[RC_ITR]

It also goes to show how corrupt the import tax system is.

Why SHOULD a cargo van have higher import taxes than a passenger van, other than to serve the needs of some random private company?

Even moreso, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ford lobbied FOR those laws before changing its mind in where to produce a particular sku

[jrockway]

It sounds like the age-old market segmentation thing. People driving their kids to soccer practice don't make money with their vans, so they'll notice the higher price (and if they find out their congresscritter was responsible, they'll vote for a different one). Meanwhile, cargo vans are used to make money, so the users can bear the extra cost. There's also overtones of taxation without representation going on here; individuals can vote, and so they have lower taxes than businesses, which can't vote. (It's too bad that Ford doesn't dump the seats they take out of the van into Boston Harbor! Someone would probably still get the reference.)

It's the same game that SaaS companies play. Everything is free until you want SSO, then it's $30,000 a year. If you need SSO, you can afford it.

Personally, I hate this in both cases. I think we could save everyone a lot of time if every vendor you did business with just grabbed you by the ankles and flipped you upside down and took whatever money fell out of your pocket. Why tiptoe around what they really want...

[titusjohnson]

> There's also overtones of taxation without representation going on here; individuals can vote, and so they have lower taxes than businesses, which can't vote.

I'm confused about this statement. Businesses are comprised of individuals, and those individuals (if citizens) can vote. So the business has a vote through the voice of its employees and representation in government through the people employees at a business.

Or are you saying the legal fiction of business personhood should give the business a ... vote? That just sounds like business owners (individuals) getting 2 or more votes then...

[NoboruWataya]

> Or are you saying the legal fiction of business personhood should give the business a ... vote? That just sounds like business owners (individuals) getting 2 or more votes then...

I believe the more common proposal is to resolve the contradiction the other way: remove taxes on corporations, as the individuals comprising the corporations generally already pay taxes. That would be politically quite unpopular, but there is a certain logic to it and it would also make taxes easier to administer and more difficult to avoid. And it doesn't need to be as pro-rich as it sounds - you could just replace corporation taxes with other taxes targeting wealthy individuals, such as a wealth tax or higher income taxes.

[billpg]

The sort of already happens. Over here, businesses don't have to pay sales tax (VAT) on the goods and services they buy, because when they finally sell the item or service to a customer, the sales tax is charged in full.

So while a business doesn't pay sales on the fuel they need to deliver their goods to me, it gets paid in the end because the cost of the fuel is included in the price I pay and the sales tax is levied on the whole purchase price.

(It is a little more complicated than that. Don't sue me.)

[alboy]

>I believe the more common proposal is to resolve the contradiction the other way: remove taxes on corporations, as the individuals comprising the corporations generally already pay taxes.

Without a wealth tax that would just make tax evasion even easier for the ultrawealthy in the usual manner of borrowing against the equity of the stock they own.

[summm]

If at the same time corporations lost their status as legal persons, I'd be very interested in your proposal.

[majormajor]

If we remove the taxes on corporations should we also remove the shield on liability against the owners of the corporation? Why make it more transparent one way but not the other?

[slt2021]

maybe businesses can't vote, but they can buy votes of the congressmen directly.

why go through the hassle of voting and deal with uncertainty whether you voted a right person, when you can just buy with cash whatever law/regulation you need

[gowld]

Would you prefer that only rich people could buy things? Without price discrimination, the market clearing price is higher.

[nickff]

>"Why SHOULD a cargo van have higher import taxes than a passenger van, other than to serve the needs of some random private company?"

Have you read a tariff schedule? They're full of this stuff, which seem to be protections or favors for specific industries. Anti-dumping protections seem similar.

[RC_ITR]

>It also goes to show how corrupt the import tax system is.

[nickff]

I am not sure it is 'corrupt', though that may be a question of semantics. I didn't mean to disagree with you, just point out how rampant the issue was.

[secabeen]

I don't think it's corrupt exactly, often these details are worked out in deals between the various countries or as retaliation for other unilateral increases. We lower your rate on rice to 6% if you lower our rate on chicken; if you raise your rate on our machine parts to 25%, we'll raise our rate on your cargo vans to 25%. Etc. It's part of the negotiations, and it often has nothing to do with the specifics of the items being tarriffed.

