Money is just not a unit of exchange, it is a store of value, so there is something in the exchange from pesos to US dollars.
Now, currency can't leave the country – but money is a bigger then then currency.
Argentinians may prefer to exchange their goods and invest abroad where returns are higher. (high taxes, inflation, and regulation decreases returns.) Now, yes, those funds have to eventually be returned (unless the person emigrates) but that could be decades from now.
Google works in dollars, developer's in pesos. Unless Google's local operations are in balance, at some point somebody has to do a conversion.
Kirchner want's it done at the official rate, which is favorable to the government, (They have lots of bills from abroad, and want to force the locals to sell dollars cheaply to them.)
That would just shift the burden of conversion from Google to the local developers, so that is not really the answer. The point of this is to artificial restrict the transfer for foreign funds into / out of the contry so the government can get a favorable FX rate to pay off it's bills.
Yes, but it implies a very high rate of inflation. And it matters if you are trying to import anything – like toilet paper, where there has been a recent run.
At lot of those places don't have the government structure, or regulations, of developed countries. o.k. But they do tend to regulate big centralized things that make money – like telecoms. i.e. it is hard to tax and regulate small farms and firms that work informally and on the barter system. It is easy to regulate a big outside firm with lots of fixed assets that does not use barter. (I am assuming cash payments for access, not just ad reveneu.)
They might not be asking the right types of questions (i.e. privacy issues) but there will be regulations.
Yes it would. The test measures the ability to process inputs. If you have faulty inputs, no amount of processing will overcome.
So this would be a poor test for somebody who is blind. That being said, any IQ test that requires you to read plain text (i.e. not braille) would fail for blind people. However, there are other tests that do work for the blind.
However, it would work for somebody who has myopia (if corrected with glasses). It may affect somebody with floaters depending on the (I have not heard anybody who has floaters who can't read due to them, but I don't know for sure.)
Think about the typical user – then subtract 20 points of IQ. It is always somebody's first day.
Think about the the worst case scenario – what is it and what is the overall effect.
I have found a good method is to have a “user” mode and a “admin” mode when the stakes are modest to high. Everybody uses the user mode which, in your case, would keep the car on the ground. If somebody needs to take off they can enter admin mode – but it is clearly in admin mode. And add lots of soft stops – power users always think more then they actually do.
My response was that early repayment is illegal – and it's not. Neither on personal loans (where it is rare because of regulations) nor on corporate bonds – where it is very, very common. (I would be hard pressed to find a bond that did not have a penalty for early repayment.)
And while Tesla's bond is a corporate bond – it's not really. I have said elsewhere that I would doubt if there was a early repayment clause.
Even without a penalty the US Treasury will make money. They get the principal back – just less interest.
Most corp bonds issued that have a call feature in them (i.e. a early repay feature) has a penalty. Normally 1 to 2 percent in the early life of the loan, but steadily decreasing.
Here is an example. A company issues a 10 year bond at 10%. 3 years latter the interest rate is 5%. They call back the high interest rate bonds and issue new ones at 5%. This is bad for the bond holder because instead of having a 10% bond they now have cash. If they went ahead and replaced it they would only get 5%. In order to stop that, the company usually has to call the bond at 102. - that is for every $100 they need to pay $102.
I doubt the US Treasury would have put a penalty for an early call – but I am just guessing.
I agree that it is a nice sentiment, but English tends to be a modifier-first, head-final order nomenclature. Think Songbird vs. Birdsong. It’s longer, it has more words – you are going against the nature grain of language.
D-Wave is selling this as a commercial product, and as a commercial product it seems lacking. Now, if we are talking about increasing fund on R&D – that would be a different story.
Here is a link to a good article.
There were 3 tests with D-Wave going against a generic algorithm.
It tied on 2 or the 3 tests, but beat the generic algorithm running 3,600 times faster.
However, if it went against a specialized algorithm it was just as fast.
No, its stupid - not me. IIRC, this is what happened in the 1970s
Ford would earn $100 of profit from its British subsidiary.
Britain uses a source definition of income for tax and had a 70% corporate tax rate, so Ford had to pay Britain $70 in taxes.
America uses a domicile definition of income and had a 40% tax rate. Since the British subsidiary was American owned, America claimed 40% of the $100, or $40.
