5 ms·

If you consider how much money is embezzled / stolen by (most) corporations by avoiding paying taxes for all the services they benefit from, in the countries th

by etatoby 10y ago

If you consider how much money is embezzled / stolen by (most) corporations by avoiding paying taxes for all the services they benefit from, in the countries they operate in, this seems a very good feature.

jdimov9 10y ago
This must be the most blatantly hypocritical statement I have ever read. Money is STOLEN by corporations by not paying taxes??? How ignorant and thankless can you be? Money is CREATED by these corporations and you owe a huge chunk of your well-being, and quite likely your life, to the existence of said corporations.
- abritinthebay 10y ago
  If you owe money to someone and don't pay it deliberately... what else would you call it other than stealing? Corporations get many benefits from the government (as do we all, in different ways) so is only fair that they pay taxes. The corporate tax rate is less in recognition that they are capital generators.
  - tremon 10y ago
    If you owe money to someone and don't pay it deliberately... what else would you call it other than stealing? Defaulting. I understand that the RIAA has succesfully popularised the term "stealing" beyond its legal definition, but that doesn't mean we should expand it even further.
    - abritinthebay 10y ago
      Defaulting on a debt is stealing - especially if the debt is, like taxes, principle only - it's a specialized form of it. Besides defaulting applies to loans. In this case you're specifically withholding something that is legally someone else's. That's theft, no matter how you cut it.
- drdeca 10y ago
  A company creating value and the same company committing theft are not contradictory. One can take commendable actions AND reprimandable (?) actions. As far as whether there is an obligation to pay taxes, well, "render unto caesar what is due to caesar" and all that.
  - tremon 10y ago
    reprimandable (?) Deplorable.
    - JdeBP 10y ago
      reprehensible
- bpicolo 10y ago
  Ah, yes, because corporations exist in a vacuum and generate money from thin air, typically using up none of earth's natural resources.
  - maratd 10y ago
    And they usually pay royalties on said resources? Pay for rights to said resources? Trust me, we learned a long time ago how to extract $$$ for said resources.
    - alkonaut 10y ago
      By resources you mean financial systems, roads and other infrastructure, legal systems, access to educated workers, being defended by an army...? I could accept a company making profit and paying no taxes if they didn't have offices, staff, use roads or electricity etc. It would be pretty hard to do anything as a company "outside" the framework of a society.
      - maratd 10y ago
        I was responding directly to the comment about natural resources. Your comment is entirely unrelated to what I said.
        alkonaut 10y ago
        I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious - that corporations exist within a society and use a multitude of important "resources" to function at all. That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too.
        maratd 10y ago
        > I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious While what you said is certainly obvious, it had nothing to do with what I said. > That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too. It is absolutely idiotic to have corporate taxes. Corporations are nothing more than proxies for the shareholders. All profits are passed to the shareholders. Once they are, those shareholders then have to pay taxes on those profits. You end up with double taxation. In recognition of this, we create something called a capital gains tax, which is less than the normal tax rate ... and then tax corporations to compensate for that. Nice. You end up with a situation where most of the taxes the corporations pay end up being passed to the consumer and the rich get a tax break. Is that what you support? Get rid of capital gains, tax all income at the same level, and get rid of the corporate tax.
- cmurf 10y ago
  Money is created through loans. It's not created by corporations (other than commercial banks who are in the business of loaning).
  - davorb 10y ago
    Money is just an unit of account, and in this context rather uninteresting. I could give you a billion Reichsmark, and you would be no better off than you would have been if I gave you a roll of toilet paper. Corporations and individuals create wealth, which benefits us all.
- vesak 10y ago
  Wealth is created by small companies too, perhaps even more so that the big ones. However, they don't have the resourcers to evade taxes like the big ones do. You realize what that means, right?
- dang 10y ago
  This comment breaks the HN guidelines by calling names, being uncivil, and last but not least by using all caps for emphasis. (Just kidding; that is least. But still unwanted.) Please don't do these things when commenting here. Instead, please (re-)read the guidelines and follow them, by posting civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
fiatjaf 10y ago
Yeah, because it would be much better if none of these companies existed.
- jug 10y ago
  Did the parent imply that?
  - fiatjaf 10y ago
    Yes, of course.
    - delan 10y ago
      Why is it a matter of course?
    - ball_of_lint 10y ago
      No, it implied it would be better for them to pay their taxes.
- vesak 10y ago
  If that's the only thing keeping them afloat, very much better.
- cmurf 10y ago
  Companies need to freeload in order to exist?
krick 10y ago
Stolen from who? It's a pretty fucked up state of mind, when avoiding to give your honestly earned money to burglars is called "stealing". Maybe you like paying taxes, and maybe I do not, let's not try to convince each other who is right or wrong, we won't get anywhere. Let's not talk about "moral" and "immoral", it's plain stupid. Let's just imagine somebody else (let's refer to his as Citizen), who has an opinion of his own, and he doesn't support the current state of things in the country he is living in. He is being told, that taxes he pays are used by some smart centralized organization to help him, to serve the community, but he sees otherwise: money is spent to feed and send killers to Iraq, (or whatever country his own country is terrorizing) which he doesn't want to support. And to fix a playground in his neighbourhood, or do something else he and his neighbours actually care about, he needs to gather the money and organize a workforce himself. He doesn't have the ability to fuck around such a massive amount of people, to become a president of his country himself, but he is active enough, to move things forward in his community. Unfortunately, no good deeds go unpunished in his country, so he has to do it silently. GNU Taler doesn't help him in doing so. And now let's imagine a corporation of yours. What is this corporation. Facebook? ExxonMobil? Do you imagine them being in need of "GNU Taler" or even "Bitcoin"? I don't. The reason being, they have the power our Citizen does not. They have money to spend on lobbying, they have all the connections Citizen cannot even dream about, they have smart, educated lawyers and accountants who's primary job is to find a way to pay less taxes and depend on the government as little as possible, and they do it successfully every day. The do and will find a way, and they can do it in semi-transparent manner, w/o hiding behind some cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency that strips a merchant naked isn't really harmful for such corporation, even if they have to use it, because they currently successfully abuse the system, that is as close to stripping them naked as possible, there's no step up from that in terms of payment system. It is harmful only for individuals and small businesses, which are, if anything, an opposition to your image of "evil stealing corporation". Because they are the ones being robbed, not the robbers.
smsm42 10y ago
You can only call tax avoidance stealing money if your prior assumption is that all money earned belongs to the state as the owner, and you can only have whatever the state gives you by its generosity. That is a pretty big assumption.
- pekk 10y ago
  That assumption is unnecessary. The only assumption needed is that taxes belong to the state. Property is defined by law.
  - smsm42 10y ago
    I don't see what "taxes belong to the state" may mean. Taxes may mean a) some set of laws regulations that create legal framework for some money being paid to the government and b) money that has been paid to the government according to the framework above. The only way you can steal tax money is when you first pay the taxes and then get some of that money back illegally. I'm not sure there are a lot of corporations that do that. A lot of them do it legally, by means of corporate welfare, but while it can be despicable, it does not qualify as theft. Failure to pay taxes usually is illegal, but can not be sensibly defined as theft.
  - murbard2 10y ago
    Law used to define some people as property. It's extremely reductive to equate the concept of property with what the law happens to say.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840853 and marked it off-topic.

