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by saosebastiao
2682 days ago
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The big problem is the corporate tax itself. It's incredibly hard to tax corporations fairly and efficiently, and as a result the corporate tax code is way more complex than any practical citizen could ever understand. It's hard enough for tax accountants and lawyers that have dedicated their entire profession to understanding it. The whole reason we have a corporate tax is because we feel rich people need to be taxed more, but the association between corporation and rich person is fuzzy at best. More nefariously, you are taxing pools of organizational and financial capital as opposed to individuals...which means that their ability to fight the tax code is amplified with pooled resources. It's regulatory capture waiting to happen. The better option would be to dump the corporate tax entirely, and have all capital gains and dividends taxed as income. I know it can't be that simple because they're not the same as income, but working out those details would be a hell of a lot easier than trying to figure out how to get corporations to repatriate income after their international tax arbitrage schemes. |
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Your better option doesn't actually work, though, because the really rich can dodge it by borrowing money against their wealth as collateral, and because once stock (and other capital) is inherited, the new owner doesn't pay taxes on its appreciation before acquiring it - so most of it is essentially untaxed entirely.