Or $110 in taxes for every $100 in profits. Which takes us back to standards and compatibility. The answer would have been for America to move to a source definition – like the rest of the world. Instead we put in place a lot of kludges. When tax lawyers figured out how to exploit those kludges, patches where piled on top – but the rotten core is still at the bottom.
Hmmm, I recall paying taxes when I receive dividend checks or sell stock back to the company.
Yep, that is called double taxation. Corporate taxes are paid when profits are earned, and you pay personal taxes when you receive that profit (either directly though dividends or indirectly by selling the shares at a higher price.) People have debated if this is fair or not. I am for low, simple corporate taxes.
As an investor, that's a great conversation to have with the board.
And sadly the board is not having that conversation with the shareholders. Now I don’t own any Apple stock directly – only though index mutual funds. But I still expect decent behavior from ALL public companies. (Actually, Apple is not that bad – but this is a glaring point of non-performance on their part.)
I have heard Neil Gaiman do voice acting work – audio play adaptation of a Gene Wolf story – (I am not counting his readings of his own audio books.) He was good. He does have a great voice.
They have it in short term corp bonds and US Treasuries. Corp bonds is basically what a bank does. Do I want Apple to go into banking? US Treasuries – well that’s money to the government – not what I would consider investing.
My understanding was there are limits to how much earnings a company can retain.
Nope, there are no legal limits.
By holding cash and not paying dividends or doing stock buybacks, they're essentially deferring taxes forever.
Taxes are paid on earnings – i..e. when the profit is made. Not when that profit is distributed – i.e. dividends and buybacks.
One could argue that the retained earnings are reflected in the stock price
This is true.
I'm effectively paying more capital gains tax
Yes, but you would be paying lower taxes. Cap Gains taxed are lower than personal income – which is rate of dividends – if you ignore the QDI / DRD rules.
But you can get the same lower tax rate with a stock buyback.
Which leads to the question – why am I investing in Apple? It’s not because they are earning the rate of inflation on their cash pile. If I wanted that I could open a bank account. That cash should either be put to work doing something that will earn more than bank account or be returned (less any money need for a rainy day or such – but Apple has not explained why it needs so much rainy day money.).
You are missing a very important bit about US taxes in this case, one that invalidates your whole concept and semi-anticdote: as the laws work you only pay the higher of the two systems in total.
Maybe – if you are lucky. Depends on the tax code in the foreign country and what kind of tax treaty (if any) they have signed with the US. Generally you only get a tax credit which reduces but does eliminate the double taxation. FYI, corporate taxes and individual taxes are different under most tax jurisdictions. See IRS Pub 901 for more details.
but that is not anything like the "$110 for every $100 in profit" that you talked about.
The tax credit is one of the kludges in the tax code to fix the above issue. If you noticed I did use the past tense – last time this was true was back in the 70s.
But the bigger concept here is that these multinationals rely on the services that the US provides both explictly and implictly.
My argument is not anti-tax, it is about equitable treatment. Assume you have a company incorporated in Europe and has a subsidiary in America – that company would pay taxes on local profits. Now flip the scenario, a American company with a subsidiary in Europe. With a Tax Credit the US company would pay more taxes then the European company. (1-FT)*(1-TUS), where FT is the foreign tax rate and TUS is the American tax rate. Now, there are loopholes, kludges, etc, to get around even that, but still – why encourage complexity in the tax code? Why gimp Americans when they work aboard? I mean, yes, it is the reason why I have a job now – but I am sure if that complexity went away I could find something different to do – something more useful to society.
No, they play games like this. (Like the “Double Dutch Sandwich”). But it would close a whole class of loopholes and make our tax system more rational.
By “Cash Hording” the OP was not saying (at least I hope) that corporations were strangling America by vacuuming up all of the loose change. America has rock bottom interest rates and companies find it easy to hawk bonds to raise money – even junk bonds. So don’t worry about the Fed.
No, the issue is that big corporations are making large profits and are doing nothing with it. No reinvestment, no dividends, no capital investment – it just sitting in a bank account (well, short term high quality bonds) which, if lucky, might be beating inflation. If I am a shareholder – that is an owner – I can think of better things to do with it then sit in a bank account.
