To me it reads like the usual right wing rhetoric, and that any tax collection is some form of evil socialism. Not quite sure how these people expect their flag waving military, for example, to be funded without the big corporation paying their fair share, but there you go.
Never understood why many Americans don't see paying tax as the ultimate act of patriotism, paying for the country they claim to love. They love the country, but resent paying for it. How does that work? Are they the ultimate freetards?
I love my country in spite of what our government has done to it in recent decades. I do not support the majority of dollars the US government spends, but feel powerless to effect change.
I resent paying for foreign wars I don't agree with, for secretive government agencies that unnecessarily pry into our private lives, and for ridiculous departments like the DHS which are largely ineffective and throw money away.
I would love to pay more for public education and a public healthcare system. I would love to pay more for innovative, effective solutions to poverty and homelessness. I'm happy to pay for the maintenance of our roads and for services like police and fire departments and public libraries.
Unfortunately, there's no good way for me to express this preference. All viable political candidates at the national level want to spend money on too many things I do not want for the voting apparatus to be of any help here.
So I sit back and grudgingly pay my taxes, hoping that people of like mind but with more political acumen and drive than I have will be able to make sense of the mess eventually.
I could understand not wanting to contribute to NSA funding, but it does sound like a vocal minority (?) does believe that tax collection should be as low as possible. Possibly due to a mistaken belief in trickle-down economics (if something yellow-coloured trickles down from the top, it doesn't mean it's gold...), or maybe caused by a belief that increasing disparities between social classes is a desirable goal.
To me it reads like the usual right wing rhetoric, and that any tax collection is some form of evil socialism. Not quite sure how these people expect their flag waving military, for example, to be funded without the big corporation paying their fair share, but there you go.
Bunk. Being anti-tax has nothing to do with being "right wing" at all. In fact, the entire term "right wing" is 100% meaningless in modern terms.
Plenty of us who oppose taxation ALSO oppose our empire building overseas military operations, and aggressive foreign policy, and want the military rolled back to only what is required for defense of the USA. I for one want the US out of the "world police" role.
Just cutting a huge chunk out of the military budget would be a great start on reducing government spending and decreasing the tax burden.
Never understood why many Americans don't see paying tax as the ultimate act of patriotism, paying for the country they claim to love.
Our country and our government are not the same thing. And Americans have a long history of having issues with excessive taxation by the government.
What sort of value do you think the typical American taxpayer gets out of their taxes as contrasted with somebody in one of the wealthier European countries?
I'm confused by your statement - a right-leaning Government is attempting to collect more taxes from multinationals who have huge sales in a country and pay little tax and yet you're claiming that they also consider tax collection some form of evil socialism?
The Conservatives are right leaning from a European perspective and compared to most of the UK governments since the war.
From an American perspective they are more akin to the Democrats: they support gay marriage, support legal abortion, don't support reintroducing the death penalty, support public health care (to some extent), generally support public education, do at least claim to accept that environmental issues are a concern (although we do have an environment secretary who denies climate changes science…). They support giving benefits to at least certain groups in society (pensioners, land owners) and accept the need to provide some level of support for the disabled, unemployed, single parents and so on. They made commitments to maintaining the level of foreign aid. For all their talk of pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights they have not actually done so. So they have a lot of policies that your typical Republican would be fairly disgusted by.
This is because the US Democratic party could be considered center-right by European standards, with the Republicans heading into extreme-right.
If a party in the UK hinted at dismantling public health care (the NHS) out loud, they'd be lynched (either in the polls or the streets, whichever was more convenient).
Small companies(S corps and LLCs) don't pay corporate taxes. C corps pay a wide variety of taxes depending on where they earn their profits, how aggressively they working to minimize tax burden, and how hard their industry lobbyists work.
Certainly some companies pay far more and far less than their fair share. I'd wager the tech companies who generally have little in the way of physical presence where they earn revenue, and have towns and cities competing for the chance to host their offices and data centers, probably pay very little relatively.
Obviously providing jobs for tax payers isn't unique to companies. I can pay for a nanny, chauffeur, and private cook even if I don't have a company. Since your logic is "X provides jobs so X shouldn't be taxed" then I shouldn't have to be taxed if I have any household staff, no?
That logic makes no sense. (If it makes sense to you, please elaborate. How many employees and how many FTEs does one need before this special exemption kicks in, and why that level?)
Now, by "company" I assume you mean "corporation." Corporations form for various reasons, the biggest being liability. Without it, shareholders could be sued individually.
This protection is worth something to the shareholders. I think it's perfectly reasonable that the state, which is the authority that grants companies the right to exist, should be able to extract something from the company - taxes and fees, for example - in order that the company may continue.
Do you think that corporations should exist without paying any fees to the state? If so, why should they get liability protection for free?
If the tax rate is too high, then people could switch from the corporate form of company to a sole proprietorship. A sole proprietor can have employees, and thus "provide jobs for tax payers", even though the business itself is not taxed separately from the proprietor's income.
