On a scale of “very targeted” to “all the fuck of em” what are we looking at for #6
No details on what subsidies will get revoked. Renewables are what's already been said -- 10-year extension on the ITC/PTC with direct pay version, additional ITC for long-range transmission.
4 seems like an inelegant solution to the problem. If multinational companies are correctly and legally not reporting income in the USA, should they still be taxed based on their international profits? As an American, I say yes but I would also be very upset if someplace like Germany instituted this rule and taxed companies based on their profits in the USA. There has to be a better solution that correctly captures where income is being generated.
The elegant solution is to tax revenues (or value added) instead of profits. It is much harder to game where revenues happen than where profits happen.
4 seems like an inelegant solution to the problem. If multinational companies are correctly and legally not reporting income in the USA, should they still be taxed based on their international profits? As an American, I say yes but I would also be very upset if someplace like Germany instituted this rule and taxed companies based on their profits in the USA. There has to be a better solution that correctly captures where income is being generated.
The elegant solution is to tax revenues (or value added) instead of profits. It is much harder to game where revenues happen than where profits happen.
It is, but I imagine that would raise holy hell from the Chamber of Commerce. And this isn't even a tax reform Bill in the first place. These are just the pay-fors to fund the ~$2trn infrastructure++ investment bill. Which the Chamber and a lot of major corporations have endorsed. Which helps give Democrats cover to push through 'partisan' legislation to replace lead pipes and patch up tunnels.
And, well, time your battles. Because it's not like we can't do actual tax reform after passing this. But we need to pass this first.
4 seems like an inelegant solution to the problem. If multinational companies are correctly and legally not reporting income in the USA, should they still be taxed based on their international profits? As an American, I say yes but I would also be very upset if someplace like Germany instituted this rule and taxed companies based on their profits in the USA. There has to be a better solution that correctly captures where income is being generated.
The elegant solution is to tax revenues (or value added) instead of profits. It is much harder to game where revenues happen than where profits happen.
Is it? I mean. How do you even do that? Value added recognizes expenses and expenses means you can shuffle profits by holding IP in various locations(Such that the value of the IP is added in a low taxation locality). Not having a value added and just taxing revenue would present other problems.
4 seems like an inelegant solution to the problem. If multinational companies are correctly and legally not reporting income in the USA, should they still be taxed based on their international profits? As an American, I say yes but I would also be very upset if someplace like Germany instituted this rule and taxed companies based on their profits in the USA. There has to be a better solution that correctly captures where income is being generated.
The elegant solution is to tax revenues (or value added) instead of profits. It is much harder to game where revenues happen than where profits happen.
4 seems like an inelegant solution to the problem. If multinational companies are correctly and legally not reporting income in the USA, should they still be taxed based on their international profits? As an American, I say yes but I would also be very upset if someplace like Germany instituted this rule and taxed companies based on their profits in the USA. There has to be a better solution that correctly captures where income is being generated.
The elegant solution is to tax revenues (or value added) instead of profits. It is much harder to game where revenues happen than where profits happen.
Say goodbye to every low-margin business then.
Or prepare to pay a lot more for them.
Trying to figure out how to tax revenues sounds like a nightmare from both ends.
And I agree with you about low margin businesses, but also most low-margin businesses are terrible for their workers and the world in general and maybe it would be a net good to force them to re-assess their models.
Tax revenue for companies who use contractors instead of employees with full benefits, profits for companies who give employees full benefits.
e: Hell, figured out how to get minimum wage to be a tax code thing.
Tax profit for any company who a certain (high...like 80% threshold) percentage of their employee base are full-time with benefits, and whose starting wage is at least $15 tied to inflation, including any contracted employees and subcontracted employees in the calculation for percentage of employees with benefits.
4 seems like an inelegant solution to the problem. If multinational companies are correctly and legally not reporting income in the USA, should they still be taxed based on their international profits? As an American, I say yes but I would also be very upset if someplace like Germany instituted this rule and taxed companies based on their profits in the USA. There has to be a better solution that correctly captures where income is being generated.