Now yes, corporations need to keep some cash on hand. However, the trend line for the past 5 years is just going up and up – and way above historical levels.
Apple is a really bad case. They are sitting on a huge pile of cash and can’t explain what they need it for. They don’t have large capital expenses such as buying a foundry. They don’t buy out other large companies, preferring to grow organically. (Small companies don’t count – their like a single potato chip to Apple – easily swallowed without having an real effect. )
Yes, there are real reasons for this. It a standards and compatibility issue.
Most of the world works on a country of source for corporate tax. You make a profit in country Y, you pay Y’s taxes. Now, when you are doing business in X and Y it can be hard to determine how to split the profit – and thus the taxes – between X or Y. It is subjective even under the best conditions. But there is still a compatibility issue between different countries tax codes which smart tax lawyers can figure out how to exploit.
The US works on a country of domical approach. If you make a profit in Y, you will pay US taxes. IIRC, back in the 70s when corporate taxes were high in both Europe and America, companies could be taxed $110 for every $100 in profit – because both America and the European country was demanding full taxes paid. The US could have fixed this by moving the world standard. But that would have been rational – like going to metric. So instead we put in a lot of dodgy loopholes and tax credits so it would not look like we were giving big corps a tax break.
The answer is that America should move to the world standard of taxation by source.
More than you may think – but it depends on the person.
These is less at stake when you take a MOOC. The cost is free to low. Is a subject foreign or difficult? So what if it takes you 2 or 3 passes to nail it. Is the subject not as interesting as you though? Turns out you lack the prerequisite skills? Teaching style is a poor fit? Who cares – drop it. It’s not like a failed grades or student loans will haunt you.
For myself it allows me to dip my toes into a subject at a low cost. Then I can go hog wild.
Slashdot Mirror
Money is just not a unit of exchange, it is a store of value, so there is something in the exchange from pesos to US dollars.
Now, currency can't leave the country – but money is a bigger then then currency.
Argentinians may prefer to exchange their goods and invest abroad where returns are higher. (high taxes, inflation, and regulation decreases returns.) Now, yes, those funds have to eventually be returned (unless the person emigrates) but that could be decades from now.
Google works in dollars, developer's in pesos. Unless Google's local operations are in balance, at some point somebody has to do a conversion.
Kirchner want's it done at the official rate, which is favorable to the government, (They have lots of bills from abroad, and want to force the locals to sell dollars cheaply to them.)
That would just shift the burden of conversion from Google to the local developers, so that is not really the answer. The point of this is to artificial restrict the transfer for foreign funds into / out of the contry so the government can get a favorable FX rate to pay off it's bills.
Yes, but it implies a very high rate of inflation. And it matters if you are trying to import anything – like toilet paper, where there has been a recent run.
I am not sure if I follow or agree.
At lot of those places don't have the government structure, or regulations, of developed countries. o.k. But they do tend to regulate big centralized things that make money – like telecoms. i.e. it is hard to tax and regulate small farms and firms that work informally and on the barter system. It is easy to regulate a big outside firm with lots of fixed assets that does not use barter. (I am assuming cash payments for access, not just ad reveneu.)
They might not be asking the right types of questions (i.e. privacy issues) but there will be regulations.
Yes it would. The test measures the ability to process inputs. If you have faulty inputs, no amount of processing will overcome.
So this would be a poor test for somebody who is blind. That being said, any IQ test that requires you to read plain text (i.e. not braille) would fail for blind people. However, there are other tests that do work for the blind.
However, it would work for somebody who has myopia (if corrected with glasses). It may affect somebody with floaters depending on the (I have not heard anybody who has floaters who can't read due to them, but I don't know for sure.)
Mod parrent up.
Think about the typical user – then subtract 20 points of IQ. It is always somebody's first day.
Think about the the worst case scenario – what is it and what is the overall effect.
I have found a good method is to have a “user” mode and a “admin” mode when the stakes are modest to high. Everybody uses the user mode which, in your case, would keep the car on the ground. If somebody needs to take off they can enter admin mode – but it is clearly in admin mode. And add lots of soft stops – power users always think more then they actually do.