Now, obviously there's a large set of trade-offs, and the example I gave - a switch to sole proprietorship - is too blunt. My point is that the idea that "provide jobs" necessarily implies "should not be taxed" is so simplistic that it more indicates a lack of understanding of why there are companies in the first place.
A corporation doesn't get liability protection for free, the corporation itself remains liable for whatever it does while the shareholders (but not board members) are protected.
In a global economy, where corporations can exist anywhere they like, taxing corporate profits is almost a guarantee that we'll see the same thing that happened to manufacturing jobs happen to corporate headquarters. The corporations will move to countries with lower tax rates because they can and because it will save them billions. I'd move my HQ to keep a billion in the bank instead of giving to the clowns trying to run the country.
I think you're adding in a nuance which I wasn't trying to clarify. Corporations provide a legal protection that doesn't exist for sole proprietorships, partnerships, or some other forms. (For example, like Lloyd's of London over most of its history, where 'Names' backed policies with personal wealth and had unlimited liability.)
You are correct in that it's not "for free", and the corporation is liable. My point is that corporate existence only occurs through state involvement, and there's no obvious reason why the state cannot make money from that.
You follow up with a market reason. Your statement is correct. Companies (and people, and employers) can use tax differences in the world to their advantage. You are free to move your HQ should you wish.
And that leads us to the topic mentioned by the linked-to article. Quoting from the OECD's "About BEPS" page:
> In an increasingly interconnected world, national tax laws have not kept pace with global corporations, fluid capital, and the digital economy, leaving gaps that can be exploited by companies who avoid taxation in their home countries by pushing activities abroad to low or no tax jurisdictions. This undermines the fairness and integrity of tax systems. The project, quickly known as BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) is looking at whether the current rules allow for the allocation of taxable profits to locations different from those where the actual business activity takes place and if not, what could be done to change this.
I can view them as lots of ways. For that matter, I've owned two companies myself, one where the business income was part of my income and one where they were separate.
But I'm not answering your question as you've not answered the ones I posed to you. As it stands, it appears that you don't know much about corporations nor corporate taxation. It seems rather a waste of my time to continue this exchange if I don't think you're making a reasonable effort at it, or tire of weak attacks on my character.
Q: Since your logic is "X provides jobs so X shouldn't be taxed" then I shouldn't have to be taxed if I have any household staff, no?
A: Nope, that wasn't my logic.
Q: Do you think that corporations should exist without paying any fees to the state? If so, why should they get liability protection for free?
A: Government is for the people, so they pay the tax. Liability protection for shareholders would be covered by dividend tax.
Your phrase was "Is there any point in taxing companies at all - they provide jobs for tax payers."
How is that not "X provides jobs therefore X should not be taxed?" Note too my followup: How many employees and how many FTEs does one need before this special exemption kicks in, and why that level?)
You propose an alternative, which is that liability protection is covered by dividend tax.
That's not practical. Google has never paid a dividend, and Berkshire Hathaway has only paid a dividend once since Warren Buffett took over. There are many other companies which don't, or which only rarely, pay dividends.
Why should their shareholders get liability protection when they've never (or almost never) paid said tax?
I see you omitted capital gains tax from your list of two possible tax sources. That of course only applies to companies which make a profit, so shareholders who don't make a profit from their investment (or who never realize their gains over their life) are still getting liability protection for free.
You seem to argue that only the people should pay taxes. That's a perfectly reasonable argument. But as soon as you allow for an entity which is able to control money independent of any person - ie, a corporation - then by definition "any contribution imposed by government [...] whether under the name of toll, tribute, tallage, gabel, impost, duty, custom, excise, subsidy, aid, supply, or other name" is a tax on that entity.
There's no reason for the government to allow a special entity without getting at least something in return. You don't like income tax on corporations. But you haven't explained why you don't like corporate registration fees or the Maryland law which imposes fees based on the number of issued and outstanding shares. For that matter, if a company isn't taxable because it isn't a person, then who pays property tax, payroll tax, customs duties, sales tax, etc?
That is, why is income somehow special from all of the other taxes that a corporation pays?
Taxed at a much lower rate than ordinary people's income though. (And more to the point the kind of person who gets money from dividends is less likely to spend it on tax-generating economic activity like buying food)
Yes, the logic is that the corporation paid tax on their profits before dividends. Perhaps there's a case for corporation tax abolition and increased dividend taxation?
I actually wouldn't be averse to that, but it'd be hard to internationally coordinate such a change (and it would have to be internationally coordinated, or corporations would move to the places that had the lowest corporation tax while their owners would move to the places that had the lowest dividend tax). And there's still the problem of keeping your wealth in a corporation and avoiding paying tax on it until you use it (which creates the wrong incentive - we want to encourage rich investors to spend the money and put it back into the system, or at least invest in new ventures, rather than leaving it in their company's bank account accumulating compound interest).
From the way I understand it, this is a way to get large companies to pay the same amount of tax as smaller companies.