The elegant solution is to tax revenues (or value added) instead of profits. It is much harder to game where revenues happen than where profits happen.
Is it? I mean. How do you even do that? Value added recognizes expenses and expenses means you can shuffle profits by holding IP in various locations(Such that the value of the IP is added in a low taxation locality). Not having a value added and just taxing revenue would present other problems.
The typical implementation of a VAT charges full rate when an import is sold for the first time, i.e. no deducting value-added abroad. Conversely, exports are typically not subject to VAT. For many applications it's easier to think of a VAT as a sales tax with a slightly different enforcement mechanism, since the automatic double reporting makes dodging it much harder. From the consumer perspective, the difference between a VAT and sales tax is mostly cosmetic, i.e. with a VAT it's the business that's nominally paying the tax and therefore it's baked in the price and quoted as an inclusive rather than exclusive percentage.
I was sitting here thinking there's not really a difference between a sales tax and a revenue tax except that sales tax doesn't currently apply to services.
I was sitting here thinking there's not really a difference between a sales tax and a revenue tax except that sales tax doesn't currently apply to services.
And even that varies a bit state-by-state. But yeah, I use the term revenue tax instead of sales tax to highlight that this isn't about whether services are taxed and that nominally the company would be taxed (since some people care about the optics).
I also just wish we'd switch over to a VAT so I can do shopping math in my head easier. Same with eliminating tipped minimum wage. Have the price listed be the price I'm actually going to pay for ___ and not some percentage of what it actually will cost me.
4 seems like an inelegant solution to the problem. If multinational companies are correctly and legally not reporting income in the USA, should they still be taxed based on their international profits? As an American, I say yes but I would also be very upset if someplace like Germany instituted this rule and taxed companies based on their profits in the USA. There has to be a better solution that correctly captures where income is being generated.
Yeah but right now, corporations will report all losses occurred in the US and all profits in Germany to the US government, and all losses occurred in Germany and all profits happened in the US to Germany.
Basically a VAT is a tax on goods and services on every stage of the supply and production chain. You buy a log and you have to pay VAT to the seller of that log and the seller gives that VAT to the government. You turn that log into boards and the person you sell it to has to pay VAT on the boards. You then pay the net VAT (what you collected minus what you paid for the log) to the government. All the way up the line until some consumer buys something as a finished product.
Sales tax is just the consumer paying X% more on top of the listed price, which is then sent on to the government.
Other stuff is in there too, but that's the rough bit.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
+3
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
I also just wish we'd switch over to a VAT so I can do shopping math in my head easier. Same with eliminating tipped minimum wage. Have the price listed be the price I'm actually going to pay for ___ and not some percentage of what it actually will cost me.
I do to but unfortunately a lot of restaurant groups have tried to shift to that model and the success rate has been very inconsistent.
I also just wish we'd switch over to a VAT so I can do shopping math in my head easier. Same with eliminating tipped minimum wage. Have the price listed be the price I'm actually going to pay for ___ and not some percentage of what it actually will cost me.
I do to but unfortunately a lot of restaurant groups have tried to shift to that model and the success rate has been very inconsistent.
I think shifting to a single minimum wage would be easier if the current minimum wage wasn't so low. The advantage to the worker is consistency, but being consistently crap really undermines that.
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
Who nominally has to pay the tax is often only a difference in optics.
Which is pretty much why I don't really care much for the corporate tax. It violates most of the principles of a good tax, namely transparency and accountability, and most of the time someone can't even tell me who actually is getting taxed from it.
I also just wish we'd switch over to a VAT so I can do shopping math in my head easier. Same with eliminating tipped minimum wage. Have the price listed be the price I'm actually going to pay for ___ and not some percentage of what it actually will cost me.
I do to but unfortunately a lot of restaurant groups have tried to shift to that model and the success rate has been very inconsistent.
I think shifting to a single minimum wage would be easier if the current minimum wage wasn't so low. The advantage to the worker is consistency, but being consistently crap really undermines that.
Raising the minimum wage was meant to be implicit within eliminating subminimum wage.
