[ttoinou]

Or stop taxing "profits" but tax every transaction on its total amount, that would also end a lot of "tax niches"

[tonyedgecombe]

We already have VAT or sales tax.

[ttoinou]

> Or stop taxing "profits"

By "profits" I meant to stop business being able to claim expenses and reduce the tax. We could replace complex taxation scheme only-on-positive-profit with a simple 1% (for example) tax on all transfers, on the total amount, no matter what is the purpose of the money transfer

[icebraining]

That incentivizes the creation of vertically-integrated conglomerates over small companies, in order to reduce the number of transactions; is that what you want to foster?

[ttoinou]

You need to take into account all the simplification it would imply in tax collection / paperwork / regulations etc. The cost of our current ways of taxing wealth and profits is huge

[JimmyAustin]

In the US, the IRS collected $3.33 trillion in revenue in 2018, with a total budget of 11.5 billion (2017). Thats 0.3453%, or 35c per $100 of tax revenue. Fairly minor in the scheme of things.

[ttoinou]

Monetary costs are a small subset of general costs (and the cheapest ones, easier to know and aggregate).

[jpadkins]

that's only one side of the ledger (collection). Now calculate the costs to the taxpayers (people and corps).

[tonyedgecombe]

The trouble with that is it will penalise low margin businesses, Apple could easily afford it on their 30% margin but a budget PC maker with a 3% margin would struggle.

[ttoinou]

Small businesses are already penalized by our current laws and ways of taxing profits. I believe the alternative I am proposing (that will never come to reality) is easier for everyone

[magduf]

Sure, it's easier, but it also means you'll just have a bunch of giant vertically-integrated monopolies. Easier, sure, but I don't see how that's better.

[ttoinou]

It's better because it's cheaper for everyone to do business. More competition, everything gets cheaper.

[markdown]

You mean like VAT/GST.

[ttoinou]

Not like GST : it would be on all transactions in the legal currency, including B2B. There wouldn't be an artificial difference between "businesses" and "customers"

Not like VAT : VAT is way more complex and expenses are deducted at each step

[IanCal]

So cheaper for large integrated companies? Sounds like it'd really hurt competitors starting up.

[tonyedgecombe]

It would kill any business with a long supply chain, the only manufacturers left would be the ones where ore arrives at one end of the factory and finished goods come out of the other end.

[ttoinou]

It would be cheaper for everyone because of tax simplifications. Current system is already unfair to a lot of group of people, including small businesses. And large company also have money transfers so I am not sure to understand the example unless we go into the specifics a little bit more