16 ms·

It's time to give up on shaming big tech companies for their low tax rates

11 points by waxymonkeyfrog 14y ago

ebbv 14y ago
It's not shaming them for their tax rates -- we should shame Congress for not raising taxes, if we all agree taxes should be higher on large corporations. It's shaming them for legal, but unethical behavior. There's a lot of behavior that falls into the area of "legal, but shitty." Large corporations gaming the system to avoid paying taxes falls into that. Don't kid yourself that we can ever totally eliminate this kind of thing. It's a moving goalpost. You pass laws to stop one kind of thing, their highly paid attorneys and accountants will find something else. It's cheaper for them to pay smart people really well to find loopholes than it is for them to pay their legitimate tax rates. If we all behaved the way corporations do -- sticking only to the letter of the law, and exploiting every other opportunity to better ourselves at the expense of everyone else around us -- the world would be a really awful place. We have to point out this behavior and shame the corporations, because negative public opinion possibly affecting their bottom line is the only thing they will respond to.
- JumpCrisscross 14y ago
  The article's gist is that there is the "right"* thing to do and the pragmatic thing, something I've seen discussed on HN before [1]. The pragmatic thing is recognising that there's juicier fruit on lower branches, i.e. personal income and consumption, in terms of cost of securing the tax income and risk of adverse effects/the taxee wiggling out. *I believe value destruction is unethical, sourcing my sense of ethics from the perspective of global long-run production. A company moving assets from the inefficient US government to its private, profitable book is thus good to me. This isn't to start a philosophical flame war on this but to point out that you can't assume this behaviour automatically falls into the "legal, but shitty" area for everyone. [1] http://www.marco.org/2012/02/25/right-vs-pragmatic http://www.marco.org/2012/02/25/right-vs-pragmatic
- swombat 14y ago
  Is exploiting tax loopholes really unethical? Some would argue that the government is the biggest waste of money there is. I'm not saying that's my belief, but let's entertain that thought for a minute. If you believe that the government wastes most, say 95%, of its money on stupid things that should never receive a dollar from anyone (like the war in Iraq, to pick a random one), and you believe that you personally can do more with that money in terms of "making the world a better place", then it follows that paying as little tax as possible is the ethical choice. Let's take an example: Bill Gates. Bill Gates is currently the second richest man on earth, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_list_of_billionaires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_list_of_billionaires . Did he use all those tax schemes on his way there? You bet your bottom dollar he did. Now he's using this money directly to solve problems like curing Africa of Malaria. Do you think he's using that money more efficiently than a government programme would? I'd bet on that too. Would the world be better off if the US government had $20b more and Bill Gates had $20b less? I don't think so. I think Bill Gates can use the money much more intelligently than the US government ever could. So, is it unethical to pour less money into the pointless furnace of wasteful government? I'm not saying this point of view is the only point of view out there. But to declare tax avoidance outright "unethical" is a failure in perspective.
  - bicknergseng 14y ago
    Fabulous argument for benevolent dictatorships.
  - jbooth 14y ago
    It's unethical because we're all on the hook for the money the government spends. That's the social contract. If you think the war in Iraq was a big waste of money (as I do), then great, lobby against that. But once the decision's made, we're all on the hook for the money and wiggling out is akin to welching on a bet or defaulting on a loan when you have the money to pay. Funnily enough, most of the people who complain about "wasteful government spending" were the the loudest advocates of the Iraq war and the expanded modern security state. It turns out everything became way more wasteful and tyrannical on a single day in January 2009.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  I'm not sure you're right to single out corporations here. It seems like all the Real People I know who are aware of simple things they could do to pay less in taxes end up doing them as well.
  - jbooth 14y ago
    Difference being that Real People can't spend 10 million setting up foreign subsidiaries in order to avoid taxation on a billion in income. Different math comes into play when you can fill an office building with lawyers for your tax policy.
