1980s, and most of the so-called "GDP Growth" has been nothing but a massive bubble of consumer and government debt. Want to see a scary chart? Plot annual increases in GDP vs. increases in total outstanding debt (government + business + consumer) for the last 30 years. Minus debt, there have only been a few quarters of genuine GDP growth. 2008 should have been a wakeup call. We hit the "debt saturation point" and the economy crashed. There is simply no way to continue the 30 year borrowing party.
this is why I keep saying it: Libertarianism (as expressed by most individuals) is simply ignorance of history, of human society, which will inevitably recreate the same society and government it seeks to replace.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Libertarianism: where we read books on the nature and history of man, law, and society, and simply ignore the parts we don't like, secure int he belief that those parts weren't important. Where we also believe that Democracy is illegitimate because people disagree with me, therefore the solution isn't rational discourse or persuasion....but anarchy.
Libertarianism: a past failed experiment that Bat S Crazy people keep thinking just has to work the next time around.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
When clever accountants figured out that they can just make up inter-company fees in order to make it look like the company is making money in Ireland when all their actual customers live in the US. Seriously, the title of this thread is "Double Irish" - look it up.
Actually Singapore healthcare is among the most highly regulated in the world.
you are confusing insurance and care.
the insurance is a 3 tier system, with varying levels of public or private sources.
but the care is extremely regulated, including strict price controls.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Then please feel free to stop driving on my roads, going to my schools, enjoying the safety granted by my food inspectors and military and police.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Foaming at the mouth ideology, disconnected from any actual facts or reality. The US has a much more private healthcare system than pretty much all of Europe. We ARE the private health care system you fetishize. And it's horrible. The cost/benefit ration is way out of whack.
Yet all those European state run national healthcare systems are both cheaper than the US system (spending as much as 40% LESS per person) while providing better care.
That is reality.
That is facts.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Um...by definition "overtaxing" means you took in more money than you needed, ie, a surplus, which is the opposite of a deficit.
A deficit means you spent more than you took in, which means you undertaxed.
You cant even get your basic terminology and concepts right, and you expect us to believe you have something intelligent to say?
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Almost all of the design and administration of Apple is done in California. But surprisingly the "Company" is a foreign company where they have no factories, no designers, no corporate officers and just a bank account.
So yes, by using the talent and ingenuity of US workers and then claiming that they're an Irish Company they are stealing the value that US Society has invested into its workforce (and supplied the infrastructure for that workforce to get to the job site etc).
Personally I believe that we should tax not based on where they are located but where most of the value is created. If you are Microsoft and 90% of your workforce is in Washington State but you are incorporate in "Nevada" because you have a PO Box there then you should be taxed at 90% Washington 8% California and 2% Nevada tax rates. Similarly if 80% of your operations are in the US then you are 80% a US company and 80% of your revenue is taxable under US tax law.
Everybody knows that Apple is a California company. To say otherwise is dishonesty. It might legally be correct that Apple is a subsidiary of an Irish shell corporation but they're cheating the system and doing something that doesn't pass any sort of sniff test of truthfulness.
Shouldn't overlook Ikea which is, after all, a not for profit company registered in the Netherlands.
http://www.economist.com/node/...
blindly antisocialist = antisocial
Seeing that companies like APple are currently paying approximately 25% in taxes and issuing debt on money overseas because they can't ge tto it, 14% sounds like a really nice deal
I don't disagree. If I had my way, we would be inching toward states' rights instead of away from it.
For instance, I'm a big supporter of the Article V amendment process; it circumvents Congress and they really can't do much about it. I feel that if a convention were to actually sit, the first and best amendment to be proposed would be regularly scheduled conventions for the purpose of providing a much-needed check on Washington.
We have the processes in place to help put us back on track, if only we would use them. Article V is a tough road, but lately it has been gaining momentum. We have options to break from our current path without armed revolution, and that's the point of democratic society.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
I don't know of any businesses that currently pay employees for the education that they already have. The education belongs to the employee and should be paid for by the employee in return. Now that they government has taken over the payment of it, people are getting masters degrees in acting or other worthless degrees that do not help people earn more.