Isn't the problem we're trying to solve that one of those groups has too large a coffer that we're essentially trying to raid?
The only way to prevent monopolists/ oligopolists from passing costs on is to either go full wage/ price controls or to anti-trust them back into a competitive market. I'm hopeful that Biden's DOJ starts trying to trust bust, but they have a lot on their plate with the whole *gestures broadly*
Isn't the problem we're trying to solve that one of those groups has too large a coffer that we're essentially trying to raid?
The only way to prevent monopolists/ oligopolists from passing costs on is to either go full wage/ price controls or to anti-trust them back into a competitive market. I'm hopeful that Biden's DOJ starts trying to trust bust, but they have a lot on their plate with the whole *gestures broadly*
Tax costs can get passed on to consumers even in competitive markets.
Isn't the problem we're trying to solve that one of those groups has too large a coffer that we're essentially trying to raid?
The only way to prevent monopolists/ oligopolists from passing costs on is to either go full wage/ price controls or to anti-trust them back into a competitive market. I'm hopeful that Biden's DOJ starts trying to trust bust, but they have a lot on their plate with the whole *gestures broadly*
Tax costs can get passed on to consumers even in competitive markets.
Can versus will. The same as labour costs. Mcdonald's is going to be less impacted by the hike in the minimum wage here than my local bbq place because they have more flexibility and negotiating power in their supply chain. Meanwhile a hike in the gas tax will just go straight on through to drivers because it's fungible and the price is set globally so the local Shell station can't really do anything to compete with Mobil on cost. So they don't.
Who nominally has to pay the tax is often only a difference in optics.
Which is pretty much why I don't really care much for the corporate tax. It violates most of the principles of a good tax, namely transparency and accountability, and most of the time someone can't even tell me who actually is getting taxed from it.
Totally agreed! If I was tax dictator, I would get rid of the corporate income tax. If we want to tax rich people, just tax rich people. In fact, without a corporate income tax, we could tax dividends and capital gains at full freight without running into the distortionary effects of double taxation. If you want to tax consumption based on location, just use sales/VAT.
But with the Democrats in charge, that sort of thinking is probably not realistic. A lot of the support on the left sees corporations as people that should be paying for some nebulous justice reasons.
Who nominally has to pay the tax is often only a difference in optics.
Which is pretty much why I don't really care much for the corporate tax. It violates most of the principles of a good tax, namely transparency and accountability, and most of the time someone can't even tell me who actually is getting taxed from it.
Totally agreed! If I was tax dictator, I would get rid of the corporate income tax. If we want to tax rich people, just tax rich people. In fact, without a corporate income tax, we could tax dividends and capital gains at full freight without running into the distortionary effects of double taxation. If you want to tax consumption based on location, just use sales/VAT.
But with the Democrats in charge, that sort of thinking is probably not realistic. A lot of the support on the left sees corporations as people that should be paying for some nebulous justice reasons.
I think because there’s a belief this is the only way to raise taxes on rich people- but not because corporations are people, but specifically because they’re not that makes them the seemingly easier target, right?
Cause the left would also argue that campaign finance is all fucked up cause we confer the speech rights of people onto corporations
Who nominally has to pay the tax is often only a difference in optics.
Which is pretty much why I don't really care much for the corporate tax. It violates most of the principles of a good tax, namely transparency and accountability, and most of the time someone can't even tell me who actually is getting taxed from it.
Totally agreed! If I was tax dictator, I would get rid of the corporate income tax. If we want to tax rich people, just tax rich people. In fact, without a corporate income tax, we could tax dividends and capital gains at full freight without running into the distortionary effects of double taxation. If you want to tax consumption based on location, just use sales/VAT.
But with the Democrats in charge, that sort of thinking is probably not realistic. A lot of the support on the left sees corporations as people that should be paying for some nebulous justice reasons.
I fundamentally disagree with the "double taxation" argument. You're making money, that's called income fucker.
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
A lot of rich people use their business for tax dodging so if the facts support that corporate taxation is a good way to recoup those losses then I am fine with it.