    - olalonde 14y ago
      On the other hand, they can much more easily pass under the radar.
      - jbooth 14y ago
        But then you're talking fraud and running a big risk.
    - Symmetry 14y ago
      No, but I know plenty who pay H&R block to help them find all the deductions they're eligible for. This doesn't come out to 10 million, but the income they're sheltering. Its true that large corporations benefit from economies of scale when they try to avoid paying any more taxes than they have to, but I don't see any moral difference between what they're doing and what everyone else does.
  - beagle3 14y ago
    and, in addition to what jbooth wrote above - these corporations lobby for the laws to be changed in their favor. How many Real People do you know who have done that? And is setting up 4 related corporations in 3 different international jurisdiction a "simple" thing?
    - 14y ago
- byrneseyeview 14y ago
  I don't understand why you'd trust a corporation more than Congress when it comes to how the tax code should work. If we all pay what we think we should owe, rather than what the rules tell us we actually owe, that would lead to chaos. "If we all behaved the way corporations do" doesn't really mean anything. Corporations are people. It would be much more accurate to say "If all people behaved like the people who work at Apple, the world would be a worse place," but I don't think that's defensible at all. If it does become a social norm to obey the law you wish Congress passed, instead of the law they actually passed, you're subsidizing people who ignore this norm. I wouldn't want to live in a world where RIMM out-competes Apple because Apple scrupulously follows good, imaginary rules, and RIMM scrupulously follows actual rules instead. This would all be a lot less meaningful if the US had lower corporate tax rates, but ours are effectively the highest in the world. Since the corporate tax rate is also the subsidy for hiding a given amount of income, it's no wonder that we lead the world in tax avoidance, too.
- olalonde 14y ago
  It really isn't that clear. A lot of people regard taxes as unethical.
- gte910h 14y ago
  That's full of crap. What they'll respond to is changing the law! They're just following the law. Beg off the companies, and change it.
jemka 14y ago
Shaming big public companies brings more attention to the discussion, which is a good thing, but I've always felt the entire focus was misdirected. How about ... spend less. Streamline that bloated money burning monstrosity called a government. "Who pays" is probably the last thing we should be talking about.
- archgoon 14y ago
  What do you feel should be cut in government? Where do you feel that money is being misappropriated?
  - Karunamon 14y ago
    Off the top of my head: * Million dollar Vegas conferences? (Recent GSA scandal) * Guantanamo Bay * Unnecessary military bases all over the world Give me a day and access to the books for any branch of government and I would bet my life savings on being able to find hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars, if not millions.
    - alphakappa 14y ago
      The US federal budget is in Trillions. If you can find wastes that range in "hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars, if not millions", they are just a negligible drop in the bucket and it would serve purely to distract from the bigger expenditures. If you were to really spend time on such an exercise, it would be more useful to find the big items that can be reformed, not the minuscule ones that would take up a lot of mindshare but ultimately change nothing.
      - beagle3 14y ago
        I'm sure there's a name for what you've just done to derail the discussion. "strawman" is not exactly it. But you make an impossible demand. I've managed a big budget before. There are usually no more than a few items that account for most of the spending (in the US, these are probably defense, health, pensions and education), which you can usually cut 10% easily, and from that point on, the devil is in the details, both for the big items, and for the smaller level items. And it always looks like there's nothing you can cut, and yet, there is always a lot you can cut, usually in the vicinity of 50%, if you have to, without endangering the viable status of the operation (although the stakeholders - employees / citizens / whatever - will find things are much less convenient than before). Give me a proper OLAPpable database of government expenses (star scheme with properly categorized fact tables), and I'll show you where to cut. And no, it won't be popular or easy, but it's possible. Right now, the US government spends ~60% more[0] than it collects in taxes (otherwise stated: taxes account for only ~70% of US government spending. For 2011, there's 2.4T in tax receipts, 1.3T in borrowing, 2012 is looking worse - http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2011USbn_13bs1n http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2011USbn_1... ). Saying that you cannot reform down to 50% is equivalent to saying that the US cannot be run sustain-ably. I would guess that's not true -- it just cannot be sustained with the current entitlements and spending. [0] Depending on how you look at it. This is using government's own numbers, which do not include e.g. backstops against otherwise bankrupt financial institutions like Freddie, Fannie. And it doesn't include IMHO proper treatment of social security. I estimate it actually spends 100% more than it collects.
