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I wouldn't call a 15% tax on corporations "communism". The actual policy objective is reasonable even if many can argue both sides with rational debate. The ma
by rsj_hn 4y ago
I wouldn't call a 15% tax on corporations "communism". The actual policy objective is reasonable even if many can argue both sides with rational debate.
The main problem is this idea that a bunch of people on the liberal side of the Western world can create "global goals" and try to strong arm the rest of the world into following, which then leads to the inevitable outrage and disappointment when the rest of the world does not follow. And yet it never seems to happen in the other direction -- e.g. Africa deciding on global rules and then trying to force Europe to follow them, assuming they have a right to set global goals. The global goals only flow in one direction.
The idea that corporate tax policy is something that countries outside of the EU have actually thought of, and are doing their best to address in their own way, and for their own purpose, is something that never occurs to these self-described "global planners" who are in reality deeply provincial and trapped in their own micro-culture.
It is also something that people on the other side of this debate have thought of, which is one of the reasons not to tax corporations at all, but to tax those who receive the profits of corporations and that are domiciled in a particular tax jurisdiction. There is a lot of self-contradictory results when you try to tax the business separately from the owner of the business -- for example, a corporation can deduct interest payments but not dividend or share repurchases, when all three are basically the same thing, and a corporation has the option of doing all three. So this incentivizes corporations to take on debt, which then promotes financial fragility. Lots of distortions happen in a vain fight against "tax loopholes", when the real problem is that you are trying to tax the company separately from the owners.
So then you say, "I agree that trying to define 'profits' is prone to tax loopholes, so I will tax corporate revenue". Good idea! But then you will penalize business that have high expenses, e.g. a retail store that buys an item and sells it for a 20% markup would be driven out of business by a 15% tax on sales. So you say, "I will tax revenue net of input prices". And all of a sudden you have a value added tax, which is a form of sales tax, which is regressive. And then people complain about that regressivity and say "we should be taxing income instead", which was my original point!
So you keep chasing your tail because you are making decisions without really thinking things through, much like the decision for the EU to cavalierly set "global goals" even as it's relative importance is rapidly shrinking, even as Asia is pretty much ignoring all these goals because they are following their own interests and don't care about EU global goals.
- poszlem 4y agoIt being a "global goal" is exactly what I don't like. I don't especially care if a country wants to tax their citizens whatever high. My problem is only when we reach a state of a "global government" deciding what's best for specific countries.
- rsj_hn 4y agoThere is really not much to look forward to in Europe besides trying to police others.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoThe continent already feels like it's trying to tax itself to death. I don't know how Europeans survive, and this was before the energy crisis. I do worry European wealth will start to evaporate and we'll see the kind of social strife that occurs when the pension funds run out and people who were promised dignity into old age find out they're not going to get it.
- rr888 4y agoI used to think this until I moved to the USA. Property taxes here are insane. Add state tax, NYC city tax, Social Security etc the marginal taxes are well over 60% of income. And you still have to pay for your own healthcare after that.
- cjbgkagh 4y agoThey're not mutually exclusive, both can be true.