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>arbitrary amounts of money... No proportional amounts of money >Taxes are proportional to earnings, but the amount of money you cost the government is not Y

>arbitrary amounts of money... No proportional amounts of money >Taxes are proportional to earnings, but the amount of money you cost the government is not You don't think Google places rather more demand on the government than me? For instance I go to court occasionally to collect debts from customers. These are single 10 minute sessions before a judge. Compare this to Oracle Vs Google. Or we have a fleet of 11 delivery vehicles using the highways that society created, Amazon has hundreds. We have 100 employees that the state brought up, kept healthy (Yeah I know this is different in the US), educated and delivered to us at 16 ready to work. Google has 74k employees, Amazon has 566k. Then there is regulation, I am not in a position to abuse the market, these guys are and should pay for the arbitration and oversight that this needs. > charge them a reasonable price based on the services they use Yes, a reasonable price, hundreds of millions of dollars every year in every territory where they operate.

jstanley 9y ago
Why do you believe the taxes should be proportional to what they earn rather than what they cost the government?
- paulryanrogers 9y ago
  Not the OP but one reason to tax by earnings could be to capture unmeasured externalities, like fewer choices in the absence of competition. (Although that example would assume earnings strongly relates to marketshare.)
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  Because the profits a company makes are a good proxy for the amount they cost the government, because larger companies require much more state intervention. I think I covered that above already. Turning the question back on you, how would you measure the cost to the government? Per patent, per line of copyrighted material you are protecting? Per mile driven, per minute the regulator had to spend on them? Per employee they take on? Per police call perhaps? Per crime they were a victim of? Per minute the politicians had to spend on them? Per the amount of debt that the government is allowing them to run up, whilst offering limited liability? That sounds like a pretty expensive return to fill out?
  - outsideoflife 9y ago
    The OECD suggest that one measure of good taxation is it's efficiency. Progressively taxing profits seems to meet that goal. 'Cost to the government' sounds tricky to measure however
    - Pokepokalypse 9y ago
      >The OECD suggest that one measure of good taxation is it's efficiency. This suggests we should not tax at all. This suggests we should simply invent money as-needed. Destroy it when not-needed. Some call that "Marxism".
      - jimnotgym 9y ago
        I think you may have misunderstood. When the OECD talk of efficiency, they mean a tax that is efficient to collect. It is one of the fundamental principles of taxation in the study of economics. "Efficiency: Compliance costs to business and administration costs for governments should be minimised as far as possible." That is a quote from OECD (2014), "Fundamental principles of taxation", in Addressing the Tax Challenges of the Digital Economy, OECD Publishing, Paris. This seems like a fair criticism of the post above where something other than a progressive income/profit tax was being suggested. RE: Marxism I don't really think you have taken the time to find out who the OECD are. The OECD are the "Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development". Their role is to spread the market economy, and in particular work on double taxation treaties between countries. The antithesis of Marxism. > This suggests we should simply invent money as-needed. Destroy it when not-needed. This is the kind of misunderstanding you get when you model national finance like a household budget. Money is created and destroyed constantly by governments, and even more so by banks. When banks lend money it comes from nowhere. Governments run deficits for years, where they create money that didn't exist before.Taxation is exactly the destruction of money. This is not Marxism, it is economics.
  - jstanley 9y ago
    I don't have any idea how taxes should be based on what you cost, but I don't see punishing success as a fair way to do it. For me personally, it's quite clear that in years where I make more money and therefore pay more taxes, I haven't cost the government any more.
- threatofrain 9y ago
  Does that mean a society where we have the disabled and sick pay extra? And those who have children and attend school services should also potentially pay extra? And those who are rural should also pay extra?
  - jstanley 9y ago
    Yes

jstanley 9y ago

Why do you believe the taxes should be proportional to what they earn rather than what they cost the government?

paulryanrogers 9y ago
Not the OP but one reason to tax by earnings could be to capture unmeasured externalities, like fewer choices in the absence of competition. (Although that example would assume earnings strongly relates to marketshare.)
jimnotgym 9y ago
Because the profits a company makes are a good proxy for the amount they cost the government, because larger companies require much more state intervention. I think I covered that above already. Turning the question back on you, how would you measure the cost to the government? Per patent, per line of copyrighted material you are protecting? Per mile driven, per minute the regulator had to spend on them? Per employee they take on? Per police call perhaps? Per crime they were a victim of? Per minute the politicians had to spend on them? Per the amount of debt that the government is allowing them to run up, whilst offering limited liability? That sounds like a pretty expensive return to fill out?
- outsideoflife 9y ago
  The OECD suggest that one measure of good taxation is it's efficiency. Progressively taxing profits seems to meet that goal. 'Cost to the government' sounds tricky to measure however
  - Pokepokalypse 9y ago
    >The OECD suggest that one measure of good taxation is it's efficiency. This suggests we should not tax at all. This suggests we should simply invent money as-needed. Destroy it when not-needed. Some call that "Marxism".
    - jimnotgym 9y ago
      I think you may have misunderstood. When the OECD talk of efficiency, they mean a tax that is efficient to collect. It is one of the fundamental principles of taxation in the study of economics. "Efficiency: Compliance costs to business and administration costs for governments should be minimised as far as possible." That is a quote from OECD (2014), "Fundamental principles of taxation", in Addressing the Tax Challenges of the Digital Economy, OECD Publishing, Paris. This seems like a fair criticism of the post above where something other than a progressive income/profit tax was being suggested. RE: Marxism I don't really think you have taken the time to find out who the OECD are. The OECD are the "Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development". Their role is to spread the market economy, and in particular work on double taxation treaties between countries. The antithesis of Marxism. > This suggests we should simply invent money as-needed. Destroy it when not-needed. This is the kind of misunderstanding you get when you model national finance like a household budget. Money is created and destroyed constantly by governments, and even more so by banks. When banks lend money it comes from nowhere. Governments run deficits for years, where they create money that didn't exist before.Taxation is exactly the destruction of money. This is not Marxism, it is economics.
- jstanley 9y ago
  I don't have any idea how taxes should be based on what you cost, but I don't see punishing success as a fair way to do it. For me personally, it's quite clear that in years where I make more money and therefore pay more taxes, I haven't cost the government any more.
threatofrain 9y ago
Does that mean a society where we have the disabled and sick pay extra? And those who have children and attend school services should also potentially pay extra? And those who are rural should also pay extra?
- jstanley 9y ago
  Yes