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> If anything, taxing corporations is regressive -- the taxes ultimately get passed on to consumers through higher product prices, regardless of their income l

• gwright 13y ago
  You started off with an interesting addition to the conversation, and I was hoping for a reference regarding the relationship between corporate taxes and the ultra-weathy, but instead I got a gratuitous, tired, over-used, boring, ad-hominem about Republicans that added nothing to conversation.
  • criley2 13y ago
    No he didn't. The national Republican Party is outspoken about raising taxes on lower income people, in "broadening the base". In the election-year expose of Romney's secret fundraising speeches, we learned about "the 49%" of Americans who don't pay taxes. Well, we didn't learn about it, it's a very common trope for conservative politicians. It's no secret that Republicans largely support "base broadening", as well as less-overt attacks on the finances of the poor like their CURRENT attempts to divorce the farm bill from food stamps, to further cut food stamps. You're trying to enforce some politically correct echo chamber where a national political party isn't responsible for their votes and their policy. Republicans are openly for raising taxes on the bottom 50% of Americans, are openly for decreasing wealth transfer like foodstamps, welfare and unemployment, and are openly for lowering (and abolishing) corporate taxes. Those are their policies and it is utterly and totally fair to state that and reference it.
    • talmand 13y ago
      Yes he did. Your comment and jellicle's comment are not quite the same thing. Even then, you are painting some of the party's platform in a negative light without showing why exactly that is their platform to begin with nor why you consider them terrible ideas. Some of their reasons may be bad, but that doesn't mean all of their reasons are.
      • karamazov 13y ago
        He didn't say these policies were bad, just that they were consistent. They're only bad if you disagree with them.
        • talmand 13y ago
          No he didn't say they were bad, he was just agreeing with the person that said they were bad. But I think it's fair to say that the tone of the discussion implies these two people feel negativity towards the GOP's platform without stating why. Disagreeing with someone's idea doesn't inherently make that idea bad. People who have the notion that another person's idea is bad solely because they disagree with them with no other evidence is simply a shallow person.
      • toomuchtodo 13y ago
        GOP Platform: "I've got mine, f* you."
        • talmand 13y ago
          "but instead I got a gratuitous, tired, over-used, boring, ad-hominem about Republicans that added nothing to conversation"
        • ctdonath 13y ago
          Leftist Platform: "I'm taking yours, f* you." Yeah, this line of discussion is going to get us far.
          • icebraining 13y ago
            I'd say the real Leftist Platform is "there is no mine or yours, only ours". Everyone else is a faker ;)
          • toomuchtodo 13y ago
            Let me be more specific: Who is blocking comprehensive reform of the banking sector (which arguably drove not only the US into a recession, but the world as a whole)? Republicans Draconian anti-abortion laws? Republics Raising student loan interest rates while keeping lending rates to banks near zero? Republicans Supporting egregious amounts of defense department spending (The US spends more on defense then the next 10 countries COMBINED; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_e...)? Republicans Blocking immigration reform? Republicans Trying to prevent the implementation of universal healthcare? Republicans. I could go on, but it would be pointless.
    • ctdonath 13y ago
      Republicans are also openly for reducing burdens (both regulation and taxation) on the wealth producers so they can make more of it and spread it around. Taking half of earners' incomes with one hand and blocking ways to earn more with the other will NOT end well. I'm making a good buck, but at this rate of taxation I'm gonna have to resort to self-sufficiency homesteading with zero taxable income. Remember the goose & golden egg? Totally not fair to present only the allegedly "bad" parts of a position without the good goals that necessitates it. Opening the paths to hiring more people is quite fairly coupled with telling the capable to stop sitting around collecting checks; if you're going to socialize health care payment, you'll need to stop giving companies reason to not have more than 49 employees.
      • ppereira 13y ago
        > Republicans are also openly for reducing burdens (both regulation and taxation) on the wealth producers so they can make more of it and spread it around. Wow, you really do drink the trickle-down effect Kool-Aid.
        • ctdonath 13y ago
          You can't "spread the wealth" if there isn't any. Printing more money doesn't make more wealth, it just diffuses it more. If I stop working, you can't tax my now-nonexistent income.
          • criley2 13y ago
            I don't believe there is correlation between a lessened burden on wealth producers and it being spread around. The burden on wealth producers is very low, one of the lowest points in the modern era. You would expect in this era of hyper-rich and low-taxation that the wealth would be spreading around. But it's not. Record profits for corporations (read: wealth producers) is turning into record stock highs, record numbers of billionaires and record lows for the middle class. I refuse your argument because the world around me clearly shows that our "wealth producers" have figured out how to depress labor costs and increase investor returns. Great for them, but that concept is 100% contrary to your "wealth producers spread wealth". No, wealth producers rightfully squeeze labor costs and rightfully return the biggest amount of money to themselves, their boards, and their investors. That's not spreading wealth downwards, it's spreading laterally only.
  • flyinRyan 13y ago
    You're the one going political here. What he stated is a well known fact about the Republicans whether you chose to acknowledge it or not.