zerostar07 14y ago
It's time there is an honest discussion internationally about the biggest shame of western capitalism, tax shelters. It's not just big tech, it's everywhere. What benefit does the world earn from this global sneaking around?
- gte910h 14y ago
  It's not actually everywhere. Countries with imputation based dividend laws have seen strong reductions in corporate tax avoidance.
mikeryan 14y ago
Honestly I'd love to hate Big Corp for doing this. But this really is one of those "Don't Hate The Player - Hate the Game" kind of scenarios. I may run a tiny LLC but I damn well try to get my tax burden down as low as possible too. I can't really fault the Apple's and Chevron's of the World for doing the same. If we want substantive change in the tax system we should be shaming those in our Government who bend backwards to serve corporate interests.
- beagle3 14y ago
  > But this really is one of those "Don't Hate The Player - Hate the Game" kind of scenarios. You've got it wrong. There is no "game", there are only players. For YOU there are game rules. However, when you are as big as Microsoft or Google or Apple or Boeing, you spend millions (or tens of millions) to change the game rules in your favor. If you're Chris Dodd, a former senator who was chairing the financial oversight committee at the time everything crashed and burned (how's that for track record?), you later head the MPAA and you can threaten - on live TV - to stop bribing politicians. Where's the referee who is supposed to enforce the game rules? Ergo, there are only players. Not that hating them is going to help. But the blame rests squarely with the players, who get to redefine the game as they go.
toddasmith 14y ago
How is it unethical for companies to legally pay low taxes? First, realize that a company's tax isn't money growing on trees. Companies pay these taxes by decreasing profits for shareholders, decreasing wages for employees, or increasing the prices of goods and services to consumers (and usually all three). Someone is hurt by collecting these taxes. The idea that government can then go on to spend this money in a way that is more beneficial to society than the cost imposed underlies the assumption that it somehow a good idea to take from some to benefit others. Most people believe that the State must collect some taxes from its subjects, but is this corporate income tax the best method? Increasing the cost of goods essentially taxes consumers in a regressive manner, irrespective of their ability to bear these increased costs. Lowering wages of company employees discourages work and lowers the income taxes collected by the government on these reduced wages. Finally, reducing the profits of shareholders reduces the taxes that would have been collected on dividends and capital gains when the shares are sold; more significantly, reducing the value of investing in companies discourages the creation of wealth and jobs for all of us by reducing the incentives to start and invest in companies. If you think it is unethical to pay few taxes (and realize that for the reasons in the previous paragraph all other countries of the world tax their companies at lower rates than the USA), then you must believe that it is somehow more ethical to pay higher taxes (than is actually owed). If this is so, why aren't you sending in double what you owe in taxes? By your own statements aren't you acting unethically?
- rprasad 14y ago
  Money does not grow on trees; it does however grow in cotton plantations. Corporate taxes decrease profits for shareholders, but do not decreas wages for employees. By definition, corporate taxes are taxes on profits, so employee wages have already been deducted from corporate revenues by the time the tax liability is determined. Nobody is "hurt" collecting taxes. Taxes are simply a nonspecific bill from the government for a massive variety of services rendered directly or indirectly on behalf of the taxpayer. Dividends and capital gains are taxed at lower rates than corporate tax rates. Thus, it is preferrable (from a revenue-generating viewpoint) to collect taxes from the corporation rather than from the dividend payments or the sale of stock. Even if the dividend preference expires, dividends will still be taxed at the individual's marginal rate, which is lower than the corporate income tax rate. Taxes do not reduce the value of investing in companies. Under the time-value of money theory, if a tax can be deferred for 7-8 years, it is as if the tax was never owed. Thus, high taxes increase the value of investing in companies because the deferral opportunities of the corporate investment form offer greater "savings". Finally, your last argument is logical nonsense. Paying less than the statutorilly declared tax rate is what people find unethical. Unethical does not mean "less ethical", it means "not ethical".
