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Our congressional representatives are corrupt, doling out tax breaks to wealthy corporations, while ordinary people are left to pay high tax rates on ordinary i

by mckoss 15y ago

Our congressional representatives are corrupt, doling out tax breaks to wealthy corporations, while ordinary people are left to pay high tax rates on ordinary income. I think Google should be ashamed to be part of this corrupt system. It's BS to say that they owe it to their shareholders to try to defraud the federal government of as much tax revenue as possible. They should instead be fighting for corporate tax reform and closing loopholes to make a level playing field and not rewarding "scumbag" corporations.

mahyarm 15y ago
It's not fraud, there is no lying involved in this. Your an international company that gets money from everywhere, your based everywhere, and you have employees everywhere. Who deserves the bulk of the tax revenue? Should Toyota pay the majority of it's taxes to the US because they sell a large amount of cars there, or only the income taxes of their employees in the US and the profits they receive from car sales in the USA? Should Japan get the majority of Toyota's tax revenue because they are headquartered there? Even though the majority of Toyota's income from Japan is minor vs the rest of the world combined? What incentive would they have other than personal reasons to stay then vs just use it as a net-loss R&D center and minor manufacturing plant to avoid tariffs? These things are significantly more gray than you think.
- mckoss 15y ago
  The highest marginal federal tax rate for corporations is 35%. I think that's too high. But Google, a US Corporation, who derives most of it's earnings from it's US operations, is paying but a small fraction of that. I think in the case of Google, they should at least be paying higher tax rates on all advertising earnings from US users; it seems to me they are maying barely 1 tenth of that amount currently. Just as "selective enforcement" of laws leads to corruption, so too does gaming the tax system. Large corporations pay legislators to create these tax loopholes for them.

by mckoss 15y ago

mahyarm 15y ago

It's not fraud, there is no lying involved in this. Your an international company that gets money from everywhere, your based everywhere, and you have employees everywhere. Who deserves the bulk of the tax revenue? Should Toyota pay the majority of it's taxes to the US because they sell a large amount of cars there, or only the income taxes of their employees in the US and the profits they receive from car sales in the USA? Should Japan get the majority of Toyota's tax revenue because they are headquartered there? Even though the majority of Toyota's income from Japan is minor vs the rest of the world combined? What incentive would they have other than personal reasons to stay then vs just use it as a net-loss R&D center and minor manufacturing plant to avoid tariffs? These things are significantly more gray than you think.

mckoss 15y ago
The highest marginal federal tax rate for corporations is 35%. I think that's too high. But Google, a US Corporation, who derives most of it's earnings from it's US operations, is paying but a small fraction of that. I think in the case of Google, they should at least be paying higher tax rates on all advertising earnings from US users; it seems to me they are maying barely 1 tenth of that amount currently. Just as "selective enforcement" of laws leads to corruption, so too does gaming the tax system. Large corporations pay legislators to create these tax loopholes for them.