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How do you propose "taxing machines"? Everything I can think of has obvious and large downsides, e.g. - filing taxes for each machine (companies may have milli

How do you propose "taxing machines"? Everything I can think of has obvious and large downsides, e.g. - filing taxes for each machine (companies may have millions of machines) - determining how much income all machines make (for machines used by humans, e.g. sewing machines, how do you determine what percentage of the income is made by the human vs the machine) - taxing cloud usage (How to determine netflix's % income made by cloud vs by advertising, by original content, etc)

avmich 2y ago
> - filing taxes for each machine (companies may have millions of machines) Yes. It may be harder to figure out the definition of a machine - e.g. a computer can have multiple programs running, is it one machine? - but this is one direction. > - determining how much income all machines make Yes, it's tricky, but we can try. For example, some temporary measurements which can be updated every few years? > - taxing cloud usage Yes, we can measure power, bandwidth, network sessions for that.
- antifa 2y ago
  Wouldn't it be easier to increase taxes for high profit income and give tax incentives for increasing human labor on payroll?
  - nuancebydefault 2y ago
    High profit income is already taxed in a cumulative way (at least where i live). Profit equals revenue minus costs. It is financially relatively interesting today to have a high cost (typically going to machines, buildings, energy, advertising, financial services and business trips), because it makes the (tax on) profits lower.
rogerkirkness 2y ago
Just tax revenue or profit per employee, which has risen ~5x in the last 25 years among the S&P 500.
- free_bip 2y ago
  Sorry, I don't see how taxing income per employee translates to taxing machines
  - rogerkirkness 2y ago
    How do you think the S&P500 was able to increase profit per employee by 5x?
nuancebydefault 2y ago
Today every penny spent by a company that is not going to humans, is a cost, and leads to a tax reduction. Somehow those pennies are meticulously counted, so I don't see how it would be hard to measure.

avmich 2y ago

> - filing taxes for each machine (companies may have millions of machines) Yes. It may be harder to figure out the definition of a machine - e.g. a computer can have multiple programs running, is it one machine? - but this is one direction. > - determining how much income all machines make Yes, it's tricky, but we can try. For example, some temporary measurements which can be updated every few years? > - taxing cloud usage Yes, we can measure power, bandwidth, network sessions for that.

antifa 2y ago
Wouldn't it be easier to increase taxes for high profit income and give tax incentives for increasing human labor on payroll?
- nuancebydefault 2y ago
  High profit income is already taxed in a cumulative way (at least where i live). Profit equals revenue minus costs. It is financially relatively interesting today to have a high cost (typically going to machines, buildings, energy, advertising, financial services and business trips), because it makes the (tax on) profits lower.

rogerkirkness 2y ago

Just tax revenue or profit per employee, which has risen ~5x in the last 25 years among the S&P 500.

free_bip 2y ago
Sorry, I don't see how taxing income per employee translates to taxing machines
- rogerkirkness 2y ago
  How do you think the S&P500 was able to increase profit per employee by 5x?

nuancebydefault 2y ago

Today every penny spent by a company that is not going to humans, is a cost, and leads to a tax reduction. Somehow those pennies are meticulously counted, so I don't see how it would be hard to measure.