newbie12 14y ago
There is no such thing as taxing a "corporation." Corporations are owned by shareholders, and those shareholders pay taxes on the money they invest and in-turn on the gains from that investment. Taxing corporation profits is double-taxation. The proper corporate tax rate should be zero. It is crazy that the government runs myriad business and job subsidy programs while also tax penalizing the most successful, forward-looking companies.
- gte910h 14y ago
  >The proper corporate tax rate should be zero I actually suggest you do something that ends double taxation and the capital gain tax tier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_imputation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_imputation This is why: >Elimination of Tax Incentives >It is also interesting to note that it was soon realised that the system eliminated to a considerable extent the effectiveness of tax incentives for corporations. If a corporation was given a tax break then its incomes thus released from taxation would not generate franking credits precisely because no tax was paid. In turn, this meant that the shareholders received fewer credits along with their dividends, meaning in turn that they had to pay more tax. The net result is that each tax break a corporation itself got was countered by a matching increase in the tax burden of shareholders, leaving shareholders in exactly the same position had no tax break been received by the corporation. Thus, to the extent that corporate directors acted so as to increase shareholder wealth, tax incentives would not influence corporate behaviour.
cletus 14y ago
I disagree with the premise that legally avoiding tax is somehow unethical or wrong (or otherwise something to be shameful for). There's a strong counterargument that not voluntarily handing over money you don't need to is resisting the tyranny of government. The real problem here is twofold: 1. The tax system is too complicated and continues to get more complicated with special interest riders and so forth; and 2. Large companies are free to shop around for friendly tax jurisdictions. The natural endgame here is that you need to treat money going to friendly jurisdictions as avoiding income and tax it at source. (2) is no doubt controversial but I see it as inevitable. An example of (1) is the tax regulation surrounding the expatriation of technology, something legal and blessed by the IRS. It goes to Ireland and money gets funnelled there and then through the Netherlands. It's time to cut that shit out. For individuals I really do think it's time for the flat tax. Call it 25% of what you earn above $20,000 with no deductions and be done with it.
- rprasad 14y ago
  (1) The tax system is very simple if you're not trying to game the system to (EDIT: changed from "or") minimize your tax burden. Almost all of the complexity arises from the allowance for deductions and the related regulations necessary to prevent abuse of those deductions. (2). Worldwide, that is the standard tax practice. It is called "territorial taxation." Source-based taxation is the U.S. practice regarding foreign persons who are citizens of nations with which we have income tax treaties (for purposes of determining which country gets to tax them). The U.S. is an outlier in taxing worldwide income regardless of source. However, getting rid of the Irish structure would require (a) a change in other countries' tax policies or (b) a tax code even more complicated than the one we have right now. Note that I mean "game the system" in the sense of gamifying the outcome. I do not mean game in the sense of "cheating."
  - clarky07 14y ago
    >(1) The tax system is very simple if you're not trying to game the system or minimize your tax burden. Almost all of the complexity arises from the allowance for deductions and the related regulations necessary to prevent abuse of those deductions. How is taking deductions "gaming the system?" Why on earth would I not try to minimize my tax burden. The US government is not a charity, and it functions far worse than most charities do. If I'm just going to give money away, the government is not going to be my first choice for recipient.