Isn't the problem we're trying to solve that one of those groups has too large a coffer that we're essentially trying to raid?
The only way to prevent monopolists/ oligopolists from passing costs on is to either go full wage/ price controls or to anti-trust them back into a competitive market. I'm hopeful that Biden's DOJ starts trying to trust bust, but they have a lot on their plate with the whole *gestures broadly*
Tax costs can get passed on to consumers even in competitive markets.
Can versus will. The same as labour costs. Mcdonald's is going to be less impacted by the hike in the minimum wage here than my local bbq place because they have more flexibility and negotiating power in their supply chain. Meanwhile a hike in the gas tax will just go straight on through to drivers because it's fungible and the price is set globally so the local Shell station can't really do anything to compete with Mobil on cost. So they don't.
Tax incidence is based on price elasticities of supply and demand and a tax will get passed on to consumers when the demand elasticity is more inelastic than the supply elasticity. That doesn't mean the price of the product will go up by Y + Tax, it just means that the tax eats more into consumer surplus than producer surplus.
Who nominally has to pay the tax is often only a difference in optics.
Which is pretty much why I don't really care much for the corporate tax. It violates most of the principles of a good tax, namely transparency and accountability, and most of the time someone can't even tell me who actually is getting taxed from it.
Totally agreed! If I was tax dictator, I would get rid of the corporate income tax. If we want to tax rich people, just tax rich people. In fact, without a corporate income tax, we could tax dividends and capital gains at full freight without running into the distortionary effects of double taxation. If you want to tax consumption based on location, just use sales/VAT.
But with the Democrats in charge, that sort of thinking is probably not realistic. A lot of the support on the left sees corporations as people that should be paying for some nebulous justice reasons.
If you get rid of the corporate tax then rich people will just pay themselves in stocks or find other ways to leave their money in the corporation while they continue to get richer.
Who nominally has to pay the tax is often only a difference in optics.
Which is pretty much why I don't really care much for the corporate tax. It violates most of the principles of a good tax, namely transparency and accountability, and most of the time someone can't even tell me who actually is getting taxed from it.
Totally agreed! If I was tax dictator, I would get rid of the corporate income tax. If we want to tax rich people, just tax rich people. In fact, without a corporate income tax, we could tax dividends and capital gains at full freight without running into the distortionary effects of double taxation. If you want to tax consumption based on location, just use sales/VAT.
But with the Democrats in charge, that sort of thinking is probably not realistic. A lot of the support on the left sees corporations as people that should be paying for some nebulous justice reasons.
If you get rid of the corporate tax then rich people will just pay themselves in stocks or find other ways to leave their money in the corporation while they continue to get richer.
Yeah you tax their gains on said stock as income when they sell it or transfer it. It’s worthless paper until they convert it into goods/etc.
Why do people think VAT will be some magic bullet in the US? Is the assumption that it would replace ALL sales taxes? State, county, muni, etc? If so, yeah that isn't happening.
Why do people think VAT will be some magic bullet in the US? Is the assumption that it would replace ALL sales taxes? State, county, muni, etc? If so, yeah that isn't happening.
Because VATs are very good at raising revenue with little effect on economic efficiency and most of us that like the VAT view taxation primarily as a means of raising revenue and not a means of redistribution.
+4
ButtersA glass of some milksRegistered Userregular
Why do people think VAT will be some magic bullet in the US? Is the assumption that it would replace ALL sales taxes? State, county, muni, etc? If so, yeah that isn't happening.
I don't think too many people consider it a magic bullet, but a lot of potential tax revenue is lost in the way business owners compensate themselves outside of traditional income and the way businesses hide profits overseas. Theoretically you can recoup some of that by taxing transactions.
Who nominally has to pay the tax is often only a difference in optics.
Which is pretty much why I don't really care much for the corporate tax. It violates most of the principles of a good tax, namely transparency and accountability, and most of the time someone can't even tell me who actually is getting taxed from it.
Totally agreed! If I was tax dictator, I would get rid of the corporate income tax. If we want to tax rich people, just tax rich people. In fact, without a corporate income tax, we could tax dividends and capital gains at full freight without running into the distortionary effects of double taxation. If you want to tax consumption based on location, just use sales/VAT.
