12 ms·

There seems to be a repeated response to what I said, so I'll just respond once. The fix for companies using loopholes to avoid taxes is not to raise the tax ra

There seems to be a repeated response to what I said, so I'll just respond once. The fix for companies using loopholes to avoid taxes is not to raise the tax rate. The fix is to remove the loopholes.

ceejayoz 8y ago
A decent chunk of the tax savings from loopholes is channeled back into preventing those loopholes from closing.
bairrd 8y ago
Why not both? People selling physical goods bake a certain percentage of shrinkange into the price of their goods whilst also finding new ways to prevent theft.
ABCLAW 8y ago
>The fix is to remove the loopholes. Is it, though? This is a situation where Chesterton's Fence is important to consider. No single government regulates tax worldwide, and each is iteratively attempting to balance a multitude of concerns, while remaining competitive to capital. Additionally, many of the loopholes aren't legislative tax exemptions on the books. They're determinations regarding how and when certain things are recognized on the books. 'Fixing' those problems doesn't 'remove' loopholes. It just creates new rules which are then exploited. Finally, with respect to tax simplification in general: Simplifying the tax code is akin to refactoring code. Sure, there are some areas where it could be engaged in without causing problems (and which would result in efficiency gains!), but much of the appeal of refactoring code lies in how we ignore the tricky edge cases when designing a new utopic system in our heads. The legal project of re-digesting a highly complicated body of law and producing a more functional version would take, at the very least, a decade of work. So now we're hitting the complexity limits of an administration's compute ability too. Shit. All in all: it's a bit harder than that. I wish you were right, though.
- 1123581321 8y ago
  Chesterton’s Fence would apply to tax rates and new taxes as well.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

There seems to be a repeated response to what I said, so I'll just respond once. The fix for companies using loopholes to avoid taxes is not to raise the tax rate. The fix is to remove the loopholes.

ceejayoz 8y ago

A decent chunk of the tax savings from loopholes is channeled back into preventing those loopholes from closing.

bairrd 8y ago

Why not both? People selling physical goods bake a certain percentage of shrinkange into the price of their goods whilst also finding new ways to prevent theft.

ABCLAW 8y ago

>The fix is to remove the loopholes. Is it, though? This is a situation where Chesterton's Fence is important to consider. No single government regulates tax worldwide, and each is iteratively attempting to balance a multitude of concerns, while remaining competitive to capital. Additionally, many of the loopholes aren't legislative tax exemptions on the books. They're determinations regarding how and when certain things are recognized on the books. 'Fixing' those problems doesn't 'remove' loopholes. It just creates new rules which are then exploited. Finally, with respect to tax simplification in general: Simplifying the tax code is akin to refactoring code. Sure, there are some areas where it could be engaged in without causing problems (and which would result in efficiency gains!), but much of the appeal of refactoring code lies in how we ignore the tricky edge cases when designing a new utopic system in our heads. The legal project of re-digesting a highly complicated body of law and producing a more functional version would take, at the very least, a decade of work. So now we're hitting the complexity limits of an administration's compute ability too. Shit. All in all: it's a bit harder than that. I wish you were right, though.

1123581321 8y ago
Chesterton’s Fence would apply to tax rates and new taxes as well.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]