ebbv 14y ago

It's not shaming them for their tax rates -- we should shame Congress for not raising taxes, if we all agree taxes should be higher on large corporations. It's shaming them for legal, but unethical behavior. There's a lot of behavior that falls into the area of "legal, but shitty." Large corporations gaming the system to avoid paying taxes falls into that. Don't kid yourself that we can ever totally eliminate this kind of thing. It's a moving goalpost. You pass laws to stop one kind of thing, their highly paid attorneys and accountants will find something else. It's cheaper for them to pay smart people really well to find loopholes than it is for them to pay their legitimate tax rates. If we all behaved the way corporations do -- sticking only to the letter of the law, and exploiting every other opportunity to better ourselves at the expense of everyone else around us -- the world would be a really awful place. We have to point out this behavior and shame the corporations, because negative public opinion possibly affecting their bottom line is the only thing they will respond to.

JumpCrisscross 14y ago
The article's gist is that there is the "right"* thing to do and the pragmatic thing, something I've seen discussed on HN before [1]. The pragmatic thing is recognising that there's juicier fruit on lower branches, i.e. personal income and consumption, in terms of cost of securing the tax income and risk of adverse effects/the taxee wiggling out. *I believe value destruction is unethical, sourcing my sense of ethics from the perspective of global long-run production. A company moving assets from the inefficient US government to its private, profitable book is thus good to me. This isn't to start a philosophical flame war on this but to point out that you can't assume this behaviour automatically falls into the "legal, but shitty" area for everyone. [1] http://www.marco.org/2012/02/25/right-vs-pragmatic http://www.marco.org/2012/02/25/right-vs-pragmatic
swombat 14y ago
Is exploiting tax loopholes really unethical? Some would argue that the government is the biggest waste of money there is. I'm not saying that's my belief, but let's entertain that thought for a minute. If you believe that the government wastes most, say 95%, of its money on stupid things that should never receive a dollar from anyone (like the war in Iraq, to pick a random one), and you believe that you personally can do more with that money in terms of "making the world a better place", then it follows that paying as little tax as possible is the ethical choice. Let's take an example: Bill Gates. Bill Gates is currently the second richest man on earth, according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_list_of_billionaires http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbes_list_of_billionaires . Did he use all those tax schemes on his way there? You bet your bottom dollar he did. Now he's using this money directly to solve problems like curing Africa of Malaria. Do you think he's using that money more efficiently than a government programme would? I'd bet on that too. Would the world be better off if the US government had $20b more and Bill Gates had $20b less? I don't think so. I think Bill Gates can use the money much more intelligently than the US government ever could. So, is it unethical to pour less money into the pointless furnace of wasteful government? I'm not saying this point of view is the only point of view out there. But to declare tax avoidance outright "unethical" is a failure in perspective.
- bicknergseng 14y ago
  Fabulous argument for benevolent dictatorships.
- jbooth 14y ago
  It's unethical because we're all on the hook for the money the government spends. That's the social contract. If you think the war in Iraq was a big waste of money (as I do), then great, lobby against that. But once the decision's made, we're all on the hook for the money and wiggling out is akin to welching on a bet or defaulting on a loan when you have the money to pay. Funnily enough, most of the people who complain about "wasteful government spending" were the the loudest advocates of the Iraq war and the expanded modern security state. It turns out everything became way more wasteful and tyrannical on a single day in January 2009.
Symmetry 14y ago
I'm not sure you're right to single out corporations here. It seems like all the Real People I know who are aware of simple things they could do to pay less in taxes end up doing them as well.
- jbooth 14y ago
  Difference being that Real People can't spend 10 million setting up foreign subsidiaries in order to avoid taxation on a billion in income. Different math comes into play when you can fill an office building with lawyers for your tax policy.
  - olalonde 14y ago
    On the other hand, they can much more easily pass under the radar.
    - jbooth 14y ago
      But then you're talking fraud and running a big risk.
  - Symmetry 14y ago
    No, but I know plenty who pay H&R block to help them find all the deductions they're eligible for. This doesn't come out to 10 million, but the income they're sheltering. Its true that large corporations benefit from economies of scale when they try to avoid paying any more taxes than they have to, but I don't see any moral difference between what they're doing and what everyone else does.
- beagle3 14y ago
  and, in addition to what jbooth wrote above - these corporations lobby for the laws to be changed in their favor. How many Real People do you know who have done that? And is setting up 4 related corporations in 3 different international jurisdiction a "simple" thing?
  - 14y ago
byrneseyeview 14y ago
I don't understand why you'd trust a corporation more than Congress when it comes to how the tax code should work. If we all pay what we think we should owe, rather than what the rules tell us we actually owe, that would lead to chaos. "If we all behaved the way corporations do" doesn't really mean anything. Corporations are people. It would be much more accurate to say "If all people behaved like the people who work at Apple, the world would be a worse place," but I don't think that's defensible at all. If it does become a social norm to obey the law you wish Congress passed, instead of the law they actually passed, you're subsidizing people who ignore this norm. I wouldn't want to live in a world where RIMM out-competes Apple because Apple scrupulously follows good, imaginary rules, and RIMM scrupulously follows actual rules instead. This would all be a lot less meaningful if the US had lower corporate tax rates, but ours are effectively the highest in the world. Since the corporate tax rate is also the subsidy for hiding a given amount of income, it's no wonder that we lead the world in tax avoidance, too.
olalonde 14y ago
It really isn't that clear. A lot of people regard taxes as unethical.
gte910h 14y ago
That's full of crap. What they'll respond to is changing the law! They're just following the law. Beg off the companies, and change it.

jemka 14y ago

Shaming big public companies brings more attention to the discussion, which is a good thing, but I've always felt the entire focus was misdirected. How about ... spend less. Streamline that bloated money burning monstrosity called a government. "Who pays" is probably the last thing we should be talking about.