Do you do the "right thing" and pay an abundance of taxes or do you look for all the deductions ALLOWED BY LAW?
This is the thing with Obama and the current leaches in the federal government. They keep making a thing about avoiding paying taxes but if any person did this in an illegal manner the IRS would be up their ass before they could blink. In other words, offshoring revenue is ALLOWED by law. Since its allowed by law it IS the right thing.
Ask yourself- do i take the standard deduction on my taxes when i am filing? You are avoiding taxes by doing this. Its also legal and the right thing to do.
Counterfeiting? Oh please, it's not counterfeiters that are printing trillions of dollars every year - it's the federal government! And what gives value to those dollars? Its the companies. Don't believe me? Ask yourself what would happen to the value of a dollar if every place you shopped at only took Euros or Yen? Dollars would only then be useful for taxes.
The communications system? Those phone line and electric lines that connect to your house are provided by private companies. The government is only involved in regulations, which are usually in place to enforce a monopoly for the companies that 'influence' the politicians.
As for the road systems and military, if your company is producing a product in China, shipping it to Chinese stores and selling it to Chinese citizens, then I think the roads, police and military protecting that is..... Chinese!
Regarding living expenses, it's not the government that is paying for people or companies living expenses, it's the other way around. Unless, of course, if your on government provided assistance. In which case the you are the one who's no "pulling your weight"
We don't need a corporate Berlin wall, we need to balance a toxic asymmetry: Jobs can be exported with very little economic friction while labor faces considerable friction when it attempts to follow those jobs.
If a country wants to export labor, export commodities or import jobs from the US market, they should balance this against labor imports, job exports and commodity imports. Taxes must provide just enough friction to correct any imbalance and compensate for the jobs sucked out of the US market. Is this unfair use of US hegemony? Maybe but US hegemony currently benefits only the 1% while the 99% suffer the resulting wars and economic ruin
While we're on the topic of hegemony, why do US corporations get a free ride at destroying our reputation overseas while ordinary American citizens who misbehave have their passports revoked? Since US corporations have the same legal rights and responsibilities as US citizens, corporations should be required to hold passports.
Corporations which do not behave responsibly should have their passports revoked and should not be allowed to operate overseas. Most of us can come up with examples of corporations which have committed acts of treason. These should not only have their passports revoked, they should face the possibility of execution.
We have seen what these types of tax polices do in France. People leave, change citizenship and the policy fails because you get almost nothing out of it.
For all the people championing higher taxes what will you do when these companies move out? Have you considered the unintended consequences? No one has any power to tell these companies they can't leave and the old empty threats of "we won't do business with them" won't work for the high numbers of people you think it will.
We should double the proposed off-shoring tax to 28%. The US dollar has risen more than 28% against the Euro so even with a 28% off-shoring tax, the cost of operating the Irish facade would be the same as it was in 2008.
This would also be the perfect time to impose a 50% tax on oil. This too would be easily absorbed as oil priced have dropped by more than 50% since 2008. A higher oil tax would keep domestic oil and alternative energy industries alive and it would provide Americans with a buffer against future OPEC price volatility. It would also weaken OPEN and give us more control over oil prices.
Business taxes should be based on where the economic activity occurs, not where the business is registered.
Precisely. Most of Apple's business does not occur in Ireland (or the Cayman Islands, or wherever).
If (say) 50% of Apple's profits are made in the US, they should pay tax on that 50% of total profit in the US.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
One wonders if Obama is so petty that he is working doubly hard to make sure Shrillary looses. It sure seems that way. I think she would make a horrible President. Obama lies really well, Hillary not so much...
Murphy was an optimist
Where, pray tell, do you think the money for this "free education, healthcare, roads, police, and judicial services" actually comes from?
Murphy was an optimist
So, when you buy a piece of iCrap, you want to pay more for it to help Apple pay their tax bill? Because it sure as shit isn't coming out of the CEO's pocket.
That's how it's retarded, retard.