by etatoby 10y ago

jdimov9 10y ago

This must be the most blatantly hypocritical statement I have ever read. Money is STOLEN by corporations by not paying taxes??? How ignorant and thankless can you be? Money is CREATED by these corporations and you owe a huge chunk of your well-being, and quite likely your life, to the existence of said corporations.

abritinthebay 10y ago
If you owe money to someone and don't pay it deliberately... what else would you call it other than stealing? Corporations get many benefits from the government (as do we all, in different ways) so is only fair that they pay taxes. The corporate tax rate is less in recognition that they are capital generators.
- tremon 10y ago
  If you owe money to someone and don't pay it deliberately... what else would you call it other than stealing? Defaulting. I understand that the RIAA has succesfully popularised the term "stealing" beyond its legal definition, but that doesn't mean we should expand it even further.
  - abritinthebay 10y ago
    Defaulting on a debt is stealing - especially if the debt is, like taxes, principle only - it's a specialized form of it. Besides defaulting applies to loans. In this case you're specifically withholding something that is legally someone else's. That's theft, no matter how you cut it.
drdeca 10y ago
A company creating value and the same company committing theft are not contradictory. One can take commendable actions AND reprimandable (?) actions. As far as whether there is an obligation to pay taxes, well, "render unto caesar what is due to caesar" and all that.
- tremon 10y ago
  reprimandable (?) Deplorable.
  - JdeBP 10y ago
    reprehensible
bpicolo 10y ago
Ah, yes, because corporations exist in a vacuum and generate money from thin air, typically using up none of earth's natural resources.
- maratd 10y ago
  And they usually pay royalties on said resources? Pay for rights to said resources? Trust me, we learned a long time ago how to extract $$$ for said resources.
  - alkonaut 10y ago
    By resources you mean financial systems, roads and other infrastructure, legal systems, access to educated workers, being defended by an army...? I could accept a company making profit and paying no taxes if they didn't have offices, staff, use roads or electricity etc. It would be pretty hard to do anything as a company "outside" the framework of a society.
    - maratd 10y ago
      I was responding directly to the comment about natural resources. Your comment is entirely unrelated to what I said.
      - alkonaut 10y ago
        I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious - that corporations exist within a society and use a multitude of important "resources" to function at all. That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too.
        maratd 10y ago
        > I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious While what you said is certainly obvious, it had nothing to do with what I said. > That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too. It is absolutely idiotic to have corporate taxes. Corporations are nothing more than proxies for the shareholders. All profits are passed to the shareholders. Once they are, those shareholders then have to pay taxes on those profits. You end up with double taxation. In recognition of this, we create something called a capital gains tax, which is less than the normal tax rate ... and then tax corporations to compensate for that. Nice. You end up with a situation where most of the taxes the corporations pay end up being passed to the consumer and the rich get a tax break. Is that what you support? Get rid of capital gains, tax all income at the same level, and get rid of the corporate tax.
cmurf 10y ago
Money is created through loans. It's not created by corporations (other than commercial banks who are in the business of loaning).
- davorb 10y ago
  Money is just an unit of account, and in this context rather uninteresting. I could give you a billion Reichsmark, and you would be no better off than you would have been if I gave you a roll of toilet paper. Corporations and individuals create wealth, which benefits us all.
vesak 10y ago
Wealth is created by small companies too, perhaps even more so that the big ones. However, they don't have the resourcers to evade taxes like the big ones do. You realize what that means, right?
dang 10y ago
This comment breaks the HN guidelines by calling names, being uncivil, and last but not least by using all caps for emphasis. (Just kidding; that is least. But still unwanted.) Please don't do these things when commenting here. Instead, please (re-)read the guidelines and follow them, by posting civilly and substantively or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html