archgoon 14y ago
What do you feel should be cut in government? Where do you feel that money is being misappropriated?
- Karunamon 14y ago
  Off the top of my head: * Million dollar Vegas conferences? (Recent GSA scandal) * Guantanamo Bay * Unnecessary military bases all over the world Give me a day and access to the books for any branch of government and I would bet my life savings on being able to find hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars, if not millions.
  - alphakappa 14y ago
    The US federal budget is in Trillions. If you can find wastes that range in "hundreds of thousands of wasted dollars, if not millions", they are just a negligible drop in the bucket and it would serve purely to distract from the bigger expenditures. If you were to really spend time on such an exercise, it would be more useful to find the big items that can be reformed, not the minuscule ones that would take up a lot of mindshare but ultimately change nothing.
    - beagle3 14y ago
      I'm sure there's a name for what you've just done to derail the discussion. "strawman" is not exactly it. But you make an impossible demand. I've managed a big budget before. There are usually no more than a few items that account for most of the spending (in the US, these are probably defense, health, pensions and education), which you can usually cut 10% easily, and from that point on, the devil is in the details, both for the big items, and for the smaller level items. And it always looks like there's nothing you can cut, and yet, there is always a lot you can cut, usually in the vicinity of 50%, if you have to, without endangering the viable status of the operation (although the stakeholders - employees / citizens / whatever - will find things are much less convenient than before). Give me a proper OLAPpable database of government expenses (star scheme with properly categorized fact tables), and I'll show you where to cut. And no, it won't be popular or easy, but it's possible. Right now, the US government spends ~60% more[0] than it collects in taxes (otherwise stated: taxes account for only ~70% of US government spending. For 2011, there's 2.4T in tax receipts, 1.3T in borrowing, 2012 is looking worse - http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2011USbn_13bs1n http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2011USbn_1... ). Saying that you cannot reform down to 50% is equivalent to saying that the US cannot be run sustain-ably. I would guess that's not true -- it just cannot be sustained with the current entitlements and spending. [0] Depending on how you look at it. This is using government's own numbers, which do not include e.g. backstops against otherwise bankrupt financial institutions like Freddie, Fannie. And it doesn't include IMHO proper treatment of social security. I estimate it actually spends 100% more than it collects.

zerostar07 14y ago

It's time there is an honest discussion internationally about the biggest shame of western capitalism, tax shelters. It's not just big tech, it's everywhere. What benefit does the world earn from this global sneaking around?

gte910h 14y ago
It's not actually everywhere. Countries with imputation based dividend laws have seen strong reductions in corporate tax avoidance.

mikeryan 14y ago

Honestly I'd love to hate Big Corp for doing this. But this really is one of those "Don't Hate The Player - Hate the Game" kind of scenarios. I may run a tiny LLC but I damn well try to get my tax burden down as low as possible too. I can't really fault the Apple's and Chevron's of the World for doing the same. If we want substantive change in the tax system we should be shaming those in our Government who bend backwards to serve corporate interests.

beagle3 14y ago
> But this really is one of those "Don't Hate The Player - Hate the Game" kind of scenarios. You've got it wrong. There is no "game", there are only players. For YOU there are game rules. However, when you are as big as Microsoft or Google or Apple or Boeing, you spend millions (or tens of millions) to change the game rules in your favor. If you're Chris Dodd, a former senator who was chairing the financial oversight committee at the time everything crashed and burned (how's that for track record?), you later head the MPAA and you can threaten - on live TV - to stop bribing politicians. Where's the referee who is supposed to enforce the game rules? Ergo, there are only players. Not that hating them is going to help. But the blame rests squarely with the players, who get to redefine the game as they go.

toddasmith 14y ago

How is it unethical for companies to legally pay low taxes? First, realize that a company's tax isn't money growing on trees. Companies pay these taxes by decreasing profits for shareholders, decreasing wages for employees, or increasing the prices of goods and services to consumers (and usually all three). Someone is hurt by collecting these taxes. The idea that government can then go on to spend this money in a way that is more beneficial to society than the cost imposed underlies the assumption that it somehow a good idea to take from some to benefit others. Most people believe that the State must collect some taxes from its subjects, but is this corporate income tax the best method? Increasing the cost of goods essentially taxes consumers in a regressive manner, irrespective of their ability to bear these increased costs. Lowering wages of company employees discourages work and lowers the income taxes collected by the government on these reduced wages. Finally, reducing the profits of shareholders reduces the taxes that would have been collected on dividends and capital gains when the shares are sold; more significantly, reducing the value of investing in companies discourages the creation of wealth and jobs for all of us by reducing the incentives to start and invest in companies. If you think it is unethical to pay few taxes (and realize that for the reasons in the previous paragraph all other countries of the world tax their companies at lower rates than the USA), then you must believe that it is somehow more ethical to pay higher taxes (than is actually owed). If this is so, why aren't you sending in double what you owe in taxes? By your own statements aren't you acting unethically?