As long as their checks to our politicians keep rolling in (and they will) then they won't loose anything
The tax issue is pretty complex and the idea that companies are 'hiding' profits or something is much more complex.
1. Most countries have a sales tax which captures the economic activity in their own country. I'm in Canada. For every IPhone sold, the government is going to get something like 10-15% of the sales price. Heck for a lot of low-margin business, the government gets more in sales tax than the company is going to make in profit for that sale
2. Most countries have taxes on wages. Apple employs thousands of people on its own dime. The government is then going to tax those people at anywhere from 20-50% depending on the country. To top it off, people employed by these companies don't get government assistance.
3. Money leaving the company to actual people in the form of capital gains, dividends... is also taxed again.
There is actually very little in the way of 'hiding' going on.
At every turn, the government gets to put it's hand in the jar so to speak. I'm not saying it is a bad thing,
But why is the corporate rate attractive to tax? I'd guess it is because the corporation is this abstract entity.
But its very interesting to see how different countries approach these things. The US has a number of really high profile companies and views that as things to be taxed to enrich America.
In say China, companies are backed by the state because they generate jobs and exports.
In Canada, we lack many such high profile companies and want to attract these companies, so we actually start lowering tax rates, giving incentives for companies to locate here, but fall short of actually backing them.
It's just interesting to see how things are viewed as either things to be taxed or things to be encouraged. Even something as simply as airports. In Canada, the government views airports as just another thing, so they have hefty leases and other things that airports have to pay. This results in airports, like Toronto Pearson having high fees that many people even choose to drive to Buffalo, NY, to take flights from there.
In the US, airports are viewed more as infrastructure, not revenue generators or to be revenue neutral; heck they're often subsidized.
It really is a matter of perspective. ....
But like all things, increase costs too much on anything relative to other countries, and people will find a way to avoid it.
Increase sales tax too much, and people will drive to the next country over with lower sales tax.
Make life hard for corporations... don't worry... you're corporations aren't that special in the world. Apple is nice, but it's not like Samsung isn't producing many phones.
Never mind that taxes at an 80 year low. When taxes were 90% after WW2, many corporations plowed that money back into the business to avoid giving it to Uncle Sam. With low inflation and low interest rates, many corporations are content to hoard cash and let it sit idle.
Speak for yourself.
I want services, and I'm willing to pay... for those services that I want.
I don't want to pay for stuff I have no use for. If you want to pay for those things, because you think you have a use for them, or because it warms the cockles of your heart to provide those things to other people, feel free to do so. But you don't have a right to make that decision for anyone else but yourself.
Now you can do that by having each person pay an "individually crafted" tax bill, but that's silly.
You can do that by moving everything into either subscription services (like a number of fire departments have done), or tolls (for using the roads).
I prefer the latter myself, but am open to the former if you can come up with a way to make it work.
Two Words: Early America.
Since the GOP wants to unbalance the budget anyway, to "shrink" government, and won't raise taxes for what the government is *supposed* to be doing, why not do it right, and make it a permanent tax. Certainly, we've needed massive infrastructure work since St. Ronnie - a report from engineers, back in the '80's, said half our bridges and dams needed work, and damn little's been done since - and this would help, as well as giving people steady, decent incomes (which helps both government revenue in taxes, and the rest of the economy).
But the unenlightened self-interested libertarians here will freak out....
mark
You're a hypocrite because you enjoy the benefits of society, but insist that you owe it nothing.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Personally I believe that we should tax not based on where they are located but where most of the value is created.
So...what, mainland China?
My mistake. You're a fantasist.
Well, so long as you keep paying your taxes, you're free to your own private absurd religious beliefs.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Ah, another freeman on the land nutter.
