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I hope they realise that every tax levied on a corporation will simply get passed on to the consumer eventually. I don't think these additional taxes make any s

I hope they realise that every tax levied on a corporation will simply get passed on to the consumer eventually. I don't think these additional taxes make any sense along with a personal income tax. It should be one or the other.

appplication 3y ago
The logical extension of this argument seems to be that the most consumer friendly policy would be to not tax corporations at all. I’m not sure I would agree with that.
- zemvpferreira 3y ago
  I personally would. Corporations are not people and shouldn't be treated as such. Taxing personal income after receiving dividends or salary seems like a much better option all-around.
  - tryptophan 3y ago
    And is also much simpler and clearer to implement.
  - thelastgallon 3y ago
    Or, don't tax people's income; just tax corporations on profit/revenue. The wealthiest 0.1% have negligible income; the middle class bears the brunt of taxation. All companies run on corporate welfare. They refuse to do anything without significant funding from Govt. Big 3 Auto got many bailouts, $250B in profits but don't have any money to build charging stations/network or invest in making an EV that people would like to buy. Big Telcos took 100s of billions for broadband access, which they never delivered. Oil companies get trillions in subsidies every year[2]. Middle class pays all the taxes, both direct and indirect. Indirect taxes are inflation, people's hard-earned-and-saved money loses 98% of value in a few decades, thanks to Govt printing massive amounts of money and giving it to Corporations (privatizing profits and socialize losses). And we also pay for substantially degraded quality of life from externalities, pollution (air pollution kills 10M/year [3]), PFAS, climate change, lead, etc. And no, the top 1% is not wealthy, its the top 0.1% that matters. Media talks about the top 1%, these are usually people who worked their ass off sacrificing everything for 2+ decades to get to a decent income but, but thats temporary. Most of them are going to fall out of that income bracket, with layoffs, with burnout, the sacrifices made catch up to you, you either get physical or mental health issues. [1] Profits at the “Big 3” auto companies—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis— skyrocketed 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250 billion. Forecasts for 2023 expect more than $32 billion in additional profits: https://www.epi.org/blog/uaw-automakers-negotiations/ https://www.epi.org/blog/uaw-automakers-negotiations/ [2] https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-pollution-deaths-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
    - imtringued 3y ago
      You can't tax on revenue because that would result in taxing the same revenue multiple times. You would have to tax added value instead.
- perryizgr8 3y ago
  If there is a personal income tax, then yes, there shouldn't be any corporate tax at all. It doesn't make sense. It's just double/triple taxation then. Money is only ever useful to a human at the end of the chain. Corporations and any other legal entities are fictions we create. There's no point taxing these intermediaries as long as every individual is being taxed on their income.
- jf785 3y ago
  Both sides are taxed - consumption and production. Both can be balanced out by tieing things, not to arbit rates pulled out of someone's ass, but to land and energy use. The biggest users of the planets resources need to be taxed the most.
generic92034 3y ago
> I hope they realise that every tax levied on a corporation will simply get passed on to the consumer eventually. So it is impossible that the profit for owners/shareholders/etc. will sink instead of prices rising?
- johngladtj 3y ago
  Only temporarily. Over time investors will simply not invest if they aren't suitably compensated.
  - generic92034 3y ago
    Well, wouldn't they have a hard time finding suitable markets, if about every large market adopts those taxes? The USA already has them. It is an OECD initiative.
    - richdougherty 3y ago
      Just speculating, but perhaps share prices would drop until the returns per dollar invested recovers to the desired level. So it might be like a one off shock to investors who hold shares now, since the new equilibrium has shares priced lower to get the same returns as before the tax.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - petre 3y ago
      Russia, China and almost the whole of African, Asian and Middle Eastern states are not OECD members. Most South American and Eastern European states are applicants. The corporations could try to sell their stuff and avoid this tax in the Middle Eastern states that are not under sanctions and possibly India and Pakistan. The rest are either under sanctions, export restrictions, too poor or too small to bother with or they'll have a hard time getting their profits out of.
- 3y ago
vikramkr 3y ago
In this case, it might not have that effect if it instead onshores money that would have been held in Ireland or Bermuda instead
- sieabahlpark 3y ago
  [dead]
Epa095 3y ago
I invite you to actually spell out that argument. Remember that companies are taxed on their surplus, not their income. So this means that these kinds of taxes are not a extra cost that is evenly distributed among all companies, companies with low or no surplus will pay little. Up-coming competitors (with low surplus) get an advantage, increasing competition. If the companies could simply increase their prices 15% today without loosing to competition with others, they would already have done so.
- Horffupolde 3y ago
  No, because that’d be an independent increase. In this case shareholders are arbitraging their capital against central bank interest rates. So parent holds.
imtringued 3y ago
That isn't the point. There are lots of countries with high corporate income taxes on the domestic level. By the way, the consumer only ends up paying the tax if the taxed corporate income is necessary for a future investment or production process. If the corporate income is paid out to owners and investors then the consumer carries none of the cost. The point is that all countries should equalize their tax rates so that the differences between tax optimized international companies and unoptimized local companies shrinks.
alphanullmeric 3y ago
It should be neither. Taxes should be a service fee proportional to your usage of a government service. Income shouldn’t even be part of the equation. The USPS charges more if you want to ship heavier packages, not if you get a raise. Personal vs corporate is irrelevant. Pay your fair share.
- perryizgr8 3y ago
  100% agreed, but that is too radical for most people. So I don't start with that :D
- howrar 3y ago
  That works for things that only benefit the person directly using the service, and shipping packages would probably be one of those. It doesn't work if you get indirect benefits from other people using the service. For example, how would you quantify how much you use of, say, a government funded mental healthcare system when your neighbour uses it to get a handle on their life and stop flinging garbage over your fence every evening? Or of law enforcement apprehending a burglar a few blocks away who may or may not target your home next if they were left to their own devices?
  - alphanullmeric 3y ago
    That’s correct, you pay for what you use and don’t pay for what you don’t. It’s irrelevant as to how much something someone else chose to do benefitted me. My lemonade stand doesn’t owe the cinema you decided to open up next to me any money. The only case where you ever have a right to force me to pay you is if we both voluntarily entered an agreement to transact. The “indirect” talking point is something some people like to say so that they can arbitrarily increase someone else’s tax burden by claiming they benefited from an infinite list of things without needing to quantify anything. Simultaneously they can arbitrarily decrease their own tax burden by choosing a threshold of income above their own at which they decide these “indirect benefits” come into play. I’m not interested in that argument. Pay your fair share.
    - 3y ago