fiatjaf 10y ago

Yeah, because it would be much better if none of these companies existed.

jug 10y ago
Did the parent imply that?
- fiatjaf 10y ago
  Yes, of course.
  - delan 10y ago
    Why is it a matter of course?
  - ball_of_lint 10y ago
    No, it implied it would be better for them to pay their taxes.
vesak 10y ago
If that's the only thing keeping them afloat, very much better.
cmurf 10y ago
Companies need to freeload in order to exist?

krick 10y ago

Stolen from who? It's a pretty fucked up state of mind, when avoiding to give your honestly earned money to burglars is called "stealing". Maybe you like paying taxes, and maybe I do not, let's not try to convince each other who is right or wrong, we won't get anywhere. Let's not talk about "moral" and "immoral", it's plain stupid. Let's just imagine somebody else (let's refer to his as Citizen), who has an opinion of his own, and he doesn't support the current state of things in the country he is living in. He is being told, that taxes he pays are used by some smart centralized organization to help him, to serve the community, but he sees otherwise: money is spent to feed and send killers to Iraq, (or whatever country his own country is terrorizing) which he doesn't want to support. And to fix a playground in his neighbourhood, or do something else he and his neighbours actually care about, he needs to gather the money and organize a workforce himself. He doesn't have the ability to fuck around such a massive amount of people, to become a president of his country himself, but he is active enough, to move things forward in his community. Unfortunately, no good deeds go unpunished in his country, so he has to do it silently. GNU Taler doesn't help him in doing so. And now let's imagine a corporation of yours. What is this corporation. Facebook? ExxonMobil? Do you imagine them being in need of "GNU Taler" or even "Bitcoin"? I don't. The reason being, they have the power our Citizen does not. They have money to spend on lobbying, they have all the connections Citizen cannot even dream about, they have smart, educated lawyers and accountants who's primary job is to find a way to pay less taxes and depend on the government as little as possible, and they do it successfully every day. The do and will find a way, and they can do it in semi-transparent manner, w/o hiding behind some cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrency that strips a merchant naked isn't really harmful for such corporation, even if they have to use it, because they currently successfully abuse the system, that is as close to stripping them naked as possible, there's no step up from that in terms of payment system. It is harmful only for individuals and small businesses, which are, if anything, an opposition to your image of "evil stealing corporation". Because they are the ones being robbed, not the robbers.

smsm42 10y ago

You can only call tax avoidance stealing money if your prior assumption is that all money earned belongs to the state as the owner, and you can only have whatever the state gives you by its generosity. That is a pretty big assumption.

pekk 10y ago
That assumption is unnecessary. The only assumption needed is that taxes belong to the state. Property is defined by law.
- smsm42 10y ago
  I don't see what "taxes belong to the state" may mean. Taxes may mean a) some set of laws regulations that create legal framework for some money being paid to the government and b) money that has been paid to the government according to the framework above. The only way you can steal tax money is when you first pay the taxes and then get some of that money back illegally. I'm not sure there are a lot of corporations that do that. A lot of them do it legally, by means of corporate welfare, but while it can be despicable, it does not qualify as theft. Failure to pay taxes usually is illegal, but can not be sensibly defined as theft.
- murbard2 10y ago
  Law used to define some people as property. It's extremely reductive to equate the concept of property with what the law happens to say.

dang 10y ago

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11840853 and marked it off-topic.