4 ms·

Comparing personal income tax rates to corporate tax rates doesn't really make sense. At the end of the chain, corporations are always owned by human beings, wh

by idoh 8y ago

Comparing personal income tax rates to corporate tax rates doesn't really make sense. At the end of the chain, corporations are always owned by human beings, who must pay tax as well (albeit possibly in the form of capital gains or taxes on dividends). Point is, if you are upset, and I'm not trying to say that you shouldn't be, then the focus should be on the difference between tax on income vs capital gains / dividend income.

refulgentis 8y ago
I get it, but I'd remove the first 6/7 of the post and add another 6/7 explaining the last sentence. The first 6/7 is a condescending description of something obvious that doesn't respond to the OP's post, then reads histrionics into the post, then in the final sentences veers towards a real explanation, only to leave the rest as an unobvious exercise to the reader.
sanderjd 8y ago
Something I've always been curious about: if capital gain taxes (for both individuals and corporations) were set to reasonable (high) levels, would there still be a strong argument for taxing corporate profits?
- idoh 8y ago
  It depends on who you ask I suppose. I think it is reasonable to have 0% tax on corporations if the other taxes were correct. An issue is that under that regime many corps would choose to never pay a dividend, so that would have to be fixed somehow.
  - mercutio2 8y ago
    If the only tax on corporations occurred when dividends were paid, corporations would just stop paying dividends. You’ll also have the problem we already have today, where individuals would construct their lives around a closely held corporation. When the corporation is closely held, income is supposed to pass through to the individual for taxation, but the incentives to evade theose rules would be much stronger. In my perfect world most government revenue would come from land value taxes, with a smattering of Pigovian taxes on top, to the extent that the bureaucracy required to levy them wasn’t too onerous.
    - idoh 8y ago
      Ah cool. I see the benefits of having a straight land tax. An issue with that is that the value of land can be hard to figure out and is easy to game. My ideal practical tax would be just a straight sales tax and nothing else. Income = Consumption + Savings, and since we want to encourage savings and investment it seems better and simpler to just do it that way. Total libertarian dream scenario is no taxes, and government funds it self via slight inflation as a tax.

by idoh 8y ago

refulgentis 8y ago

I get it, but I'd remove the first 6/7 of the post and add another 6/7 explaining the last sentence. The first 6/7 is a condescending description of something obvious that doesn't respond to the OP's post, then reads histrionics into the post, then in the final sentences veers towards a real explanation, only to leave the rest as an unobvious exercise to the reader.

sanderjd 8y ago

Something I've always been curious about: if capital gain taxes (for both individuals and corporations) were set to reasonable (high) levels, would there still be a strong argument for taxing corporate profits?

idoh 8y ago
It depends on who you ask I suppose. I think it is reasonable to have 0% tax on corporations if the other taxes were correct. An issue is that under that regime many corps would choose to never pay a dividend, so that would have to be fixed somehow.
- mercutio2 8y ago
  If the only tax on corporations occurred when dividends were paid, corporations would just stop paying dividends. You’ll also have the problem we already have today, where individuals would construct their lives around a closely held corporation. When the corporation is closely held, income is supposed to pass through to the individual for taxation, but the incentives to evade theose rules would be much stronger. In my perfect world most government revenue would come from land value taxes, with a smattering of Pigovian taxes on top, to the extent that the bureaucracy required to levy them wasn’t too onerous.
  - idoh 8y ago
    Ah cool. I see the benefits of having a straight land tax. An issue with that is that the value of land can be hard to figure out and is easy to game. My ideal practical tax would be just a straight sales tax and nothing else. Income = Consumption + Savings, and since we want to encourage savings and investment it seems better and simpler to just do it that way. Total libertarian dream scenario is no taxes, and government funds it self via slight inflation as a tax.