3 ms·

Ok - can you elaborate why you so clearly favour aggression and blaming Ireland rather than simple domestic legislation and general political will to prevent th

by alainv 11y ago

Ok - can you elaborate why you so clearly favour aggression and blaming Ireland rather than simple domestic legislation and general political will to prevent these companies using other countries as tax havens?

Jach 11y ago
Yeah, threatening them to take the action of banning US incorporation is a bit weird. Even Trump is about fining the company that wants to move to Mexico above the tax savings rather than getting Mexico to halt the deal.
kolbe 11y ago
Sure. I like the logic of trying to close it with domestic legislation, but the US sucks at that. For one, congress and the president cannot ever seem to work together to get anything meaningful done. But secondly, every single time we think we make an exception or a rule in the tax code, we learn that crafty investment bankers figure out how to exploit the rule. As Plato said, "know thyself." And we suck at playing nicely. Completely hypothetically, say we could kill tax inversions. The whole thing has felt like a game of cat and mouse game for a century now. Inversions are the tax-avoidance scheme du jouer. For example, for years, Pfizer has already been paying virtually no taxes in the US by storing all of its IP in an offshore subsidiary. The "double Irish" trick is being done by companies who have never done an inversion. There are all sorts of holes in the tax code that other nations use to fuck the US. And there's no way we can compete on the rate, since we'd be competing with countries that have a 0% rate. Many companies pay a zero percent corporate tax rate on all of their offshore profits (which, IIRC, is attributed to a subsidiary in Bermuda), and mostly claim to have nothing but losses to write off in the US. We need to finally say, "fuck this nonsense." Companies don't need laws to inform them when they're acting morally. It is immoral to act the way they are, and instead of playing cat and mouse like we have been doing, we need to put our foot down and MAKE every company obey the spirit of the tax laws, and not the letter. And the only way I know of to make that happen is to use extreme threats like invalidating their IP if they pull these tricks, or threatening the countries that aid them.

by alainv 11y ago

Jach 11y ago

Yeah, threatening them to take the action of banning US incorporation is a bit weird. Even Trump is about fining the company that wants to move to Mexico above the tax savings rather than getting Mexico to halt the deal.

kolbe 11y ago

Sure. I like the logic of trying to close it with domestic legislation, but the US sucks at that. For one, congress and the president cannot ever seem to work together to get anything meaningful done. But secondly, every single time we think we make an exception or a rule in the tax code, we learn that crafty investment bankers figure out how to exploit the rule. As Plato said, "know thyself." And we suck at playing nicely. Completely hypothetically, say we could kill tax inversions. The whole thing has felt like a game of cat and mouse game for a century now. Inversions are the tax-avoidance scheme du jouer. For example, for years, Pfizer has already been paying virtually no taxes in the US by storing all of its IP in an offshore subsidiary. The "double Irish" trick is being done by companies who have never done an inversion. There are all sorts of holes in the tax code that other nations use to fuck the US. And there's no way we can compete on the rate, since we'd be competing with countries that have a 0% rate. Many companies pay a zero percent corporate tax rate on all of their offshore profits (which, IIRC, is attributed to a subsidiary in Bermuda), and mostly claim to have nothing but losses to write off in the US. We need to finally say, "fuck this nonsense." Companies don't need laws to inform them when they're acting morally. It is immoral to act the way they are, and instead of playing cat and mouse like we have been doing, we need to put our foot down and MAKE every company obey the spirit of the tax laws, and not the letter. And the only way I know of to make that happen is to use extreme threats like invalidating their IP if they pull these tricks, or threatening the countries that aid them.