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Because if there's a company (in this case a sole proprietorship) that reports business expenses exceeding income, what is there to tax? The objection is to th

Because if there's a company (in this case a sole proprietorship) that reports business expenses exceeding income, what is there to tax? The objection is to the idea that you can fuck up the world for everyone else and somehow mischaracterize the cleanup of that fuckup as a "normal business expense". The cleanup of an oil spill should come from post-tax profits, the burden should 100% be on the company. They made their profits from the extraction of common resources, they can restore the common resources to a healthily state. If it is economically unviable to do so, well, I guess you shouldn't be extracting those common resources then. If the company cannot afford to perform the cleanup it should be nationalized and sold off until the cleanup can be funded. I'm heavily in favor of this also applying to the Board and Investors in the company, there needs to be real consequences with being involved in world-destroying corporate fuckups. Ideally to the point that being on the Board of an Energy Company carries the very real consequence of flipping burgers for the rest of your days should the company you are supposed to be overseeing fucks up badly enough. The objection is to the idea that one can somehow come out ahead while also fucking the world up for everyone else. The objection is to the complete and total lack of Consequences for Actions.

gruez 5y ago
>The cleanup of an oil spill should come from post-tax profits, the burden should 100% be on the company. or maybe that's already baked into the fine? In other words fine for a bad: $1000 average tax rate: 30% new fine ("from post-tax profits"): $1300 alternatively, the "real" price of the fine: $769.23
ChrisLomont 5y ago
> mischaracterize the cleanup of that fuckup as a "normal business expense" An alternative is to go out of business and leave the total cleanup costs to society instead of paid for out of future profits. Which is better? >If the company cannot afford to perform the cleanup it should be nationalized and sold off until the cleanup can be funded. That mindset adds SuperFund sites - destroy the actor without being able to extract profits over longer periods of time. >Ideally to the point that being on the Board of an Energy Company carries the very real consequence of flipping burgers for the rest of your days And as you drive the risk so high capital will flee the sector, we'll ultimately have higher energy costs and worse technology as places that don't view the world so black and white use a nuanced approach. Then when energy is too costly for the poor, we can screw em or nationalize more things to help them, right? Seems this recipe has been tried places...
- dr_orpheus 5y ago
  > An alternative is to go out of business and leave the total cleanup costs to society instead of paid for out of future profits. I know I'm reading between the lines here a bit, but it seems like that would've been better in this case. "In 2012, the Coast Guard finally ordered Taylor to install a dome to contain the leak, but three years later, when Taylor Energy settled a lawsuit that forced it to start publicly disclosing more about its efforts, the company had not even finished the design... protective dome, finally installed by a contractor the Coast Guard hired after losing faith in Taylor, contains the leak." The expenditure ended up being from the Coast Guard hiring another contractor anyways to stop the oil leak. Part of the complaints here are that this trust was set up for the explicit purpose of stopping the oil leak but didn't seem to actually do anything about it. This is less a question of the tax code part of the conversation but more of fraud of whether those business expenses of the trust were actually going towards the oil spill.

gruez 5y ago

>The cleanup of an oil spill should come from post-tax profits, the burden should 100% be on the company. or maybe that's already baked into the fine? In other words fine for a bad: $1000 average tax rate: 30% new fine ("from post-tax profits"): $1300 alternatively, the "real" price of the fine: $769.23

ChrisLomont 5y ago

> mischaracterize the cleanup of that fuckup as a "normal business expense" An alternative is to go out of business and leave the total cleanup costs to society instead of paid for out of future profits. Which is better? >If the company cannot afford to perform the cleanup it should be nationalized and sold off until the cleanup can be funded. That mindset adds SuperFund sites - destroy the actor without being able to extract profits over longer periods of time. >Ideally to the point that being on the Board of an Energy Company carries the very real consequence of flipping burgers for the rest of your days And as you drive the risk so high capital will flee the sector, we'll ultimately have higher energy costs and worse technology as places that don't view the world so black and white use a nuanced approach. Then when energy is too costly for the poor, we can screw em or nationalize more things to help them, right? Seems this recipe has been tried places...

dr_orpheus 5y ago
> An alternative is to go out of business and leave the total cleanup costs to society instead of paid for out of future profits. I know I'm reading between the lines here a bit, but it seems like that would've been better in this case. "In 2012, the Coast Guard finally ordered Taylor to install a dome to contain the leak, but three years later, when Taylor Energy settled a lawsuit that forced it to start publicly disclosing more about its efforts, the company had not even finished the design... protective dome, finally installed by a contractor the Coast Guard hired after losing faith in Taylor, contains the leak." The expenditure ended up being from the Coast Guard hiring another contractor anyways to stop the oil leak. Part of the complaints here are that this trust was set up for the explicit purpose of stopping the oil leak but didn't seem to actually do anything about it. This is less a question of the tax code part of the conversation but more of fraud of whether those business expenses of the trust were actually going towards the oil spill.