30 ms·

I'm not sure I understand (or agree with) his assumption that the full tax returns of corporations are private matters and always must be. That's a choice tha

I'm not sure I understand (or agree with) his assumption that the full tax returns of corporations are private matters and always must be. That's a choice that Congress can make. If corporations are the way for entities to achieve individual profits without individual liabilities, then surely privacy is not the same concern as for individuals' tax returns. Why are corporations (whose structure is granted by law to reap certain benefits with incorporated protections) then further shielded from their tax returns being public to show how they did it? We can (if our leaders were incentivized to do it) choose to have it be true.

shadowmore 6y ago
But our leaders aren't incentivized to do it, because our leaders are incentivized only by the very corporations in question. As in, the corporations, through lobbying, quite literally write the legislation, not the people we actually elect to office. So uprooting corporate tax info transparency rules is something that will never come to pass until other existing systems are demolished, but how do you get the legislators to legislate against their own self-interest?
- cies 6y ago
  > uprooting corporate tax info transparency rules Also the Big Four are not going to like that, they make a lot of money off this.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  I just read a story about how in the 1950s some citizens in Appalachia couldn't get their representatives to give a damn about fixing the run-down single bridge to their small isolated town far away from the big cities of importance. So what they did was to ask the Soviet Union's representative office in the United States to sponsor their bridge repair, and they let all the newspapers know about it. Sooner than you could blink, the state politicians reversed course and ponied up the $ for the bridge. Maybe sometimes what you need is your enemies to be shown to be exploiting your weaknesses so that someone cares enough to fix it.

shadowmore 6y ago

But our leaders aren't incentivized to do it, because our leaders are incentivized only by the very corporations in question. As in, the corporations, through lobbying, quite literally write the legislation, not the people we actually elect to office. So uprooting corporate tax info transparency rules is something that will never come to pass until other existing systems are demolished, but how do you get the legislators to legislate against their own self-interest?

cies 6y ago
> uprooting corporate tax info transparency rules Also the Big Four are not going to like that, they make a lot of money off this.
supernova87a 6y ago
I just read a story about how in the 1950s some citizens in Appalachia couldn't get their representatives to give a damn about fixing the run-down single bridge to their small isolated town far away from the big cities of importance. So what they did was to ask the Soviet Union's representative office in the United States to sponsor their bridge repair, and they let all the newspapers know about it. Sooner than you could blink, the state politicians reversed course and ponied up the $ for the bridge. Maybe sometimes what you need is your enemies to be shown to be exploiting your weaknesses so that someone cares enough to fix it.