appplication 3y ago

The logical extension of this argument seems to be that the most consumer friendly policy would be to not tax corporations at all. I’m not sure I would agree with that.

zemvpferreira 3y ago
I personally would. Corporations are not people and shouldn't be treated as such. Taxing personal income after receiving dividends or salary seems like a much better option all-around.
- tryptophan 3y ago
  And is also much simpler and clearer to implement.
- thelastgallon 3y ago
  Or, don't tax people's income; just tax corporations on profit/revenue. The wealthiest 0.1% have negligible income; the middle class bears the brunt of taxation. All companies run on corporate welfare. They refuse to do anything without significant funding from Govt. Big 3 Auto got many bailouts, $250B in profits but don't have any money to build charging stations/network or invest in making an EV that people would like to buy. Big Telcos took 100s of billions for broadband access, which they never delivered. Oil companies get trillions in subsidies every year[2]. Middle class pays all the taxes, both direct and indirect. Indirect taxes are inflation, people's hard-earned-and-saved money loses 98% of value in a few decades, thanks to Govt printing massive amounts of money and giving it to Corporations (privatizing profits and socialize losses). And we also pay for substantially degraded quality of life from externalities, pollution (air pollution kills 10M/year [3]), PFAS, climate change, lead, etc. And no, the top 1% is not wealthy, its the top 0.1% that matters. Media talks about the top 1%, these are usually people who worked their ass off sacrificing everything for 2+ decades to get to a decent income but, but thats temporary. Most of them are going to fall out of that income bracket, with layoffs, with burnout, the sacrifices made catch up to you, you either get physical or mental health issues. [1] Profits at the “Big 3” auto companies—Ford, General Motors, and Stellantis— skyrocketed 92% from 2013 to 2022, totaling $250 billion. Forecasts for 2023 expect more than $32 billion in additional profits: https://www.epi.org/blog/uaw-automakers-negotiations/ https://www.epi.org/blog/uaw-automakers-negotiations/ [2] https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel-subsidies-surged-to-record-7-trillion https://www.imf.org/en/Blogs/Articles/2023/08/24/fossil-fuel... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-pollution-deaths-climate-change.html https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/08/opinion/environment/air-p...
  - imtringued 3y ago
    You can't tax on revenue because that would result in taxing the same revenue multiple times. You would have to tax added value instead.
perryizgr8 3y ago
If there is a personal income tax, then yes, there shouldn't be any corporate tax at all. It doesn't make sense. It's just double/triple taxation then. Money is only ever useful to a human at the end of the chain. Corporations and any other legal entities are fictions we create. There's no point taxing these intermediaries as long as every individual is being taxed on their income.
jf785 3y ago
Both sides are taxed - consumption and production. Both can be balanced out by tieing things, not to arbit rates pulled out of someone's ass, but to land and energy use. The biggest users of the planets resources need to be taxed the most.

