4 ms·

I'm not sure it's so easy. If you own 51% of a company, which owns a slice of a company, which does business in America, does this grant uncle same the right to

by iguy 7y ago

I'm not sure it's so easy. If you own 51% of a company, which owns a slice of a company, which does business in America, does this grant uncle same the right to collect 5% of your profits? Sounds pretty imperial. Here's another idea though: Arrange things so that the taxes owed depend on the goods sold, not on any ownership structure. Don't sell goods in the US? No problem. Sell mostly in the US? Who cares about your office in the Bahamas. This probably means abolishing the tax on corporate profits, as where these occurred seems to be basically an accounting fiction. Which is fine, we also don't tax windows anymore.

danenania 7y ago
It's definitely imperial, but it's kind of fundamentally an imperial problem to have companies taking advantage of your world-leading economy, then moving all the profits elsewhere to avoid contributing to the society that made all their success possible. Extradition is also imperial, but without it you effectively offer impunity to anyone who can get out of the country before they're caught. We don't offer this type of criminal impunity, so why are we offering tax impunity to the wealthiest and most powerful entities in the world? The VAT idea is interesting and sounds a lot better than what we have now, but still seems like it could be subject to shell games in terms of what gets spent where. Wouldn't it also be extremely complex from a reporting perspective?
- iguy 7y ago
  But not just your economy, I'm sure China feels the same way, as will the EU once they see what you raise... I think the recent reductions in the US tax are moves in this direction, which is good. And what else to tax, lots of countries administer VAT, it's not so difficult, and seems quite hard to dodge. But there are lots of other taxes, too. Income tax + 401k starts to sound like a consumption tax, too, only paid on what you spend right now, like VAT. We can adjust that however we like. And before the profits in Ireland can be turned into a bigger yacht for any owner, they have to be paid as dividends (or by selling shares) by some real person who lives somewhere, and we can tax that.
salawat 7y ago
>I'm not sure it's so easy. If you own 51% of a company, which owns a slice of a company, which does business in America, does this grant uncle same the right to collect 5% of your profits? Sounds pretty imperial. Well, you run into that kind of issue when you allow spontaneous incorporation. If anything, incorporation should likely be handled a bit more like immigration in the sense you recognize an entity incorporated somewhere else instead of whipping up a brand new separate legal fiction, Company X,<Your Country edition>. This would create a mechanism through which issues of taxation could be resolved through tracing the "heritage" of a corporation, then leaving the divvy up of tax extracted value to be sorted out by internation tax agreement. It certainly sets up a pleasing symmetry in process between dealing with Corporations and people by my estimation, and cuts down on the attractiveness of creating corporate hierarchies with the direct intent to play shell games with your taxes.
- iguy 7y ago
  I think you are saying that buying or selling shares should be as difficult as immigration? Or only if the buyer and seller are in different countries?

by iguy 7y ago

danenania 7y ago

It's definitely imperial, but it's kind of fundamentally an imperial problem to have companies taking advantage of your world-leading economy, then moving all the profits elsewhere to avoid contributing to the society that made all their success possible. Extradition is also imperial, but without it you effectively offer impunity to anyone who can get out of the country before they're caught. We don't offer this type of criminal impunity, so why are we offering tax impunity to the wealthiest and most powerful entities in the world? The VAT idea is interesting and sounds a lot better than what we have now, but still seems like it could be subject to shell games in terms of what gets spent where. Wouldn't it also be extremely complex from a reporting perspective?

iguy 7y ago
But not just your economy, I'm sure China feels the same way, as will the EU once they see what you raise... I think the recent reductions in the US tax are moves in this direction, which is good. And what else to tax, lots of countries administer VAT, it's not so difficult, and seems quite hard to dodge. But there are lots of other taxes, too. Income tax + 401k starts to sound like a consumption tax, too, only paid on what you spend right now, like VAT. We can adjust that however we like. And before the profits in Ireland can be turned into a bigger yacht for any owner, they have to be paid as dividends (or by selling shares) by some real person who lives somewhere, and we can tax that.

salawat 7y ago

>I'm not sure it's so easy. If you own 51% of a company, which owns a slice of a company, which does business in America, does this grant uncle same the right to collect 5% of your profits? Sounds pretty imperial. Well, you run into that kind of issue when you allow spontaneous incorporation. If anything, incorporation should likely be handled a bit more like immigration in the sense you recognize an entity incorporated somewhere else instead of whipping up a brand new separate legal fiction, Company X,<Your Country edition>. This would create a mechanism through which issues of taxation could be resolved through tracing the "heritage" of a corporation, then leaving the divvy up of tax extracted value to be sorted out by internation tax agreement. It certainly sets up a pleasing symmetry in process between dealing with Corporations and people by my estimation, and cuts down on the attractiveness of creating corporate hierarchies with the direct intent to play shell games with your taxes.

iguy 7y ago
I think you are saying that buying or selling shares should be as difficult as immigration? Or only if the buyer and seller are in different countries?