The Founding Fathers didn't write about speed limits or concrete sidewalks either. The Constitution's intent was to create a basic legal framework, not to envision every possible tax. Income taxes have long been ruled lawful, so pay them, hypocrite.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I agree completely. It is just the way things are. If you remove government, you get highway bandits. Eventually, the highway bandits compete with each other, until one wins. The dominant winner doesn't hide. He and his group conspicuously controls the highways, to keep all the other highway bandits out. They wear uniforms. They streamline their collection. They create euphamisms, like "tolls", and "North Texas Transportation Authority" for their operations. We ultimately accept them, because they are us... I could personalize it like this: The people got rid of the government. Then, when I was bringing my butternut squash that I grew on my land to market, someone set up a roadblock and took most of it, claiming they were collecting tolls (for whatever). I need to take my squash back, or steal someone else's food to survive. I find it is not so easy acting alone, so I get a posse together. We take all of our stuff back. But then some other groups try to take back the stuff we reposessed. You can see where this is going. As long as I fail to kill all the toll takers who cross my path, I am literally paying people to be highway bandits. I am the highway bandit. I am the government. Or alternatively, I am a true libertarian, killing all the toll takers (and police who come after me) who crazily believe they are doing their job and earning a living. Really, those dead people were just immoral highway bandits, trying to steal my goods at gunpoint. I am not the troll. They are (or were).
Join the IParty!
Seriously, at this point, Obama is one of the most business unfriendly presidents this country has seen. He can't get out of this office fast enough.
Not to mention all the banana republics set up by the US to help multinationals
Just lower the corporate tax rate to a value that makes it more financially advantageous to simply pay the tax than it is to out-maneuver the tax.
Do the same with all taxes.
Shrink the government to a size that can be paid for with these taxes.
For every percent of taxes not repatriated, we send one drone after their top execs and top shareholders, starting at the top and working down.
I give it about one week before they pay in full.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Ummmm.... no. Proof or it didn't happen.
The only thing good can find is his desire to lower the cost of repatriating money down to 15%, which is different
I am curious. What neo-cons/taa-bsgging group are u astroturfing for? Trash like you are always here hiding as AC, but always pushing the BS rather than anything substantial
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You clearly keep putting out more and more vinegar, because honey is too expensive...
He's proposing taking money *earned* in other countries for the benefit of the US economy. The US is not the only country getting foxed by the Irish solution. (for instance, Australia has the same problems with it)
He's a mac zealot- it's even in his name. He will refuse to believe it because it goes against his "beliefs" and will happily "not be argumentative" about it all damned night!
lgw, you are too damned old to be trying to use the hip slang the youngsters are using. Your spiderface is dumb and you should feel dumb for being dumb.
The error in your analysis is the assumption that there necessarily needs to be a single, centralized authority. That approach is characteristic of progressive, fascist, socialist, and communist states, mostly in the West, but it is hardly an essential part of government. Most societies historically have functioned perfectly well without it.
Yes: into a false dichotomy.
States rights are certainly a good thing, as is restoration of the interstate commerce clause to its original purpose (unimpeded trade between the states), as is subsidiarity even below the state level.
I really can't think of much that I would want to amend the Constitution by. As written, it gives only a small and reasonable number of enumerated powers to the federal government. The problem we are having is that the federal government is simply ignoring the limits set by the US Constitution; how is amending the Constitution going to fix that?
And why at all would you presume that I am 'trolling'? What, everybody who sees government as the ultimate oppressive evil force that only exists to destroy individual freedoms is a 'troll'? Interesting. It is essential liberty that has been denied generations of individuals not having their earnings stolen from them via taxes. There is such a thing as voluntary exchange, you are incapable of even slight understanding that is enough for a human society to work together, there is no need for coercive group violence, it is destructive and it starts at the very beginning, promoted by parents hitting their fucking kids.
You can't handle the truth.
No shit Sherlock. Why do you think I said they wouldn't vote for Obama, or any Democrat toeing his line?
Either you're a raving dammfool lunatic right wing nutjob, or you're just a raving dammfool lunatic nutjob. There's insufficient evidence to decide between them.
> hoard cash and let it sit idle
Does it make any sense to do that? Here's a theoretical question. Take a person who works hard to earn what it takes to live. Some savings for retirement and deferred spending make sense, but if that person has earned enough to live while not earning, why bother continuing to go to work (never mind those who would go nuts doing nothing)?