    • gwright 13y ago
      It isn't a fact. It is an unsubstantiated opinion. Your assertion that my comment was the political one is nonsensical. We've got serious long-term and structural problems in this country. We've got to find a way to discuss them that rises above trite generalizations.
      • flyinRyan 13y ago
        We do have problems indeed. And as long as people continue to get bogged down with the silly "Democrat/Republican" song and dance, the issues can't be addressed. The parties are practically the same thing (see: Bush Jr. vs Obama) so seeing one side as a friend and the other as an enemy is just a straw man boxing match.
        • gwright 13y ago
          If you really believe this, why would would you agree with something like "Republicans just want to tax the poor"? I didn't take potshots at Democrats, I just pointed out that taking potshots at Republicans wasn't furthering the discussion.
• VMG 13y ago
  > Actually, the studies show that corporate taxes are essentially a proxy for the taxing the ultra-wealthy - a cut in the corporate tax rate is very similar to cutting the highest marginal income tax rate. So why tax by proxy and not wealth directly?
  • dragonwriter 13y ago
    > So why tax by proxy and not wealth directly? If by "wealth" you mean "net worth", then because that is even harder to administer than income taxes. If by "wealth" you mean "income", we do that, but earning income through an entity with separate legal entity whose income is not taxed and retaining it in that entity becomes an effective tax dodge if it is permitted. Which is why corporate "income" tax (which is effectively a tax on retained profits) is included as part of the income tax system.
    • absherwin 13y ago
      Given that the vast majority of wealth in this country in held in liquid assets or in real estate which is already taxed based on value, why do you suppose that a scheme to tax it would be more complex than the corporate tax system which employs on the order of ten thousand people and generates returns that are often thousands or even tens of thousands of pages and has been shown to be amenable to a wide variety of gaming through manipulating the timing and geographic incidence of profit? There will be some complicated edge cases but there will be relatively few and the ability to game them is less because wealth is a simpler concept than income.
      • dragonwriter 13y ago
        > Given that the vast majority of wealth in this country in held in liquid assets or in real estate Source? > There will be some complicated edge cases but there will be relatively few and the ability to game them is less because wealth is a simpler concept than income. How is wealth a "simpler concept" than income. AFAICT, income is far simpler (and, in fact, involves a strict subset of the assessments necessary in assessing wealth.)
• true_religion 13y ago
  > After all, if corporate taxes truly fell on the poor, Republicans wouldn't be for cutting them. That kind of presupposes that Republicans are all about saving big business and not the poor. What if Republicans favor cutting corporate taxes because they are regressive, and their support of 'family' values means they want to protect the income and lifestyle of the poor to middle class families that make up the majority of the American voting population?
  • flyinRyan 13y ago
    I can't imagine how anyone would imagine Republicans are anti-poor. It's not like they've spent decades demonizing them or anything [1]. [1] http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/23/politics/weflare-queen http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/23/politics/weflare-queen
• absherwin 13y ago
  It's not that simple. Of course, the direct effect of corporate taxes is mostly on the wealthy who own most of the stock but that's not necessarily the group who gets most of the wealth--more on that below. Even in terms of direct payments, wealth isn't the only important factor. As significant is a company's willingness to be creative. I have never seen a corporate tax scheme that's ungamable that doesn't involve giving the IRS more discretion post-hoc in applying the law nor is one feasible in practice given the resources a company tends to devote to minimizing a multi-billion dollar tax bill. So we have the perverse situation where, to a significant degree, tax creativity is a productive economic activity and belief in adhering more closely to the spirit of the law of punished with higher taxes. As for the economic payers. Consider what happens if we eliminate corporate taxes: The company has more money. It can use that money in three general ways: Lower prices, raise pay or return it to shareholders. In a company with little competition, the optimal calculation is fairly simple. Does the additional return enable new entrants at current prices? Do we have employees who could leave and create competition and to what extent does the additional cash-flow make it more likely? In a competitive environment, the right answer is based on the sensitivity of profit to talent, the sensitivity of talent to pay increases, and the sensitivity of consumers to price decreases. Given this different factors, what's the empirical answer? It varies based on circumstance and no one can say definitively. Here's an example of one attempt to answer based on variation in European tax rates that suggests that 49% of the taxes are paid by workers: http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/51691/1/66322666X.pdf http://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/51691/1/66322666X.pdf. You can find many more papers with different points of view through your favorite search engine.
  • mistermann 13y ago
    re: It can use that money in three general ways: Lower prices, raise pay or return it to shareholders. Or, paid out to executives as bonus.
    • absherwin 13y ago
      Yes, given executive compensation trends, I wouldn't be surprised if executives would get a disproportionate share. That's largely irrelevant to understanding the aggregate impact. At large corporations, CEO compensation is usually less than 0.1% of profits.
• yhlasx 13y ago
  Increase in corporate taxes will be partially paid by consumers, but also it will reduce corporate profits. If they pass it completely to consumers, it will reduce demand -> reduce revenue -> reduce profits, so the increase will be paid by both parties. If anyone believes in market forces and the invisible hand (also if you took some basic economics courses) you should agree with this. I don't understand the fuss over corporate taxes