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Why does everyone focus on hiking corporate taxes when the top corporations skirt around and pay 0 tax?

koolba 3y ago
Because corporations can’t vote so you’re only directly alienating people with a basic understanding finance and economics. Corporate taxes should be zero. Anything else stifles innovation and leads to double taxation.
- asynchronous 3y ago
  I feel as though if a corporation is hoarding billions of dollars worth of wealth (without reinvesting it or doing something positive to the economy with it) then I do think society should incentivize them by taxing the hoard.
  - lazide 3y ago
    At some point that hoard has to go somewhere or do something no? It gets taxed then. Even if it just inflated the share price, if the shares get traded, there are capital gains taxes.
    - medvezhenok 3y ago
      Have you heard of the buy, borrow & die strategy? Basically once you are rich enough, you can live off of loans collateralized by your property/stocks and then after you die the cost basis gets stepped up to market value thereby avoiding capital gains taxes for your descendants.
      - lazide 3y ago
        Last I heard, Elon ended up paying one of the largest tax bills of a private individual - ever. It works until it doesn’t.
- ithkuil 3y ago
  What about a foreign corporation making money in the USA and then taking that money away and investing it their country? Should that be taxed before the capital exits your country?
- medvezhenok 3y ago
  Corporate taxes are a hacky workaround for the game-able system of individual income taxes (specifically game-able at the rich level via things like real estate depreciation, art valuation, etc). And also game-able via the buy-borrow-die strategy. We want to slow down the natural growth of inequality - it grows because the economies of scale that are available today lead to many natural monopolies which were not possible in the past, and because people closer to the source of money get more than others via the Cantillon Effect - not because of anything special that they did per se.

Because corporations can’t vote so you’re only directly alienating people with a basic understanding finance and economics. Corporate taxes should be zero. Anything else stifles innovation and leads to double taxation.

asynchronous 3y ago
I feel as though if a corporation is hoarding billions of dollars worth of wealth (without reinvesting it or doing something positive to the economy with it) then I do think society should incentivize them by taxing the hoard.
- lazide 3y ago
  At some point that hoard has to go somewhere or do something no? It gets taxed then. Even if it just inflated the share price, if the shares get traded, there are capital gains taxes.
  - medvezhenok 3y ago
    Have you heard of the buy, borrow & die strategy? Basically once you are rich enough, you can live off of loans collateralized by your property/stocks and then after you die the cost basis gets stepped up to market value thereby avoiding capital gains taxes for your descendants.
    - lazide 3y ago
      Last I heard, Elon ended up paying one of the largest tax bills of a private individual - ever. It works until it doesn’t.
ithkuil 3y ago
What about a foreign corporation making money in the USA and then taking that money away and investing it their country? Should that be taxed before the capital exits your country?
medvezhenok 3y ago
Corporate taxes are a hacky workaround for the game-able system of individual income taxes (specifically game-able at the rich level via things like real estate depreciation, art valuation, etc). And also game-able via the buy-borrow-die strategy. We want to slow down the natural growth of inequality - it grows because the economies of scale that are available today lead to many natural monopolies which were not possible in the past, and because people closer to the source of money get more than others via the Cantillon Effect - not because of anything special that they did per se.