My response was that early repayment is illegal – and it's not. Neither on personal loans (where it is rare because of regulations) nor on corporate bonds – where it is very, very common. (I would be hard pressed to find a bond that did not have a penalty for early repayment.)
And while Tesla's bond is a corporate bond – it's not really. I have said elsewhere that I would doubt if there was a early repayment clause.
For personal loans this is true - not so much as illegal as a lot of regulation to discourage it. Most bonds have penalties for early repayment.
Hey - we don't know if he is a guy. Her could be a girl. Or a dog. Or a AI. Who knows?
Even without a penalty the US Treasury will make money. They get the principal back – just less interest.
Most corp bonds issued that have a call feature in them (i.e. a early repay feature) has a penalty. Normally 1 to 2 percent in the early life of the loan, but steadily decreasing.
Here is an example. A company issues a 10 year bond at 10%. 3 years latter the interest rate is 5%. They call back the high interest rate bonds and issue new ones at 5%. This is bad for the bond holder because instead of having a 10% bond they now have cash. If they went ahead and replaced it they would only get 5%. In order to stop that, the company usually has to call the bond at 102. - that is for every $100 they need to pay $102.
I doubt the US Treasury would have put a penalty for an early call – but I am just guessing.
I agree that it is a nice sentiment, but English tends to be a modifier-first, head-final order nomenclature. Think Songbird vs. Birdsong. It’s longer, it has more words – you are going against the nature grain of language.
D-Wave is selling this as a commercial product, and as a commercial product it seems lacking. Now, if we are talking about increasing fund on R&D – that would be a different story.
Here is a link to a good article.
There were 3 tests with D-Wave going against a generic algorithm.
It tied on 2 or the 3 tests, but beat the generic algorithm running 3,600 times faster.
However, if it went against a specialized algorithm it was just as fast.
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21578027-first-real-world-contests-between-quantum-computers-and-standard-ones-faster
There are 2 countries that do it like this - America and Eritrea. So, no, not most. Everybody else uses the source definition.
No, its stupid - not me. IIRC, this is what happened in the 1970s
Ford would earn $100 of profit from its British subsidiary.
Britain uses a source definition of income for tax and had a 70% corporate tax rate, so Ford had to pay Britain $70 in taxes.
America uses a domicile definition of income and had a 40% tax rate. Since the British subsidiary was American owned, America claimed 40% of the $100, or $40.
Or $110 in taxes for every $100 in profits. Which takes us back to standards and compatibility. The answer would have been for America to move to a source definition – like the rest of the world. Instead we put in place a lot of kludges. When tax lawyers figured out how to exploit those kludges, patches where piled on top – but the rotten core is still at the bottom.
Hmmm, I recall paying taxes when I receive dividend checks or sell stock back to the company.
Yep, that is called double taxation. Corporate taxes are paid when profits are earned, and you pay personal taxes when you receive that profit (either directly though dividends or indirectly by selling the shares at a higher price.) People have debated if this is fair or not. I am for low, simple corporate taxes.
As an investor, that's a great conversation to have with the board.
And sadly the board is not having that conversation with the shareholders. Now I don’t own any Apple stock directly – only though index mutual funds. But I still expect decent behavior from ALL public companies. (Actually, Apple is not that bad – but this is a glaring point of non-performance on their part.)
I have heard Neil Gaiman do voice acting work – audio play adaptation of a Gene Wolf story – (I am not counting his readings of his own audio books.) He was good. He does have a great voice.
but if Apple is has cash in the bank
They have it in short term corp bonds and US Treasuries. Corp bonds is basically what a bank does. Do I want Apple to go into banking? US Treasuries – well that’s money to the government – not what I would consider investing.
My understanding was there are limits to how much earnings a company can retain.
Nope, there are no legal limits.
By holding cash and not paying dividends or doing stock buybacks, they're essentially deferring taxes forever.
Taxes are paid on earnings – i..e. when the profit is made. Not when that profit is distributed – i.e. dividends and buybacks.
One could argue that the retained earnings are reflected in the stock price
This is true.
I'm effectively paying more capital gains tax
Yes, but you would be paying lower taxes. Cap Gains taxed are lower than personal income – which is rate of dividends – if you ignore the QDI / DRD rules.
