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Why are you assuming US citizenship? My SaaS, and sucking billions out of the US economy, doesn't require it. I couldn't pull off 0% taxes without using corpor

Why are you assuming US citizenship? My SaaS, and sucking billions out of the US economy, doesn't require it. I couldn't pull off 0% taxes without using corporate entities that are untaxed, all countries (at least try to) tax all income produced within their jurisdictions.

whb07 6y ago
Because you’re able to pass benefits and productivity presumably to US citizens. Not just that, but fine, you win your arguments as they are perfect. So now, this founder/owners have pallets of US dollars. Where does one spend those funny looking pieces of paper? Poof. There goes that argument of “sucking billions out” as those dollars are FORCED to come back to the US.
RC_ITR 6y ago
This point has been made above, but you think foreign corporations with no meaningful connection to the US are paying significant corporate taxes here? Spotify is a great example. >We have significant net operating loss carry-forwards in Sweden and the United States. As of December 31, 2020, we had net operating loss carry-forwards of €100 million in Luxembourg, €1,293 million in Sweden, €461 million in the United States relating to federal taxes, and €315 million in the United States relating to state taxes. >We have initiated and are in negotiations of an APA between Sweden and the United States governments for tax years 2014 through 2020 covering various transfer pricing matters. These transfer pricing matters may be significant to our consolidated financial statements. In addition, we are subject to the continuous examination of our income tax returns by various tax authorities which could result in assessments against us. Those two lines more or less tell me that Spotify will not pay meaningful US corporate taxes for the next decade. Might as well lose that non-existent tax revenue if that's the 'carrot' that gets the public on board with a wealth tax.
hluska 6y ago
This has been the dream of people around the world for a good part of the last century. It’s a lot harder to achieve than to write hypotheticals about. In practice, the US economy is very good at taking its cut.
gnramires 6y ago
Well, then we could just set a global minimum income tax. However... there's a great problem with this proposal. We're decreasing individual agency and increasing corporate agency. Corporations are massive evolutionary self-defending systems. As this kind of system, they don't fundamentally care (i.e. their survival and reward isn't directly connected) about the wellbeing of their employees or the general population; their success doesn't mean success of employees or our progress as a society. Think about how our bodies don't really regard the wellbeing of our cells (only that they do their jobs to sustain what we do care about) -- and of course that's fine because cells don't think (individually). Since corporations are non-conscious as individual entities (as far as I can tell), they don't have a well-defined wellbeing we should care for, unlike their employees and the population at large. In this sense, they can indeed be seen as AGI overlords fighting with us. If they could replace humans with non-questioning (and without consciousness or well-defined wellbeing) robots they wouldn't bat an eye, as entities. I call this The Great Problem of Consciousness: there are a great many of (abstract) forces and incentives in the Universe, and almost none of them care about the only thing that really matters, the Collective Conscious experience. Profit, nationalism, bureaucracy, authoritarianism, entropy, natural selection, energy gradients, and so on. None of that really cares about our experience (well being), yet they are the major driving forces of the Universe. The great battle is to try to align those gargantuan monsters into our own service. We only have control now because of the precarious situation where: Power ~ Intelligence ~ Consciousness Any variations in this condition will risk to topple humanity (in the sense of conscious individuals with good experience of life), unless we can systematically prevent it (before it prevents us). It's not quite it, but a similar concept is Scott Alexander's Moloch[1]. I'm studying ways to defeat this opponent (if anyone is interested, I hereby invite you to join in!). [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/
RhysU 6y ago
> sucking billions out of the US economy Nah. Every-hypothetical-body in the US paying you billions is getting more in value from your SaaS product than they're paying you for your SaaS product. Otherwise they wouldn't buy it.

whb07 6y ago

Because you’re able to pass benefits and productivity presumably to US citizens. Not just that, but fine, you win your arguments as they are perfect. So now, this founder/owners have pallets of US dollars. Where does one spend those funny looking pieces of paper? Poof. There goes that argument of “sucking billions out” as those dollars are FORCED to come back to the US.

RC_ITR 6y ago

This point has been made above, but you think foreign corporations with no meaningful connection to the US are paying significant corporate taxes here? Spotify is a great example. >We have significant net operating loss carry-forwards in Sweden and the United States. As of December 31, 2020, we had net operating loss carry-forwards of €100 million in Luxembourg, €1,293 million in Sweden, €461 million in the United States relating to federal taxes, and €315 million in the United States relating to state taxes. >We have initiated and are in negotiations of an APA between Sweden and the United States governments for tax years 2014 through 2020 covering various transfer pricing matters. These transfer pricing matters may be significant to our consolidated financial statements. In addition, we are subject to the continuous examination of our income tax returns by various tax authorities which could result in assessments against us. Those two lines more or less tell me that Spotify will not pay meaningful US corporate taxes for the next decade. Might as well lose that non-existent tax revenue if that's the 'carrot' that gets the public on board with a wealth tax.

hluska 6y ago

This has been the dream of people around the world for a good part of the last century. It’s a lot harder to achieve than to write hypotheticals about. In practice, the US economy is very good at taking its cut.

gnramires 6y ago

Well, then we could just set a global minimum income tax. However... there's a great problem with this proposal. We're decreasing individual agency and increasing corporate agency. Corporations are massive evolutionary self-defending systems. As this kind of system, they don't fundamentally care (i.e. their survival and reward isn't directly connected) about the wellbeing of their employees or the general population; their success doesn't mean success of employees or our progress as a society. Think about how our bodies don't really regard the wellbeing of our cells (only that they do their jobs to sustain what we do care about) -- and of course that's fine because cells don't think (individually). Since corporations are non-conscious as individual entities (as far as I can tell), they don't have a well-defined wellbeing we should care for, unlike their employees and the population at large. In this sense, they can indeed be seen as AGI overlords fighting with us. If they could replace humans with non-questioning (and without consciousness or well-defined wellbeing) robots they wouldn't bat an eye, as entities. I call this The Great Problem of Consciousness: there are a great many of (abstract) forces and incentives in the Universe, and almost none of them care about the only thing that really matters, the Collective Conscious experience. Profit, nationalism, bureaucracy, authoritarianism, entropy, natural selection, energy gradients, and so on. None of that really cares about our experience (well being), yet they are the major driving forces of the Universe. The great battle is to try to align those gargantuan monsters into our own service. We only have control now because of the precarious situation where: Power ~ Intelligence ~ Consciousness Any variations in this condition will risk to topple humanity (in the sense of conscious individuals with good experience of life), unless we can systematically prevent it (before it prevents us). It's not quite it, but a similar concept is Scott Alexander's Moloch[1]. I'm studying ways to defeat this opponent (if anyone is interested, I hereby invite you to join in!). [1]: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

RhysU 6y ago

> sucking billions out of the US economy Nah. Every-hypothetical-body in the US paying you billions is getting more in value from your SaaS product than they're paying you for your SaaS product. Otherwise they wouldn't buy it.