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Closing the loopholes (aka raising taxes) would only drive business out of America. Google provides thousands of jobs to Americans, and raising taxes on them an
by wallawe 13y ago
Closing the loopholes (aka raising taxes) would only drive business out of America. Google provides thousands of jobs to Americans, and raising taxes on them and other big companies will drive more work out of the US.
- lubos 13y agonon-sense, I'm honestly surprised to see this argument on HN. the value USA provides to high-tech companies is concentration of talent and expertise you won't find anywhere else in the world.
- wallawe 13y agoI think you are speaking of the US in it's current state, where the loopholes and lower taxes exist. My point is that businesses are encouraged by financial incentives. If you raise taxes you are incentivizing the company to move jobs elsewhere. Have we not seen this play out with the high cost of labor in manufacturing settings? The same will apply if you tax these companies at exorbitant rates. Long term, you will damage the US jobs market.
- phaemon 13y ago>My point, and you can take a basic econ class to learn such info Oh well, if you learned it in school then it must be true!
- talmand 13y agoForget school, I just read it on the Internet. So it is true.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- lubos 13y agoYes, businesses are encouraged by financial incentives and that's why Apple, Google, Facebook and countless of other IT giants and startups are based in Silicon Valley - the most expensive place to hire employees. Meanwhile corporate taxes and personal income taxes are at record low and it still didn't stop all manufacturing jobs to be outsourced to China. See your logical fallacy? Sometime "basic econ class" will teach you... well... just the basics.
- gaadd33 13y agoHow does that square with the fact that some of the fastest growing years in the past 100 years were years when the top corporate tax rate was 50% and the personal tax rate exceeded 70%?
- Malician 13y agoDo you know what the effective tax rates were during those years? There was no "alternative minimum tax" to limit the abuse of deductions, which I believe hearing were rampant. (This isn't to say you are wrong, at all; just that the actual tax businesses are really required to pay must be considered, not the claimed values on the sticker sheet.)
- andrewcooke 13y agohi - have you seen http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-think-science-self-correcting-alarming-degree-it-not-trouble http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21588057-scientists-t... and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566915 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6566915 - this is exactly what you were worried about at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6487356 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6487356 (i would have emailed you, but i can't find an email, so am replying here - given that economist article i may have underestimated the importance of the effect).
- adventured 13y agoNot necessarily. You can close the loopholes and lower taxes, leaving a neutral revenue effect. That still leaves a net gain through less expensive tax enforcement and compliance, along with an attractive corporate tax rate that suddenly becomes very competitive internationally. If we closed all corporate tax loopholes, you could lower the corporate tax rate down to closer to the 22% range (if my memory serves me).
- wallawe 13y agoI completely agree.