5 ms·

Or stop taxing "profits" but tax every transaction on its total amount, that would also end a lot of "tax niches"

• tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  We already have VAT or sales tax.
  • ttoinou 8y ago
    > Or stop taxing "profits" By "profits" I meant to stop business being able to claim expenses and reduce the tax. We could replace complex taxation scheme only-on-positive-profit with a simple 1% (for example) tax on all transfers, on the total amount, no matter what is the purpose of the money transfer
    • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
      The trouble with that is it will penalise low margin businesses, Apple could easily afford it on their 30% margin but a budget PC maker with a 3% margin would struggle.
      • deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      • ttoinou 8y ago
        Small businesses are already penalized by our current laws and ways of taxing profits. I believe the alternative I am proposing (that will never come to reality) is easier for everyone
        • magduf 8y ago
          Sure, it's easier, but it also means you'll just have a bunch of giant vertically-integrated monopolies. Easier, sure, but I don't see how that's better.
          • ttoinou 8y ago
            It's better because it's cheaper for everyone to do business. More competition, everything gets cheaper.
    • icebraining 8y ago
      That incentivizes the creation of vertically-integrated conglomerates over small companies, in order to reduce the number of transactions; is that what you want to foster?
      • ttoinou 8y ago
        You need to take into account all the simplification it would imply in tax collection / paperwork / regulations etc. The cost of our current ways of taxing wealth and profits is huge
        • JimmyAustin 8y ago
          In the US, the IRS collected $3.33 trillion in revenue in 2018, with a total budget of 11.5 billion (2017). Thats 0.3453%, or 35c per $100 of tax revenue. Fairly minor in the scheme of things.
          • ttoinou 8y ago
            Monetary costs are a small subset of general costs (and the cheapest ones, easier to know and aggregate).
          • jpadkins 8y ago
            that's only one side of the ledger (collection). Now calculate the costs to the taxpayers (people and corps).
• markdown 8y ago
  You mean like VAT/GST.
  • ttoinou 8y ago
    Not like GST : it would be on all transactions in the legal currency, including B2B. There wouldn't be an artificial difference between "businesses" and "customers" Not like VAT : VAT is way more complex and expenses are deducted at each step
    • IanCal 8y ago
      So cheaper for large integrated companies? Sounds like it'd really hurt competitors starting up.
      • tonyedgecombe 8y ago
        It would kill any business with a long supply chain, the only manufacturers left would be the ones where ore arrives at one end of the factory and finished goods come out of the other end.
      • ttoinou 8y ago
        It would be cheaper for everyone because of tax simplifications. Current system is already unfair to a lot of group of people, including small businesses. And large company also have money transfers so I am not sure to understand the example unless we go into the specifics a little bit more