this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2024
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i'd be ok if we move income tax onto the corpo side of things.
Would mean that it's the companies responsibility to pay that tax, and no longer forces the IRS to go after joe shmoe, who fudged his finger on a 0 while it was still wet.
Or we could also just remove individual taxes, and tax corpos, that's where all money is anyway.
A company doesn't have a full understanding of your income. Sure, they probably pay most of it, but if you have a side job or investments or something else, they'd have no visibility into that.
Corporations are people my friend, and they should be taxed as such. They should also get the death penalty for criminal acts.
The issue is that we tax labor. Creating a company is a choice. People who survive off trading their labor have no choice. They have to perform labor. Taxing survival is inherently flawed.
You only need a profitable side hustle because you're being underpaid and stuck in the capitalists' system. This side hustle is already taxed like a company, it would be on you to structure it so you are a laborer of the company while also covering the company tax.
Investments aren't labor so they can be tax as they are now.
The main problem is that you can't imagine a system that doesn't have a personal income tax. I don't have the time or patience to go through their history of this so I'll leave that as homework.
This is why I support high sales taxes with exemptions for necesities instead of income tax on wages. Carve out exemptions so that it isn't a regressive tax but 500% tax on yachts, high taxes on alcohol and entertainment with higher percentages for more expensive forms of all luxuries. Tax capital gains at a higher percentage too and make firms automatically withold said tax upon asset sale.
The problem with sales taxes is they are always regressive. Carve outs don't help because the rich will just add loopholes.
The rich always propose this as a flat tax because they understand how they benefit from it.
One possibility might be to a progressive sales tax tied to inflation. For example 0% for the first $100, 5% up to $1000...by the time you get to yacht prices the tax would be 50% -- it's all important that corporations pay this same tax so they don't loop hole their way through having an LLC that owns the yacht and they simply "rent it" from themselves.
The big issue is how corporations are able to deduct the cost of business. If I could do this as a laborer, I would be able to deduct rent, food, vehicles, etc as the cost of supporting the physical entity that performs the labor.
But obviously that's not how any of this is structured because the human body is not a depreciating asset.. Even though it clearly depreciates with time and use.
You can have non linear sales tax.
I think they're saying to tax the profits of companies instead of individual income tax.
the company, the one that literally pays me my money, doesn't understand my income? I mean sure, maybe i work at multiple companies, and receive multiple paychecks. But like, let's be honest here.
who cares, 90% of what is moving through the economy is corpo money anyway.
Yes, this is the system we're in by design. The idea is that the private sector can get cheap loans and other handouts (government contracts, private-public partnerships, etc) for organizing the economy and will pass some of that money onto us commoners in the form of wages. It was designed like this because the politicians and their donors believe that it is more productive to organize the economy this way.
yeah, i'm not debating the functionality of the current economic system though. It's definitely up for grabs i suppose.
Mostly just pointing out that even in our current economy we don't really have a good excuse for most of this shit.
Or maybe the world is just a little bit more complicated than "who cares"? Bunch of fucking children in here. Simple solutions generally don't solve complex problems.
simple solutions don't solve complex problems, and complex solutions solve complex problems. But complex solutions are generally pretty shitty solutions.
You should strive to have a simple problem, and then find a simple solution. Otherwise you get BMW cars.
The problem is what it is. Redefining the problem so it's simple is not a solution to the fucking problem.
"You should strive to have a simple problem". Fuckin hell kind of MBA babble is that. Yeah maybe in business where you can make money by inventing "problems" and then inventing solutions to them, but not when it comes to real-life social issues.
The problem exists. It is complex. We need to fix it.
a simple solution is a solution to the problem, it's redefining the problem in such a manner, to make the solution possible. It's called compromise. A thing that exists in either one of these situations. In complex solutions you compromise by making a shitty solution mostly cover a shitty problem, in a simple solution you make it comprehensively cover the problem, and in a simple manner, but it doesn't cover the whole problem, because the problem is simple.
The problem here is that tax is overwhelmingly complex, we just need to forcibly simplify it in a manner that makes it more functional, and more apt, while not losing too much control. It's absolutely possible. It's just scope control.
That's called a complex solution
well no, see that's where you're mistaken. Tax is currently overwhelming complex BECAUSE of the tax law.
Simple tax law makes taxes simpler, complex tax law makes tax more complex. Much like a simple solution solves a simple problem, and a complex solution solves a complex problem.
You can generally force a simple solution on a complex problem by simply altering what the problem is. You might argue that tax is inherently complex due to the fact that it's applied both to individuals and corporations/companies, however i would argue that it should only apply to one of those, making it vastly simpler, because it only has to focus on the one group. Repeat ad nauseam and boom simple tax law.
You think tax was just as complicated back in the days of pre industrialization? It sure as hell wasn't.
You can't tax companies.
Where do you think business and property taxes come from?
From your pocket. Are you really that naive?
yeah which is exactly why i dont want to fucking pay tax myself. Just let the fucking corpo that pays me do it instead.