A person with dreams might save big time in order to some day be able to realize something bigger. But all these companies hoarding cash seem to have no outlet to try anything with their money. So it's time to ask, are there no more challenges? Or are the challenges so daunting that the risk-reward ratio is too much? Well, maybe it's just a timing issue after all, as there are plenty of ventures that show promise and companies get purchased all the time.
Nevertheless, the large cash hoards will prompt governments to prod these companies to do something. The US looks to be the one to start the pebble rolling down the hill. The companies have been put on notice to start spending.
Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
We Have Petitioned President Obama To Impose Tax On Corporate Revenues, Not Profits;
https://petitions.whitehouse.g...
Casteism
And why at all would you presume that I am 'trolling'?
he probably assumed that people smart enough to use slashdot would view atlas shrugged as a work of fiction. as you are instead harping it as a religious text or a how-to manual it would seem that you are likely out to lampoon the randians and paullowers. of-course, if he were to read your comment history he would know that you are not trolling but rather a dedicated disciple.
I pay for everything I enjoy and I like paying for things I enjoy, that's the only thing I need from society - to be able to buy things I enjoy. What I hate about the so called society is you, people like you, who want to use violence as a group against individuals, because people like you want to steal and use group violence to achieve it.
Is that clear enough for you?
You can't handle the truth.
Wrong, free market means market without external regulations that are not intrinsic emerging properties of the market itself and governments are an imposition, a violent group put together to interfere with the intrinsic emerging properties of the market.
Free market is market free from government rules, nothing else at all.
I do not watch USA television regardless of what you believe I do not watch Fox and regardless of what many here assume I didn't read Atlas Shrugged until literally a year ago out of curiosity and though I found it to be a beautiful work of philosophy and art, my views have formed over almost 3 decades prior based on my own understanding of the world we live in here.
So if you want to attack my views, attack my views, but do not assume things that I did not specifically mention or refer to.
You can't handle the truth.
In a market free from government intrusion people do make money (and we know they do, we have this happening today) by providing expert opinion and they stake their own brand name on it.
You can't handle the truth.
Then others provide inexpert opinion under the same brand , spoiling the brand.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Somehow I am quite certain that in the age of instant communications and the Internet this is not an insurmountable issue for free market participants.
On the other hand I have less than 0 trust in anything (anything) that comes out of government. Less than 0 specifically because I expect it to be propaganda based and to be against my self interest and against the interests of society at large and in the interests of some better connected entities who have monopoly access to government officials.
You can't handle the truth.
I really can't think of much that I would want to amend the Constitution by.
I can. If Congress passes some unpopular law, and the Supreme Court asserts that the law is constitutional, then the states can pass an amendment nullifying the law as well as future variants. There isn't a thing Congress can do about it since they don't have the authority to subvert this process, meaning there would finally be a viable check from the states on Washington.
And if the convention passes an amendment requiring a convention of the states every 2 years (or on whatever time table is deemed best), such laws will be reviewed by the convention on a regular basis.
Even if Congress attempts to subvert this process as you suggest, that would give the states more ammunition to take back to the people and demand that those currently in power at the federal level be removed from office.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
On the other hand I have less than 0 trust in anything (anything) that comes out of government.
unless, of-course, it is coming from your savior/politician or his son. then you see it as gospel.
"perfectly well". That literally made me laugh out loud. So perfect!!! Yes, if you zoom out far enough, and look at the world as a whole, the world society lacks a single centralized authority. And world society, historically speaking, functions "perfectly well" with instability, wars, famine, injustice, rape, murder, apathy, ignorance, environmental destruction, and all the rest. That is just what people do, on a macro scale, and a micro scale. They need these things to evolve! The error in *your* thinking is that there is or ever has been any central authority anywhere. There have always been competing authorities, and competing rules, and competing systems, with borders and limitations. And evolution. And evolutionary blind alleys. Mutation, cancer, and disease (because there is no central progressive, socialist, communist, facist authority for DNA reproduction, and life functions perfectly well without it). Beheadings. Warlords. Conquest. Palaces and dungeons. Yes, as you say, "Most societies historically have functioned perfectly well without it." The earth continues to spin, and life continues to evolve into ever greater forms. Nice to see someone else thinking perfectly well for a change. Throw away your labels and ideals, and let us stand on the bones of our ancestors and have a perfectly good laugh! Or should we try to kill each other to decide who is right and who's children will laugh over our bones?
