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> Investors would make slightly less money in the short term Why do you assume that the tax incidence falls on investors, rather than on customers and/or emplo

by em500 2y ago

> Investors would make slightly less money in the short term Why do you assume that the tax incidence falls on investors, rather than on customers and/or employees? With sales tax or VAT people tend to automatically assume 100% passthrough (so that the incidence falls completely on customers/consumers) even though they're also collected by companies. In reality taxes are borne by a combination of customers/employees/owners, with proportions determined by their relative price elasticities, rather than by who lawmakers appointed to collect the tax.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> taxes are borne by a combination of customers/employees/owners And any green tax would be trivial for Google to add as a line item on invoices: it’s so defensible.
- grecy 2y ago
  > In reality taxes are borne by a combination of customers/employees/owners That depends entirely on where the money comes from. If the company does not reduce profit, then yes, they must raise prices and/or reduce employee salaries. But if we are willing to put the taboo topic of reducing profits on the table, profit can just be reduced without any impact to customers or employees. I realize this kind of talk is blasphemy, but it clearly needs to be done.
  - JumpCrisscross 2y ago
    > if we are willing to put the taboo topic of reducing profits on the table, profit can just be reduced without any impact to customers or employees We’ve capped profits in various industries before. The benefits didn’t flow to customers and employees equally, they flowed to specific employees and specific customers. (You also see R&D grind to a halt.) There isn’t a clean technical solution to this social problem, that of redistributing wealth indirectly. At the end of the day, if you want investors’ profits, you have to take them directly.
ClumsyPilot 2y ago
> Why do you assume that the tax incidence falls on investors, rather than on customers and/or employees? Because they have huge investor surplus

by em500 2y ago

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> taxes are borne by a combination of customers/employees/owners And any green tax would be trivial for Google to add as a line item on invoices: it’s so defensible.

grecy 2y ago
> In reality taxes are borne by a combination of customers/employees/owners That depends entirely on where the money comes from. If the company does not reduce profit, then yes, they must raise prices and/or reduce employee salaries. But if we are willing to put the taboo topic of reducing profits on the table, profit can just be reduced without any impact to customers or employees. I realize this kind of talk is blasphemy, but it clearly needs to be done.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > if we are willing to put the taboo topic of reducing profits on the table, profit can just be reduced without any impact to customers or employees We’ve capped profits in various industries before. The benefits didn’t flow to customers and employees equally, they flowed to specific employees and specific customers. (You also see R&D grind to a halt.) There isn’t a clean technical solution to this social problem, that of redistributing wealth indirectly. At the end of the day, if you want investors’ profits, you have to take them directly.

ClumsyPilot 2y ago

> Why do you assume that the tax incidence falls on investors, rather than on customers and/or employees? Because they have huge investor surplus