phil_20686, on 2012-August-15, 14:12, said:
Because corporations are "things" and so they don't "pay". If you tax a corporation, it is people somewhere who are paying. Either the consumer in higher prices, or the employees in lower wages, or the owner in lower profits. If you tax a corporation one of these three groups is paying. So why not tax them directly? I am arguing that you should set up your tax law in such a way that people get taxed.
Moreover, we have no idea who pays for corporation tax in general. Is it a tax on rich people or poor people? How can we decide how redistributive a tax system is when we have no idea who is paying one of the major taxes?
Also, your example cannot possibly be true. But even if it is mostly true, in the sense that he pays much less than the legislature intended, it only tells you that you should be rewriting your income tax law. Finally, you are assuming that the rich guy is the one who loses from corporation tax. It could very well be that it is actually his tenants who are paying the tax through higher rents. Corporation tax incidence is very complicated.
Well, corporations "earn" so why shouldn't they pay taxes just as people who "earn" pay taxes? It seems to me to be far clearer about who is paying and for what if the corporations are taxed..then people have the choice whether or not to contribute part of what they "earn" to the corporation's bottom line. Otherwise who knows where the taxes paid are going, lord knows much of the time it isn't anywhere people would normally choose to have their taxes go. Governments have all had and continue to have corruption scandals and suchlike. They also already bail out corporations with taxpayer money but at least now the taxpayer KNOWS that their taxes are going to benefit banks and big business. Why make it easier for them to hide such activities?
Also seems to me that the more you tax people rather than corporations, the more you limit the ability of people to start and run businesses. I would guess that that isn't high on the list of priorities for governments oriented toward "bigger is better" and "global economy" but I read somewhere a long time ago (but it stuck in my mind) that the period of time with the lowest taxation for the middle class corresponds to the period of the most active development of the economy in terms of businesses starting/employment and so forth. Problem is that now there are so many regulations (many put in place because big business misbehaved but applied to small businesses even when it isn't appropriate), it costs so much to start up a business and it's pretty tough for a small business to compete with the big players, who have the sympathetic ear of governments everywhere.
As someone said to me recently, there are too many people in the government (from municipal on up to federal) in charge of "making people sad" for trying to do anything.
Now you have the mega businesses such as Walmart driving 3 generation family businesses to close their doors permanently just by announcing they are moving into an area. As far as I can see, the wholesale pandering to megabusinesses is turning the general population into a society of workers rather than entrepeneurs with all of the fallout that entails. It's a sort of 22nd century feudalism situation but the "lords" (corporations) clearly most often feeling no responsibility for the workers at all, but only to the bottom line and the shareholders.
It's what leads corporations to go to set up sweat shops for child labour in 3rd world countries, or dump their toxic wastes there, or cut corners on materials/upkeep which leads to toxic spills, or give as few as possible of their workers full time work so they don't have to pay any benefits such as health care or pensions, or to fire/downsize an older worker who is approaching retirement or may have health issues.
In an industry I once worked in, it was common knowlege that if anyone ever used workman's compensation they would be dumped by the company (just no work at the moment, we'll call you) and would not work again for the company once the claim was over, no matter how valid, and no matter how many years they had worked for the company. But of course they weren't fired..that would be illegal, so until word got around people waited to get called to work rather than looking elsewhere, until finances made them desperate and they had to go elsewhere.
It's what allows corporations to pay one woman what they pay men and all other women get much lower wages doing the same job. As long as ONE woman has parity, 1000 others could get paid half of what men earn and the company is within the letter of the law. I don't know about the States but that is certainly true in Canada. Given that stats say women earn less in the States it appears to be true there as well.
We now commonly have the situation where workers take rollbacks for a number of years to help corporations deal with the results of their own mismanagement, often also subsidising such businesses as the auto industry with taxpayer dollars. The companies take the taxpayer money, turn things around and start to make big profits again. Then if the workers want to benefit from the turnaround that they funded through wage rollbacks and tax dollar forgiveness/subsidies,the companies threaten to take all the jobs elsewhere. Or they just move, once they've milked the taxpayers for everything they can get, and abandon the workforce that kept them in business.
Or as one company did, keep a handful of people temporarilly on the payroll for a couple of months to train the replacement workers in the new country.
And they should pay no taxes? Why on earth not?
a) They are earning money
b) they use the services of the community such as the police, and
c) too often as a result of their activities, whether it be toxic wastes or an abandoned work force, taxpayers are left to deal with the fallout
d) Of course the costs will be passed on to the consumer but then it is his or her CHOICE to buy from BP or Walmart or whatever.
It seems the perfect example of how schizoid govenments are about handling money when it relates to big business when you consider that (to my understanding) tobacco growers are heavilly subsidized with tax dollars even as the tobacco companies are being taken to court and zapped with fines for selling the stuff. Great for lawyers, I suppose. It may be that the government figures it makes more money back in fines than the subsidies, but if all the hoopla is true, then we are paying much much more in such things as medical care than the fines could ever hope to approach. Why not do the simpler thing and subsidize the tobacco farmers ONCE to switch to another crop such as hemp?
As far as the guy paying no income tax, of course I have not seen his tax returns and am going by what he claims. I think the way he did it was to have everything owned by the various companies..e.g. the vehicles by the car dealership, the house was on a horse farm (very common for lawyers and such to have a "farm" to avoid taxes here). The stables/arena area were.. much nicer than many peoples's houses, and included his accountant's office etc.
I know there are people in the States with some authority who are claiming to know how to retire after 20 years or so with well over $100,000 per MONTH, ALL NONtaxable income, if they make certain arrangements having to do with the way the banking system works. The catch is, as is so often the case, you need to have lots of money to be able to set it up. Like the old joke which is too often true, you can only get money if you don't need it.
Help
Much to my surprise, this "word" is actually in my computer's dictionary. Maybe I should get a new one. 