[colejohnson66]

No lobbying involved. It’s the remnants of a tariff war with France and Germany: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax

[RC_ITR]

The Chicken Wars brought the powerful agricultural lobby in France into direct conflict with the powerful agricultural lobby in the United States. Not surprisingly, France, the largest poultry producer in the EEC, was unwilling to embrace a free trade policy whose benefits would be spread among consumers throughout Europe. The benefits of protectionism were concentrated in France and the costs were borne by consumers throughout Europe. Indeed, the stakes were sufficiently high that France might have quit the EEC had not French agricultural interests been appeased.

That's from the 'further reading' link on Wikipedia.

[vilaca]

> benefits would be spread among consumers throughout Europe

The EU has banned poultry meat from the US on psytosanitary grounds for more than two decades.

[Jon_Lowtek]

Which is a lot younger than the chicken tax from the 1960s

For some context: it is about washing chicken meat with chlorine dioxide to kill bacteria, especially salmonella, at the slaughterhouse. It may seem ridicoulous that europeans prefer salmonella to chlorine on their chickens, but european food health and safety argues that the practice is needed in the USA due to the very unsanitary, and therefor cheaper, chicken meat production, whereas europa requires high standards during production instead of washing the end product in chlorine, and is therefore more costly. Some argue this cost difference is the major driver of the ban, and it is not an actual health and safety issue.

[w0mbat]

The US also has more lax rules than Europe has governing what food chickens can be fed. Without going into the rather revolting details, this is a legitimate reason to exclude US chicken.

[colejohnson66]

Yes, but I meant lobbying from Ford for said tariff as you suggested.

[RC_ITR]

At the same time, the U.S. auto industry was suffering its own trade crisis due to competition from growingly popular foreign cars and trucks. During the early 1960s, sales of Volkswagens surged as America’s love affair with the iconic VW “Bug” coupe and Type 2 van shifted into overdrive. By 1963, the situation got so bad that Walter Reuther, president of the United Automobile Workers Union (U.A.W.), threatened a strike that would have halted all U.S. auto production just before the 1964 presidential election.

Running for reelection and aware of the influence the U.A.W. had in Congress and in the minds of voters, President Johnson looked for a way to persuade Reuther’s union not to strike and to support his “Great Society” civil rights agenda. Johnson succeeded on both counts by agreeing to include light trucks in the Chicken Tax.

While U.S. tariffs on other Chicken Tax items have since been rescinded, lobbying efforts by the U.A.W. have kept the tariff on light trucks and utility vans alive. As a result, American-made trucks still dominate sales in the U.S., and some very desirable trucks, like the high-end Australian-made Volkswagen Amorak, are not sold in the United States.

https://www.thoughtco.com/chicken-tax-4159747

[e4e78a06]

"American-made" = all the labor-intensive parts are made abroad and only the final car is assembled in the US. The USMCA merely requires that a majority or plurality (depending on the item) of item content come from a member nation.

If there was a war American industry would shut down overnight.

[drzaiusapelord]

I find it incredible that people think the government does things like this "just because." It do so because its capitalist masters demand it. Of course this is lobbying driven. The government in a capitalist society exists almost solely to bring the agenda of lobbyists into the legislature by any means possible be it via cash contributions, manufacturing consent via the corporatist media, riling people up via the pulpit, fixing elections, demonizing unrelated minority groups, threatening or even attempting coups, blocking the teaching of certain subjects in school, assassination, etc.

Its incredible to me that there's an entire political identity that borderline denies any of this happens, and instead the government itself is somehow naturally corrupt but business and the lobbying and capital owning class are all angels and saints. Everyday conservatism buys into this fallacy fairly well and this dishonesty seems to be the core of libertarianism.

Explaining this concept to some people feels like how I would imagine explaining water to fish must be. We're just so surrounded by it and it defines so much of our culture, that you can fail to see if you choose. You can just call everything government corruption from cradle to grave without asking about the source and motivation of that corruption. You can swim your whole life and never wonder why you're wet.