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If you're going to legally treat corporations the same as actual humans - then tax them the same. We pay taxes for services we expect from governments, defence

• valenterry 5y ago
  Exactly this. Imagine a company that has makes X dollars and spends X dollars. So the company pays no tax. What that means is that all the other tax payers pay for all the infrastructure. And that's fine, but if such a company ever needs to call the police and go to court, etc., they then would have to pay all of that out of their pockets (i.e. the work of the police, the lawyers and judges, and so on).
  • peoplefromibiza 5y ago
    the fact that streets are illuminate at night and pollice patrols them is using services provided by taxpayer's money. Uber benefits from streets more than the average citizen. if corporations had to pay per use, they would prefer to build their private infrastructures and police forces, while public infrastructure would lag behind chronically underfunded.
    • lostcolony 5y ago
      I'm not entirely sure why you think what corporations -prefer- matters when it comes to a discussion on taxation?
      • bumby 5y ago
        Well they have a right to petition the government in the US at least. Would you say the same about what citizens prefer does not matter in a representative democracy?
        • lostcolony 5y ago
          Citizens tend to be all over the place when it comes to taxation. Traditional corporations are pure profit seeking entities. What they would -prefer- is to pay no taxes at all, while benefiting from all tax paid services they can. So I'm not really sure, given we're talking hypotheticals here anyway, that designing a system to tax corporations based on what they -prefer- is really going to get us anywhere. The current system, whereby many major corporations pay nothing in taxes, while benefiting from major government subsidies, directly and indirectly, is already pretty close to what they'd -prefer-.
          • bumby 5y ago
            >would -prefer- is to pay no taxes at all, while benefiting from all tax paid services they can. I think you could probably preface the above with the word “citizens” and it would still be true. But both citizens and corporations have the right to lobby their representatives in their own interest. It’s the politicians job to try and create policy that balances the interests of all their constituents.
            • lostcolony 5y ago
              I addressed citizens in the very first sentence. I, personally, would happily pay -more- in taxes, if it meant that, for instance, we stopped all fundraising for elections (and instead candidates had a set amount to spend per race), and also if we provided healthcare to everyone.
              • bumby 5y ago
                Ah, ok I didn’t realize context of “all over the place” meant in terms of reasons for taxation. I do think there is a growing movement in business to have a multi-dimensional focus. B-Corps are one example.
    • valenterry 5y ago
      I don't think building "private infrastructure" in the sense of streets on public ground would make any sense or ever be allowed. The company could just pay for the usage of the road (in some way) and the government makes sure the roads exist. Besides the bureaucratic overhead, I don't see why that couldn't work.
      • redler 5y ago
        I think you just described corporate taxes.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • ahallock 5y ago
    I agree. Just charge everyone a monthly fee for essential gov services. And do I mean essential. If you want extra programs from the gov, you need to pay voluntarily.
• njovin 5y ago
  I look forward to the day that we punish corporations by removing their freedom (ability to operate) instead of fining them laughably small percentages of their yearly revenue for serious violations of laws and regulations. In reality I understand that this would harm the employees and the public to an unacceptable degree so maybe some form of “jail time” whereby all profits go directly to non-executive employees and price discounts would be more effective. Depriving shareholders of dividends may lead investors to “vote with their wallets” and we’d see more of an actual free market instead of what we have today where economy-destroying decisions go effectively unpunished and in some cases are rewarded by bail outs.
  • vmception 5y ago
    Right, actually impairing a corporation leads to a monopoly and less competition which the state doesn’t want to be directly responsible for This guides the trend in enforcement actions or lack thereof There are some books on this
  • alien_ 5y ago
    Confiscating profits wouldn't work, many companies are reinvesting their profits. Probably the best way would be to just make the fines hurt more, by using a fixed and non-negligible percentage of the monthly/yearly revenue, much like Finland does for traffic fines.
    • reacharavindh 5y ago
      I can’t believe we as a society don’t adopt this idea more. Punishment should be a percentage of taxable income of that year. The impact should equally felt regardless of your current financial status. Extending this to a corporation would simply put them in back foot in a market.. which is indeed the punishment.
      • HWR_14 5y ago
        In the US, income based fines have questionable constitutional allowability. I fall on the "the seem constitutional" side, but some people apparently think it violates the 8th amendment.
• Ericson2314 5y ago
  But then it's highly unfair to tax humans on revenue, but corporations on profit. I think the right answer is VAT + externalities taxes (LVT, Cabon tax, etc.) + UBI, which is both very easy to enforce and perhaps net progressive enough. Re "progressive enough": I don't so much care if BWM owners are screwed over relative to private jet owners on paper, I think reducing work hours and propping up demand at the bottom with UBI will have a trickle-up effect. There might be room for a wealth tax, but I think it might be less loophole-prone and better theoretically to attack that problem more directly and less monetarily in terms of socializing key natural monopolies, promoting coops, etc. Trying to financialize the big question of "who controls the means of production" I think might be just too difficult.