But it still comes out of your pocket.
yeah, that's fine. I don't care, i even advocated from removing individual taxes altogether but i dont think you read that part.
As long as i'm not filing them, and the IRS cant sue my ass, i'm fine and i don't care.
The optimal clearing price for a good or service doesn't map to the tax rate. That's why schemes like a gas tax cut and cuts to real estate rates don't reduce the price of energy or rent. Also why voucher programs and other tax rebates tend to pair with inflationary prices.
Businesses just pocket the gains in the same way they're forced to eat the losses when taxes rise.
Well, I don't know how it works in US, but tax cuts do result in lower prices here in UK. For example, we have 0% VAT on groceries and they tend to be cheaper than elsewhere in Europe.
And no sane business will eat losses, that's how you run out of business. So every tax penny always comes from your pocket. Always.
The rest of Europe has some strict protectionist policies on food imports to prop up their own agricultural economies. UK is a net importer, so it gets to buy out of both the US and EU agriculture surplus.
Fly over to the US (which doesn't have a sales tax on groceries) and compare prices to Mexico (which also doesn't have a sales tax on groceries). You'll consistently find US prices to be higher because (a) vendors know Americans have more money so they can be charged higher prices and (b) the US is a net-agg exporter and regularly dumps its surplus into Mexican agg markets. This has destroyed the Mexican agg sector and produced a bunch of north-bound migration as a result. But it also makes food rates in Mexico cheaper, as you can bid between local output (produced at lower-than-US wage rates) and surplus foreign imports (sold at dumping rates, because there's too much of it).
Businesses routinely eat losses. Some businesses have literally never turned a profit - Lyft, AirBnB, and Reddit have never shown a profit. Amazon famously took 20 years to show a profit, with Tesla and Spotify coming in close behind.
But even after becoming profitable, firms will periodically gain or lose profit margin relative to the prevailing market. A company with a 10% profit margin in Year 1 that sees the marginal rate fall to 8% in Year 2 can't necessarily raise prices to increase profits, because increasing prices will cut into sales volume.
Companies that rely on large pools of customers and lengthy supply chains can and will periodically operate at a loss on the fringes of their business, if they see those fringes as loss-leaders with the potential for growth in future years. Walmart pioneered this strategy back in the 1980s, building unprofitable storefronts in growing neighborhoods under the theory that stacking a claim early on was easier than acquiring property after a development had been completed and filled in.
Just the opposite. All tax revenue must ultimately come from business revenues, as businesses fund the salaries of the state's labor force. In a state like Alaska or a country like Saudi Arabia, residents get a negative tax based on the gross exports of the local business interests in a given year.
In states like California and New York, the tax base is entirely predicated on the high incomes of locals. And those high incomes are predicated on tech and finance companies paying out enormous salaries. These are functionally taxes paid by the business to employ high-demand staffers, who predominantly live in these states.
States invest in infrastructure to attract workers (most commonly public utilities, police/fire/EMS, and schools). Skilled workers become a magnet for businesses. And businesses pay taxes - both directly to the state and indirectly through taxation on salaries.
Get rid of the infrastructure and public services (as Kansas tried to do a few years back) and you lose the workers. You lose the workers and you lose the businesses. You lose the business and you lose the tax base.
Because, in the end, all tax revenue comes from business activity. If you have a bunch of consumers who do nothing but eat, your state has no real revenue stream.
Britain was part of EU just recently and still has the same policies for the most part. And being a net importer it means that prices should be higher. And they actually did increase after Brexit.
There's no point comparing two countries so far apart in economical development. The prices in Mexico are lower because Mexican labour is much cheaper. You should compare US to similar countries like Canada or European counterparts.
You misunderstand their business model. You are not a consumer of their product, you ARE the product. And their business model is not to turn profit on intercations with you, but to milk venture capital. The side effect is that their actual profit is not treated as profit from tax perspective, so they have free money essentially.
A successful management will think in decades, not years. Just like a good investor. There are good years and there are bad years, but the balance sheet must workout in the end. Also businesses has plenty of other ways to increase profits: redundancies, wage stagnation, debt, etc.
A business is a virtual entity. No matter how you twist it, taxes are paid by people. A business can't pay shit, it's just a record in the Company House.
That's not true. In fact, it's a big part of the reason the UK economy has been melting down over the last few years
Lol ook. Some random American knows better than a Brit. Ofc.
You don't need to be a Brit to know you've been in recession since February.
Lol ook. Do you even follow the context? Or is it too much for an American?
My guy, get some sunshine and touch some grass. Things will turn around. You're finally going to do a pogrom on all the trans-folks in your country aren't you? That's always good for the economy.
You insane? Call a doctor maybe...
Seriously. Touch some grass.
Seriously. Call a doctor.
Doctor says I'm fine, but recommends you touch grass
says who? I said we can tax companies, so let's fucking tax companies, fuck companies.