But with the Democrats in charge, that sort of thinking is probably not realistic. A lot of the support on the left sees corporations as people that should be paying for some nebulous justice reasons.
If you get rid of the corporate tax then rich people will just pay themselves in stocks or find other ways to leave their money in the corporation while they continue to get richer.
Yeah you tax their gains on said stock as income when they sell it or transfer it. It’s worthless paper until they convert it into goods/etc.
But the rich can use their stocks as collateral to get a loan with an interest rate much lower than any taxes they would pay on the stock, so that they never have to sell the stock. Or they do things like count the stock being sold as the stock that was just issued to them (so least growth) and keep all of their higher gains stock.
The problem is that the rich can incredibly game the system with regards to taxes, we need to stop that gaming and get rid of so many exemptions and work arounds.
For me the benefit of VAT over Sales Tax is literally just the ease of use at the end user side.
There are a lot of specific complaints to lodge against our various taxes and approaches and levels. Regressivity versus progressivity. Perverse incentive structures, dead weight loss, enforcement costs. &c. But even if you put all of the arguments of what those ought to be to one side, the way we do it is just extremely annoying. Needlessly so.
Posts
No details on what subsidies will get revoked. Renewables are what's already been said -- 10-year extension on the ITC/PTC with direct pay version, additional ITC for long-range transmission.
The elegant solution is to tax revenues (or value added) instead of profits. It is much harder to game where revenues happen than where profits happen.
"all the fuck of em, and sue them for damages while we're at it"
e: Misread "at" as "for." This is personal opinion, and not what's going to happen.
It is, but I imagine that would raise holy hell from the Chamber of Commerce. And this isn't even a tax reform Bill in the first place. These are just the pay-fors to fund the ~$2trn infrastructure++ investment bill. Which the Chamber and a lot of major corporations have endorsed. Which helps give Democrats cover to push through 'partisan' legislation to replace lead pipes and patch up tunnels.
And, well, time your battles. Because it's not like we can't do actual tax reform after passing this. But we need to pass this first.
Is it? I mean. How do you even do that? Value added recognizes expenses and expenses means you can shuffle profits by holding IP in various locations(Such that the value of the IP is added in a low taxation locality). Not having a value added and just taxing revenue would present other problems.
Say goodbye to every low-margin business then.
Or prepare to pay a lot more for them.
Trying to figure out how to tax revenues sounds like a nightmare from both ends.
And I agree with you about low margin businesses, but also most low-margin businesses are terrible for their workers and the world in general and maybe it would be a net good to force them to re-assess their models.
e: Hell, figured out how to get minimum wage to be a tax code thing.
Tax profit for any company who a certain (high...like 80% threshold) percentage of their employee base are full-time with benefits, and whose starting wage is at least $15 tied to inflation, including any contracted employees and subcontracted employees in the calculation for percentage of employees with benefits.
Tax revenue if they're not.
The typical implementation of a VAT charges full rate when an import is sold for the first time, i.e. no deducting value-added abroad. Conversely, exports are typically not subject to VAT. For many applications it's easier to think of a VAT as a sales tax with a slightly different enforcement mechanism, since the automatic double reporting makes dodging it much harder. From the consumer perspective, the difference between a VAT and sales tax is mostly cosmetic, i.e. with a VAT it's the business that's nominally paying the tax and therefore it's baked in the price and quoted as an inclusive rather than exclusive percentage.
And even that varies a bit state-by-state. But yeah, I use the term revenue tax instead of sales tax to highlight that this isn't about whether services are taxed and that nominally the company would be taxed (since some people care about the optics).
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Yeah but right now, corporations will report all losses occurred in the US and all profits in Germany to the US government, and all losses occurred in Germany and all profits happened in the US to Germany.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value-added_tax
Basically a VAT is a tax on goods and services on every stage of the supply and production chain. You buy a log and you have to pay VAT to the seller of that log and the seller gives that VAT to the government. You turn that log into boards and the person you sell it to has to pay VAT on the boards. You then pay the net VAT (what you collected minus what you paid for the log) to the government. All the way up the line until some consumer buys something as a finished product.