Join the IParty!
Yeah, yeah, of-course you are attacking me, not my ideas but me personally. Attacking a person rather than his ideas, fine, that's the modus operandi with most incompetents as I already quoted Asimov. You think you can disguise a personal attack rather than an attack on an idea with your 'concern' for me, whatever.
You can't handle the truth.
Your certainty and personal trust have less than zero importance in a supposedly logical discussion. Did you mean it to be a blind faith based discussion from the start?
With internet, the problem of authentic information has increased, not decreased.
Bingo Dictionary - Pragmatist, n. A myopic idealist.
Did you mean it to be a blind faith based discussion from the start?
With roman_mir everything is a faith based discussion. More specifically, with roman every conversation comes down to you either subscribe to his faith or you are a violent infidel trying to violently use violence to violently take away his stuff with great violence. His world is that binary.
Taxes are at an 80 year low. No need to surrender the honey jar as well.
You are in wesley snipes territory man. He really believed cockeyed things too.
It's like people who torrent things who think they arent' doing anything illegal so they get reckless or that guy you read about who offers pot to a cop in a state where it's illegal because he's lost touch with the fact it is illegal.
anyway-- moving on from this thread. Best of luck.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
"But all these companies hoarding cash seem to have no outlet to try anything with their money."
It's surprising the shareholders aren't agitating for dividends - they can't be paid out until the company repatriates the cash and pays tax first.
What are they counterfeiting, exactly speaking?
If government military is an outdated idea, what's stopping you from living the way you want right now? Simply use whatever method you had in mind to deal with hostile foreign governments to free yourself from the US government.
Besides this, simply claiming something "shouldn't" be the domain of government is not a convincing argument. Why should roads, healthcare, communications, etc. have nothing to do with government? How would they be dealt with, and why would that be a superior way?
So, in your view, firefighters are not pulling their weight but mafia accountants are?
Again, assertions require backing to be convincing.
What do you mean by "real productivity"? Is there some kind of "false productivity" it contrasts with? How do you reconcile your claim with your own earlier assertion that "Roads, education, health care, communications, etc., none of it should have anything to do with government in the first place" which kinda implies that currently, government is doing all of these things?
Schools, hospitals, firefighters, police, roads, telecommunications... How do you propose paying for these without taxes? Sucks for you if your parents can't afford to send you to a private school?
I'm going to assume you meant "voluntary". So, how do you propose to ensure a group of thugs with guns doesn't move in as soon as the police move out? Because this far you're doing a pretty poor job of convincing even people actually willing to talk about the issue, which most groups of thugs with guns probably aren't.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'm sorry, but I don't see how your idea is even remotely workable. Subscription for fire services would lead to firemen standing around letting your house burn over an unpaid subscription (as it has already happened), and you would also be left open to blackmail from those who know who paid the subscription and who didn't. Also, if your neighbor is irresponsible and does not pay, and his house catches fire, your house might catch fire as well. The firemen will either wait until your house lights up and then get to work, so you still get some water damage, or extinguish the fire anyway in order to remove the danger for you and the rest of the neighborhood. Great, you and everybody else just paid to save the house of your lousy neighbor.
All roads becoming toll roads is also a terrible idea. This is a natural monopoly, because it is not viable to have at least two roads to every destination. Think the cable subscription is bad? You can at least give up cable. What if you can't get to work because the road toll has just increased a third time this year. Or if you are in an emergency and you can't afford to pay the toll for the road to the hospital. Toll highways have a place, because usually there is at least one other alternative and you can do a cost-benefit analysis before deciding if you will pay the toll or take the other route. But tolls on every road is just begging to be abused.
