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by mikeyouse 3872 days ago
But Buffett does make his capital gains exclusively through Berkshire who absolutely does make money through fancy lawyers and tax loopholes.. See the pointless Burger King / Tim Horton's inversion they shepherded through last year;

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-12-15/berkshire-...

This isn't productive work on any scale except tax optimization and is only available to massive companies and their teams of lawyers.
2 comments
harryh 3872 days ago
Shares of BRK.B are available to anyone who wants to buy them. So they can participate in those gains as well.

What you're really getting at is tax incidence. Ultimately corporate taxes are still taxes on people. It's a complicated question to figure out which people. Sometimes it's shareholders like buffet, but it's also often employees or customers.

I do generally agree with you though that corporate taxes probably fall disproportionately on rich shareholders so to whatever degree there are shenanigans it's probably benefiting those rich shareholders.

Personally this makes me question the value of corporate taxes entirely. Just get rid of them and tax people directly. It would save a lot of paperwork and be easier for everyone to understand. Most people disagree with me on this point (though I would say that's because they don't think about tax incidence!).

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plonh 3872 days ago
Not everyone can obtain very many BRK shares. Buffet has very many.
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harryh 3872 days ago
Yes. Clearly. Hence "I do generally agree with you though that corporate taxes probably fall disproportionately on rich shareholders."
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drumdance 3872 days ago
This is why I actually favor doing away with the corporate income tax. Hundreds of thousands, maybe millions, of accountants and tax lawyers would be out of work, but on the flip side companies would have no incentive to play all these games and keep money offshore. Just pay a dividend, or don't, and let the investors figure it out.
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plonh 3872 days ago
Then you'd need a property tax or else the investors can keep accumulating value and never paying tax.
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drumdance 3872 days ago
No, you'd still tax distributions to investors. Basically, once money touches a personal bank account, it becomes taxable. The difference is that corporations would have much less incentive to hide their earnings.
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