Sales tax is just the consumer paying X% more on top of the listed price, which is then sent on to the government.
Other stuff is in there too, but that's the rough bit.
I do to but unfortunately a lot of restaurant groups have tried to shift to that model and the success rate has been very inconsistent.
I think shifting to a single minimum wage would be easier if the current minimum wage wasn't so low. The advantage to the worker is consistency, but being consistently crap really undermines that.
All taxes are paid by a combination of consumers, employees, and owners. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence
Who nominally has to pay the tax is often only a difference in optics.
Which is pretty much why I don't really care much for the corporate tax. It violates most of the principles of a good tax, namely transparency and accountability, and most of the time someone can't even tell me who actually is getting taxed from it.
I’m way wrong, but this seems like a tax on the value capital steals from labor *tilts cap revolutionarily*
Raising the minimum wage was meant to be implicit within eliminating subminimum wage.
The only way to prevent monopolists/ oligopolists from passing costs on is to either go full wage/ price controls or to anti-trust them back into a competitive market. I'm hopeful that Biden's DOJ starts trying to trust bust, but they have a lot on their plate with the whole *gestures broadly*
Tax costs can get passed on to consumers even in competitive markets.
Can versus will. The same as labour costs. Mcdonald's is going to be less impacted by the hike in the minimum wage here than my local bbq place because they have more flexibility and negotiating power in their supply chain. Meanwhile a hike in the gas tax will just go straight on through to drivers because it's fungible and the price is set globally so the local Shell station can't really do anything to compete with Mobil on cost. So they don't.
Totally agreed! If I was tax dictator, I would get rid of the corporate income tax. If we want to tax rich people, just tax rich people. In fact, without a corporate income tax, we could tax dividends and capital gains at full freight without running into the distortionary effects of double taxation. If you want to tax consumption based on location, just use sales/VAT.
But with the Democrats in charge, that sort of thinking is probably not realistic. A lot of the support on the left sees corporations as people that should be paying for some nebulous justice reasons.
I think because there’s a belief this is the only way to raise taxes on rich people- but not because corporations are people, but specifically because they’re not that makes them the seemingly easier target, right?
Cause the left would also argue that campaign finance is all fucked up cause we confer the speech rights of people onto corporations
I fundamentally disagree with the "double taxation" argument. You're making money, that's called income fucker.
Tax incidence is based on price elasticities of supply and demand and a tax will get passed on to consumers when the demand elasticity is more inelastic than the supply elasticity. That doesn't mean the price of the product will go up by Y + Tax, it just means that the tax eats more into consumer surplus than producer surplus.
If you get rid of the corporate tax then rich people will just pay themselves in stocks or find other ways to leave their money in the corporation while they continue to get richer.
Yeah you tax their gains on said stock as income when they sell it or transfer it. It’s worthless paper until they convert it into goods/etc.
Because VATs are very good at raising revenue with little effect on economic efficiency and most of us that like the VAT view taxation primarily as a means of raising revenue and not a means of redistribution.
I don't think too many people consider it a magic bullet, but a lot of potential tax revenue is lost in the way business owners compensate themselves outside of traditional income and the way businesses hide profits overseas. Theoretically you can recoup some of that by taxing transactions.
But the rich can use their stocks as collateral to get a loan with an interest rate much lower than any taxes they would pay on the stock, so that they never have to sell the stock. Or they do things like count the stock being sold as the stock that was just issued to them (so least growth) and keep all of their higher gains stock.
The problem is that the rich can incredibly game the system with regards to taxes, we need to stop that gaming and get rid of so many exemptions and work arounds.
There are a lot of specific complaints to lodge against our various taxes and approaches and levels. Regressivity versus progressivity. Perverse incentive structures, dead weight loss, enforcement costs. &c. But even if you put all of the arguments of what those ought to be to one side, the way we do it is just extremely annoying. Needlessly so.