I think what should be taxable here is not a "robot" but a human replacement for the purpose of reducing costs in the pursuit of profit. Gates was talking about

I think what should be taxable here is not a "robot" but a human replacement for the purpose of reducing costs in the pursuit of profit. Gates was talking about industrial job displacing "robots". If you didn't fire your personal assistant to replace him/her with Alexa/Siri or you chauffer because you updated your Tesla software and you're not at least an LLC then that wouldn't count. The point is not to reward businesses that replace workers, but to make that more difficult through loss of revenue and tax complications. This should be seen more as an obstacle than a cost. Most americans (myself included) understand very little about corporate taxation, but are quite aware that through armies of accountants and lawyers the larger companies pay less taxes per dollar than the average american citizen. (a simple google search kicked this back from last year: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/03/07/27-giant-profitable-companies-paid-no-taxes/81399094/ http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/markets/2016/03/07/27-gi...).