generic92034 3y ago

> I hope they realise that every tax levied on a corporation will simply get passed on to the consumer eventually. So it is impossible that the profit for owners/shareholders/etc. will sink instead of prices rising?

johngladtj 3y ago
Only temporarily. Over time investors will simply not invest if they aren't suitably compensated.
- generic92034 3y ago
  Well, wouldn't they have a hard time finding suitable markets, if about every large market adopts those taxes? The USA already has them. It is an OECD initiative.
  - richdougherty 3y ago
    Just speculating, but perhaps share prices would drop until the returns per dollar invested recovers to the desired level. So it might be like a one off shock to investors who hold shares now, since the new equilibrium has shares priced lower to get the same returns as before the tax.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - petre 3y ago
    Russia, China and almost the whole of African, Asian and Middle Eastern states are not OECD members. Most South American and Eastern European states are applicants. The corporations could try to sell their stuff and avoid this tax in the Middle Eastern states that are not under sanctions and possibly India and Pakistan. The rest are either under sanctions, export restrictions, too poor or too small to bother with or they'll have a hard time getting their profits out of.
3y ago

vikramkr 3y ago

In this case, it might not have that effect if it instead onshores money that would have been held in Ireland or Bermuda instead

sieabahlpark 3y ago
[dead]

Epa095 3y ago

I invite you to actually spell out that argument. Remember that companies are taxed on their surplus, not their income. So this means that these kinds of taxes are not a extra cost that is evenly distributed among all companies, companies with low or no surplus will pay little. Up-coming competitors (with low surplus) get an advantage, increasing competition. If the companies could simply increase their prices 15% today without loosing to competition with others, they would already have done so.

Horffupolde 3y ago
No, because that’d be an independent increase. In this case shareholders are arbitraging their capital against central bank interest rates. So parent holds.

imtringued 3y ago

That isn't the point. There are lots of countries with high corporate income taxes on the domestic level. By the way, the consumer only ends up paying the tax if the taxed corporate income is necessary for a future investment or production process. If the corporate income is paid out to owners and investors then the consumer carries none of the cost. The point is that all countries should equalize their tax rates so that the differences between tax optimized international companies and unoptimized local companies shrinks.

alphanullmeric 3y ago

It should be neither. Taxes should be a service fee proportional to your usage of a government service. Income shouldn’t even be part of the equation. The USPS charges more if you want to ship heavier packages, not if you get a raise. Personal vs corporate is irrelevant. Pay your fair share.

perryizgr8 3y ago
100% agreed, but that is too radical for most people. So I don't start with that :D
howrar 3y ago
That works for things that only benefit the person directly using the service, and shipping packages would probably be one of those. It doesn't work if you get indirect benefits from other people using the service. For example, how would you quantify how much you use of, say, a government funded mental healthcare system when your neighbour uses it to get a handle on their life and stop flinging garbage over your fence every evening? Or of law enforcement apprehending a burglar a few blocks away who may or may not target your home next if they were left to their own devices?
- alphanullmeric 3y ago
  That’s correct, you pay for what you use and don’t pay for what you don’t. It’s irrelevant as to how much something someone else chose to do benefitted me. My lemonade stand doesn’t owe the cinema you decided to open up next to me any money. The only case where you ever have a right to force me to pay you is if we both voluntarily entered an agreement to transact. The “indirect” talking point is something some people like to say so that they can arbitrarily increase someone else’s tax burden by claiming they benefited from an infinite list of things without needing to quantify anything. Simultaneously they can arbitrarily decrease their own tax burden by choosing a threshold of income above their own at which they decide these “indirect benefits” come into play. I’m not interested in that argument. Pay your fair share.
  - 3y ago