But you can get the same lower tax rate with a stock buyback.
Which leads to the question – why am I investing in Apple? It’s not because they are earning the rate of inflation on their cash pile. If I wanted that I could open a bank account. That cash should either be put to work doing something that will earn more than bank account or be returned (less any money need for a rainy day or such – but Apple has not explained why it needs so much rainy day money.).
You are missing a very important bit about US taxes in this case, one that invalidates your whole concept and semi-anticdote: as the laws work you only pay the higher of the two systems in total.
Maybe – if you are lucky. Depends on the tax code in the foreign country and what kind of tax treaty (if any) they have signed with the US. Generally you only get a tax credit which reduces but does eliminate the double taxation. FYI, corporate taxes and individual taxes are different under most tax jurisdictions. See IRS Pub 901 for more details.
but that is not anything like the "$110 for every $100 in profit" that you talked about.
The tax credit is one of the kludges in the tax code to fix the above issue. If you noticed I did use the past tense – last time this was true was back in the 70s.
But the bigger concept here is that these multinationals rely on the services that the US provides both explictly and implictly.
My argument is not anti-tax, it is about equitable treatment. Assume you have a company incorporated in Europe and has a subsidiary in America – that company would pay taxes on local profits. Now flip the scenario, a American company with a subsidiary in Europe. With a Tax Credit the US company would pay more taxes then the European company. (1-FT)*(1-TUS), where FT is the foreign tax rate and TUS is the American tax rate. Now, there are loopholes, kludges, etc, to get around even that, but still – why encourage complexity in the tax code? Why gimp Americans when they work aboard? I mean, yes, it is the reason why I have a job now – but I am sure if that complexity went away I could find something different to do – something more useful to society.
Printing metal parts has been around for a long time. Titanium metal hip replacements come to mind. There are other limitations.
No, they play games like this. (Like the “Double Dutch Sandwich”). But it would close a whole class of loopholes and make our tax system more rational.
By “Cash Hording” the OP was not saying (at least I hope) that corporations were strangling America by vacuuming up all of the loose change. America has rock bottom interest rates and companies find it easy to hawk bonds to raise money – even junk bonds. So don’t worry about the Fed.
No, the issue is that big corporations are making large profits and are doing nothing with it. No reinvestment, no dividends, no capital investment – it just sitting in a bank account (well, short term high quality bonds) which, if lucky, might be beating inflation. If I am a shareholder – that is an owner – I can think of better things to do with it then sit in a bank account.
Now yes, corporations need to keep some cash on hand. However, the trend line for the past 5 years is just going up and up – and way above historical levels.
Apple is a really bad case. They are sitting on a huge pile of cash and can’t explain what they need it for. They don’t have large capital expenses such as buying a foundry. They don’t buy out other large companies, preferring to grow organically. (Small companies don’t count – their like a single potato chip to Apple – easily swallowed without having an real effect. )
Yes, there are real reasons for this. It a standards and compatibility issue.
Most of the world works on a country of source for corporate tax. You make a profit in country Y, you pay Y’s taxes. Now, when you are doing business in X and Y it can be hard to determine how to split the profit – and thus the taxes – between X or Y. It is subjective even under the best conditions. But there is still a compatibility issue between different countries tax codes which smart tax lawyers can figure out how to exploit.
The US works on a country of domical approach. If you make a profit in Y, you will pay US taxes. IIRC, back in the 70s when corporate taxes were high in both Europe and America, companies could be taxed $110 for every $100 in profit – because both America and the European country was demanding full taxes paid.
The US could have fixed this by moving the world standard. But that would have been rational – like going to metric. So instead we put in a lot of dodgy loopholes and tax credits so it would not look like we were giving big corps a tax break.
The answer is that America should move to the world standard of taxation by source.
Mod parent up.
More than you may think – but it depends on the person.
These is less at stake when you take a MOOC. The cost is free to low. Is a subject foreign or difficult? So what if it takes you 2 or 3 passes to nail it. Is the subject not as interesting as you though? Turns out you lack the prerequisite skills? Teaching style is a poor fit? Who cares – drop it. It’s not like a failed grades or student loans will haunt you.
For myself it allows me to dip my toes into a subject at a low cost. Then I can go hog wild.