rprasad 14y ago
Money does not grow on trees; it does however grow in cotton plantations. Corporate taxes decrease profits for shareholders, but do not decreas wages for employees. By definition, corporate taxes are taxes on profits, so employee wages have already been deducted from corporate revenues by the time the tax liability is determined. Nobody is "hurt" collecting taxes. Taxes are simply a nonspecific bill from the government for a massive variety of services rendered directly or indirectly on behalf of the taxpayer. Dividends and capital gains are taxed at lower rates than corporate tax rates. Thus, it is preferrable (from a revenue-generating viewpoint) to collect taxes from the corporation rather than from the dividend payments or the sale of stock. Even if the dividend preference expires, dividends will still be taxed at the individual's marginal rate, which is lower than the corporate income tax rate. Taxes do not reduce the value of investing in companies. Under the time-value of money theory, if a tax can be deferred for 7-8 years, it is as if the tax was never owed. Thus, high taxes increase the value of investing in companies because the deferral opportunities of the corporate investment form offer greater "savings". Finally, your last argument is logical nonsense. Paying less than the statutorilly declared tax rate is what people find unethical. Unethical does not mean "less ethical", it means "not ethical".

newbie12 14y ago

There is no such thing as taxing a "corporation." Corporations are owned by shareholders, and those shareholders pay taxes on the money they invest and in-turn on the gains from that investment. Taxing corporation profits is double-taxation. The proper corporate tax rate should be zero. It is crazy that the government runs myriad business and job subsidy programs while also tax penalizing the most successful, forward-looking companies.

gte910h 14y ago
>The proper corporate tax rate should be zero I actually suggest you do something that ends double taxation and the capital gain tax tier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_imputation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dividend_imputation This is why: >Elimination of Tax Incentives >It is also interesting to note that it was soon realised that the system eliminated to a considerable extent the effectiveness of tax incentives for corporations. If a corporation was given a tax break then its incomes thus released from taxation would not generate franking credits precisely because no tax was paid. In turn, this meant that the shareholders received fewer credits along with their dividends, meaning in turn that they had to pay more tax. The net result is that each tax break a corporation itself got was countered by a matching increase in the tax burden of shareholders, leaving shareholders in exactly the same position had no tax break been received by the corporation. Thus, to the extent that corporate directors acted so as to increase shareholder wealth, tax incentives would not influence corporate behaviour.

cletus 14y ago

I disagree with the premise that legally avoiding tax is somehow unethical or wrong (or otherwise something to be shameful for). There's a strong counterargument that not voluntarily handing over money you don't need to is resisting the tyranny of government. The real problem here is twofold: 1. The tax system is too complicated and continues to get more complicated with special interest riders and so forth; and 2. Large companies are free to shop around for friendly tax jurisdictions. The natural endgame here is that you need to treat money going to friendly jurisdictions as avoiding income and tax it at source. (2) is no doubt controversial but I see it as inevitable. An example of (1) is the tax regulation surrounding the expatriation of technology, something legal and blessed by the IRS. It goes to Ireland and money gets funnelled there and then through the Netherlands. It's time to cut that shit out. For individuals I really do think it's time for the flat tax. Call it 25% of what you earn above $20,000 with no deductions and be done with it.

rprasad 14y ago
(1) The tax system is very simple if you're not trying to game the system to (EDIT: changed from "or") minimize your tax burden. Almost all of the complexity arises from the allowance for deductions and the related regulations necessary to prevent abuse of those deductions. (2). Worldwide, that is the standard tax practice. It is called "territorial taxation." Source-based taxation is the U.S. practice regarding foreign persons who are citizens of nations with which we have income tax treaties (for purposes of determining which country gets to tax them). The U.S. is an outlier in taxing worldwide income regardless of source. However, getting rid of the Irish structure would require (a) a change in other countries' tax policies or (b) a tax code even more complicated than the one we have right now. Note that I mean "game the system" in the sense of gamifying the outcome. I do not mean game in the sense of "cheating."
- clarky07 14y ago
  >(1) The tax system is very simple if you're not trying to game the system or minimize your tax burden. Almost all of the complexity arises from the allowance for deductions and the related regulations necessary to prevent abuse of those deductions. How is taking deductions "gaming the system?" Why on earth would I not try to minimize my tax burden. The US government is not a charity, and it functions far worse than most charities do. If I'm just going to give money away, the government is not going to be my first choice for recipient.