[crazygringo]

No it's not. It shows how much more profitable Berkshire Hathaway has been than other big companies. Which is what it's known for.

You'd never want other companies paying as much tax if they didn't have the profit to back it up. It would bankrupt them.

[colechristensen]

>You'd never want other companies paying as much tax if they didn't have the profit to back it up. It would bankrupt them.

They do have the profit in that the money they make doing things exceeds the money they spend to do the thing, but though a series of tricks of varying legality and ethics they make it so on paper they do not have "profit" and therefore successfully avoid taxes.

Amazon reported losses for the first 10 years while growing to billions in yearly revenue.

>It would bankrupt them.

It really wouldn't have. While Amazon was growing to dominate retail and putting very many competitors out of business, they were paying 0 corporate taxes. Many companies play these tricks and many people want them to pay fair taxes. If you need to be tax free to break even, you should go bankrupt. Especially in the Fortune 500 region.

[crazygringo]

You seem to be misunderstanding. Amazon paid no corporate taxes because it was reinvesting everything into growth. There's nothing illegal or unethical about that – in fact it's not a bug, it's a feature. We incentivize that because it means that Amazon winds up paying more taxes in the long run. Once it no longer has growth opportunities but is just raking in the profits, it winds up paying tons of taxes. Way more taxes than it would've been paying when it was much smaller. It benefits the tax base to let companies make their own decisions about when to grow and when to turn a profit. The last thing you want to do is to start taxing revenue rather than profit, because that slows down economic growth in the entire country. That would be terrible policy. It's not about tricks, it's literally about maximizing tax revenue over the long-term.

[colechristensen]

I don't really think we needed to incentivize amazon to grow to dominate the market reaching 40% total retail ecommerce market share and destroying many competitors that weren't trying to race to monopoly. The companies taking profit not trying to conquer the world were doing the right thing and were put to disadvantage by the tax code. Tax revenue is not maximized by allowing rotating monopolies that only pay taxes for the relatively brief period between when they're growing and dying.

[paxys]

Now apply that same logic to people.

[tarr11]

40% of US households pay no federal income tax.

https://taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox/tpc-number-those-who-dont...

[ethansimmons]

I also think the industries that Berkshire is generally in can't take advantage of some tax advantages that other companies are able to. Right?