  • milesward 5y ago
    DING DING DING
  • anoncake 5y ago
    If you can deduct work-related expenses, income tax is a tax on "profit".
  • HWR_14 5y ago
    > But then it's highly unfair to tax humans on revenue, but corporations on profit. Wow, it's a good thing we don't do that. Good news, the income you spend to further your business is deductible. We include a personal exemption for generic costs, child exemptions, mortgage exemptions, healthcare cost exemptions, retirement savings exemptions, and numerous others. Additionally, the whole concept behind a progressive income tax is to tax people in a similar way to taxing them on profit. After all, percent of income spent on necessary goods goes down as income goes up. But I don't think anyone wants a system where this is done by itemized receipts instead of with generalizations.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • pmalynin 5y ago
      Huh? How is it not unfair that, for example I can’t deduct rent from my income? A company would be able to do that. What about amortizing the cost of my domicile over 30 years? The personal exemptions are a sham and do not reflect the reality of high cost of living areas.
• cle 5y ago
  But they aren't always treated the same as humans. In some cases they are, but it is not a blanket "corporations are people". In order for me to buy an argument like this, you'd need to dig into the specifics of how the ways in which corporations are treated the same as people justifies the argument. And also consider the ways in which corporations aren't treated the same, why they are treated differently, and how that also impacts the argument.
• stuaxo 5y ago
  Exactly, 15 percent is nothing.
• fallingknife 5y ago
  We don't legally treat them the same, though. That's a myth.
• asdfasgasdgasdg 5y ago
  > If you're going to legally treat corporations the same as actual humans ... We don't do that, though, not by a long shot. There are some cases where the rules are the same but many, many cases where they are different. So I don't think that can serve as an argument that they should be taxed the same.
• sologoub 5y ago
  1 through 6 already lead to taxes being paid - sales/VAT taxes in most places, individual income taxes, employee social security/retirement contributions and so on. Share buybacks lead to greater stock value and therefore income when sold for the owners, who in term are taxed as individuals. You theoretically could have a hold Corp that never paid out anything and instead funded the lifestyle of the owners/employees, but I’m sure there are ways to close that and the current 15% min is a far cry from what most people pay.
• throwaway34241 5y ago
  Humans are taxed on their income. Corporations are taxed on their profits (they deduct their expenses). Corporations can be taxed on the money coming in, that would look like a sales tax or VAT. The problem with that tax is it falls on the consumer (since what really matters is which transaction you tax, not which side pays the tax). But this brings me to a solution to the corporate tax avoidance issue that has already been figured out by economists, but rarely gets discussed. This is a simplification, but basically corporations have one place money goes in, and two places it goes out, like this: sales = expenses + profits If you tax the sales, but deduct the expenses, this leaves the incidence of the tax on the profits. Unlike profits, it's usually much clearer where the sale takes place so it's much harder to avoid than the existing corporate tax. It's called a border adjustment tax. [1] Where this gets complicated is international trade - how this works is only domestic expenses are deductible. At first glance that seems protectionist, but apparently the currency exchange rates adjust which balances is it out and although it's not obvious it ends up trade-neutral. It was actually seriously proposed as part of US tax reform in 2017, but some big companies were against it so it got killed. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border-adjustment_tax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border-adjustment_tax
  • optimiz3 5y ago
    > Humans are taxed on their income. Corporations are taxed on their profit Not true. States like WA have general B&O taxes which are a tax on revenue, not profit. This makes it much harder to operate thin margin businesses like groceries and manufacturing, while favoring high margin businesses like software.
    • throwaway34241 5y ago
      Sure, I believe Ohio has something similar. More significantly I think (in percentage terms), there are already sales taxes and VATs. But when people are discussing the corporate tax and corporate tax avoidance, usually they're talking about the corporate income tax, which is also what the article is about.
  • bumby 5y ago
    Is this similar to a gross receipts tax?
• dtwest 5y ago
  We don't treat them the same, and we shouldn't treat them the same. Having a multi layered tax policy is complicated and has proved difficult to enforce. Multinational corporations have shown time after time that they are able to get around the first layer of taxation (corporate tax), so why not just eliminate it and put more of the burden on the second layer (income, capital gains, sales tax, etc). The general idea is not to raise or lower net taxes, in this particular instance we could keep net taxes the same while allowing for less corporate avoidance and more targeted tax collection. Companies like Amazon historically have minimized their profit to grow revenue, assets and shareholder value. They barely pay corporate tax while profitable small businesses will pay corporate tax plus the second layer.