First we were told to be nice to the rich and give them tax reduction, because we will be all happy for the trickling down pennies. And now we are supposed to give the cooperation tax relief because there is money trickling down from the employees?
You're not "supposed" to do anything. If you want to raise tax, raise tax. Just keep in mind that this changes incentives for anyone who has to pay that tax. That's not a threat, it's a fact.
I haven't seen anyone claim that Facebook is failing to pay all the tax they are legally obligated to pay. Did you mean something else by "everybody pays his taxes?"
There are currently investigations in the EU if FB did fullfil the requirements to use the tax loopholes they are using. If not, FB did not pay the taxes they are obligated to pay.
And if they didn't, they'll be fined and be forced to pay whatever they didn't, which will probably not happen again in the future as a way to avoid being fined.
If they did? You seem to be dancing around the central point, which is, these numbers, while absurd, are generally completely above board and legal. Nobody is going to pay more tax than they're obligated to, and it's absurd to expect otherwise.
"Investigations in the EU" means jack shit. There have also been "investigations in the EU" about whether Google is an illegal monopoly and whether Facebook needs to segregate all its data on European entities into separate European data centers.
As much as the minuscule corp tax bills infuriate me, my logical half laughs and says income tax is silly, just use sales tax.
I know we'll never pass something along the lines of FairTax, but I daydream about it all the time. And yes, I've heard all the arguments against it and I still think it's a much better solution than taxing income.
I did say something along the lines of FairTax. They proposed a yearly 'prebate' check of the taxes paid on base level spending. That is to combat the regressive tax situation.
If you're paid $100 in cash as wages and use it to buy food and pay rent, then your effective tax rate is equal to the sales tax rate.
If you or your company is earning $1m in profit, and use half of that for spending and buying goods (that are taxed by sales tax) and the other half to buy revenue-producing assets - shares of other companies, real estate, bonds - then half of your income isn't taxed at all, your effective tax rate is twice as small as the tax rate on poor people.
This introduces an even stronger rich-get-richer mechanic to the society, as accumulating wealth generation (not just wealth) is tax-free.
That's easy to explain (although it might be tricky).
The marginal value of money decreases as the absolute value increases.
Getting a raise from $1k per month to $2k per month is more significant than from $2k to $3k
Meaning that if you earn more, you'll usually save more.
So now stuff is taxed at 50% (VAT or Sales tax), so everything will cost more, but it will be easier for the rich to afford it, because of no income tax, and harder for those with less income (their income tax was not high to begin with)
If you have a low income and need all the money to buy food you get taxed on 100% of your income. If you have a lot of income and can save or invest 90% you only get taxed on 10% of your income.
If you are low income and they give everyone a tax refund on the first 30k or so of spending, then you perhaps pay 0% in taxes while the person spending over 30k starts paying a tax.
If I didn't buy an iPhone, I'd buy a different phone. The VAT would still be there. If I didn't use Facebook I'd be using a different image sharing service, or chat service, or whatever. The VAT would still be there.
Because I have a budget to spend on entertainment, and various companies compete for that budget.
We pay those taxes, Facebook/Apple doesn't 'generate' anything, that money would be spent on a different entertainment. We pay income taxes, if we didn't work for Facebook/Apple, we would have to find a different job, perhaps start our own company, etc.
I want to make this super clear. Those taxes, including income taxes, are our contributions, not Facebook's. The citizens are generating that money. If Facebook didn't exist, there would be a company filling that void with an alternative entertainment which VAT would still be charged on.
Now, on the flip-side, it's not entirely zero-sum and Facebook does increase the overall wealth. They are generating new markets, new growth, etc.
But is it by the percentage of money its extracting from the local economy? Of course not. And worse still, that money's sitting in an offshore account somewhere, not even flowing back into the US economy, because they're waiting for a tax break. So instead of doing what it's supposed to do, which is spur more growth, it's doing the worst thing it can, which is being excluded from the world economy.
Yes, VAT is payed 'by the consumer', and if people weren't buying Apple phones they would be buying something else, fair enough.
I just find it funny how the solution to lack of money is always wanting to squeeze more taxes from the companies and people instead of optimizing goverment spending (optimizing, not cutting)
Ah of course, living withing your means is now called 'austerity' and it's bad because?
And worse still, that money's sitting in an offshore account somewhere, not even flowing back into the US economy, because they're waiting for a tax break. So instead of doing what it's supposed to do, which is spur more growth, it's doing the worst thing it can, which is being excluded from the world economy.
Before Apple did iPhone, modern mass-market smartphones didn't exist and VAT from old-school smartphones was probably 10% of what it is today.
Before Apple did iPad, VAT from tablet sales was virtually zero.
I think you should tax what is easy and straightforward to tax; not aim for a "perfectly fair taxes".
Anyway, it shoud be good to you that you are paying taxes and not Apple. Next time Apple wants to ban phones with square screens, you tell them to back off because they don't pay taxes. You should get a voice here and you should to get your message straight. If you can't - blame your government and work towards digital democracy.