A la carte tax is not an option, because a lot of things would just not get paid for. For example the army - guess how many people would take exception to paying for that, and it is not a small percentage in your tax total. Even most of the vocal supporters would just take the opportunity to keep more money for themselves.
So yes, you and I and everybody must pay for a lot of things that we find absurd and completely unjustifiable, because the alternative to that is much worse.
Re: Fire Departments
What happens today in the scenario you describe (where the neighbor's house is on fire) is that the subscription fire department comes out and provides preventative protection to your building so that it doesn't catch on fire in the first place.
Re: Roads
If you don't like the tolls on the roads you have to drive to get to work, maybe you need to move somewhere else. I live in a part of teh country where it's not uncommon for someone to own a house at the end of four to five miles of road where theirs is the only house on the road, at the far end. Why should everyone else be paying for upkeep on that road, subsidizing their choice to live in the middle of nowhere?
Re: A la carte tax and the military
Are you kidding? It'd be a GOOD thing if our military was pared down due to lack of general support for it. Here's the thing about Americans: When there is a genuine need to step up and take action, we are willing - nay, proud - to do so. But that happens ever so rarely (WWI, WWII), compared to the multitude of times where we decide to be Team America World Police, mostly because someone has to justify the hundreds of billions of dollars that got spent on this weapon system or that carrier group. Let the people who want to protect Kuwaiti oil pay to do so. Let the people who want to oust Saddam do so. And if those people aren't able to raise enough money to do so, then it's a "vote with your pocketbook" way of demonstrating that there isn't enough popular support for those deployments in the first place.
The idea that I tried to convey is that preventative protection would still damage your property.
Also, the problem with roads is the fact that they are a monopoly, and as such the prices would become unreasonable, sooner or later, everywhere.
And the vote with your pocketbook does not really work also because people are naturally reluctant to give up any cash that they feel they don't absolutely have to, especially for something as remote as national defense. The might of the American army would become history in a flash, and like it or not a lot of what makes America great comes from the fact that it is the greatest military power in the entire history. The effects would not become visible only overseas, but back home and very nasty and very soon. Like any great enterprise, the army can not be simply wound down. The conservation costs alone for all the equipment are staggering. If you would cut the funding tomorrow in half, the entire thing would just implode.
Shouldn't the citizens pay for all of those things, since they're the ones benefiting? Corporations are made up of people, after all.
As someone in the middle class, I can tell you I do not get nearly the number of services I pay for.
Toll roads is absolutely a great idea. It does not need to be a privately owned road. With camera system based toll collection there is no need to have expensive toll plazas and you do not need to impede traffic to collect.
Government ownership of the road system is still a good idea but tolls should be used to collect maintenance revenue as it is the only way to accurately charge people for use and it balances with the need for maintenance.
I want services, and I'm willing to pay... for those services that I want.
I actually have a suggestion for this, but people tend not to like it.
I think that when you file your taxes, you should be able to fill out a form saying where the money goes. So you can pick whatever services you like and send money to them. This can be the fire department, roads, etc. If you fill out the form online, you can drill down to a relatively low level (e.g. replacing the stop sign at the end of your street with a traffic light). If there's not enough money for your pet project, then the money is invested in treasury bonds until there is enough money (or it passes the statutory period and goes to cancel the national debt).
So Mitt Romney can dedicate all his taxes to the military (because he thinks the military is underfunded). Barack Obama can send his money to international welfare (foreign aid). Hilary Clinton can give hers to domestic welfare. Tom Steyer can send his to the EPA.
This would reunite responsibility and ownership. I wouldn't be paying my taxes for stupid things that I don't like. I may pay them to something that you don't like, but who cares? You can pay your taxes to something that I don't like.
A side effect of this is that we'd balance the budget. Programs would only get money if they could get funding. And people could no longer complain about how idiot politicians spend our money. We could only complain about how other people spend their money, because we'd each be spending our own.
While I am philosophically opposed to taxation in general, yours is a proposal I could live with as an "interim" measure... once people are used to directly contributing in this fashion, it's a natural next step to simply removing the form and letting people buy/fund things directly.