Bolding mine.
Agree that’s part. But in your own quote, there are other important things mentioned that are being explicitly rejected by @HMS_Irruncible.
Not that I am saying his proposal is flawless, but it sounds like he is in favor of cutting corporate taxes, but vastly increasing recapture from personal incomes of all sorts- so the businesses can reinvest in themselves, but paying out to individuals in any form is recaptured.
I am a bleeding heart liberal and also support full legalization (I think as an added benefit it would cut down on weapons, crimes, and gangs)… except when:
Which town should they then go to?
I consider myself liberal. I support nuclear energy and GMO foods.
I don’t support a wholesale gun ban or repeal of the 2nd amendment.
No “bleeding heart” there. Just a fundamental misunderstanding of how addiction works.
Yes, this is it exactly.
We should not cut personal income taxes and then give the proceeds to rich people. That’s trickle-down theory.
We should increase personal income taxes, and increase them mostly on the rich. Then we lower the corporate tax rate to give businesses more working capital.
By combining the two approaches, we capture excess wealth flowing to rich people’s pockets, and decrease the corp tax rate so businesses have more cash to work with. This is how it’s done in many European countries that we consider a model for “socialist” US policies.
The key point that DrDeth is failing to apprehend, and will continue failing to apprehend, is that I’m not talking about reducing rich-people tax burdens. I am talking about raising taxes on them, so we can decrease another tax that will produce more jobs. That job production will not come from the magical generosity of the rich; it will come from conscious policy that lets corporations have more working cash, while explicitly preventing management and executives from looting it.
Now watch this go sailing right over his head, again.
I wouldn’t mind slashing corp and increasing individual taxes but for a different reason: it would bring us more in line with the rest of the world. Fewer incentives to offshore corporate profits which gives the US nothing instead of little.
If the top marginal rate for individuals was 70+% … what effect would that have had on Trump’s $750 tax bill ?
Any ?
Would he have paid $752 instead ?
For those who haven’t seen it, I recently started a thread that’s (only as relevant to this one as the detour about taxes):
I think there’s a more fundamental problem that we’re missing … and it’s not an issue of coincidence.
I admit I don’t know much about corporate taxes, but aren’t they usually on net profits only, and not on overall revenue? My understanding is that most of the things that companies can invest their money in to grow or sustain their business (eg. capital expenditures, wages, other operating expenses) are already tax deductible, so I don’t see how changing the corporate tax rate would give them more money to invest in those things - I think it largely just reduces the money that companies can use to issue dividends, buyback stocks, etc. To me, the main advantage of having low or zero corporate taxes is to encourage companies to be headquartered in your jurisdiction - likely generating some jobs (and therefore, taxpayers, and stimulating the economy) in your city/state/country. Ireland seems to be one of the poster boys for low corporate taxes, and according to Wikipedia, foreign companies employ 25% of their workforce, and that workforce pays 50% of salary taxes in Ireland, which seems quite significant. The other advantage in theory is that with lower taxes, companies would be able to save up cash faster to make large investments. The thing is, it is not that clear to me how often companies actually need to save cash to make large investments - it seems like more often they just use financing, whether through debt or equity.
The downside I see to zero corporate taxes is when there is foreign ownership of a company in your jurisdiction - foreign owners can reap the benefits of the value of the company, while your country only gets the benefit of taxing the domestic owners and workers. That being said, when you think about who benefits from the taxes being spent (ie. the people in the country), perhaps it does make the most sense for those taxes to solely be coming from those same people.
I think there are legitimate arguments to be made for zero corporate tax, but I don’t think there’s a clear cut right answer by any means.
Not all things. Basically, things to sustain your business are tax deductible, but things to grow it generally are not.
When I pay my rent, utilities, my employees or buy supplies, I get to deduct that straight off. Larger equipment purchases, or improvements to my facility (or if I were to buy one) go in to a much more complicated depreciation/amortization table, and it is much more limited in how much and when I can write off those, as they are a form of profit.
My account plays with my numbers to keep my tax rate pretty low. There have been a number of years where I did not have any tax at all for my business, just on what I paid myself. But, when I had a good year, and bought a whole bunch of new equipment and built out an expansion, I ended up paying a fairly decent chunk of tax on that.
The biggest argument I would make towards having a low or zero corporate tax rate is that that is a tax that is simply passed onto the customers. Taxing the withdrawal of money from a corporation makes much more sense than trying to tax its profits.
It also makes accounting for small business much more of a hassle, as all transactions need to be accounted for, and a determination needs to be made as to how it should be declared for tax purposes.
It would not be unreasonable to also limit the abusable assets, like personal cars, meals, and housing, and put a fairly low cap on allowed expenditures on them before they have to be declared personal income.
But yeah, in general, I don’t see how the corporate tax is all that beneficial, and we would probably be better off capturing that revenue when it is dispersed to employees (especially highly compensated employees), owners and shareholders.
Other big things that divide me from those who share my general political ideology would be nukes and the environment. I am very pro-nuke, and I don’t actually care about the environment. I do care about it, in that that is where I live, and it would be nice to live in a place that is habitable, but I don’t really care about endangered species, or specific habitats or green spaces. I mean, I’m a bit worried about bio-diversity, and how that will affect us humans if it collapses, but as to the 3 toed red necked lizard, or the 4 horned owl, I really couldn’t give a damn. It pisses me off when things like solar plants or nuclear reactors are held up because it may impact the nesting ground of some endangered species. It seems very self defeating, hug a tree and let the forest burn.
Conservative.
Religion. I have no problems with abortion in the first two trimesters (or in the third if it’s necessary to save the mother’s life), evolution should be taught in schools and creationism shouldn’t, and religion should not be taught in schools except as part of a course on comparative religions, with none of them pointed out as being bad or good., (On the other hand, I see no reason why like-minded students and/or teachers should not be able to have a prayer meeting on school property before or after school, as long as they don’t interfere with others.)
Lifelong conservative Republican here. I differ from most in two key areas:
I’m a left leaning liberal (to whatever extent “left” means anything anymore) and always have been. Anyone questioning me on general political, moral and ethical principles would quickly come to that conclusion.
As such I’m very strong on equality when it comes to opportunity and in favour of strong legal sanctions to ensure that happens.
Where I seem to depart from others who go with me that far is my vehement opposal to any mandated equality of outcome. That way totalitarian madness lies.
I a conservative but I think the current Republican foreign policy is based on inertia and very little else. NATO is an alliance that has lost its purpose, our military is like a race car driven by a little old lady who can barely see over the dashboard. Isolationism is the preferable option to multilateralism which is the only other feasible policy.
Another socioeconomic liberal here who’s OK with individual gun ownership including the faux-tacticool ones, and not just “for now”; and who will try my best to do what’s right but will not waste finite lifetime policing if someone fails to be at the utter bleeding edge of the Intersectional Wokeness Derby in word and thought 24/7.
But as others have suggested, that may not really divide me from “others who share my general ideology” as much as it divides me from those on both Left and Right who’d set up certain litmus tests to pigeonhole people in debate, and say “if you support A and B, you must support K and Q or you’re not a real (whatever)”.
Conservative
Abortion is fine as it stands now
Health Care needs are not being met so would support some form of Health Care for all
The rich don’t pay enough (and I don’t mean those families making 250k /year)
We spend too much, period. Across the board
I don’t care to involve myself in your life, don’t involve yourself in mine (So Pro LGBTQ)
I totally understand your point.
But you are still wrong. You plan doesnt stop the Companies from using all that extra $$ to increase executive pay- and since they have higher tax rates, they will want more pay and benefits.
Not to mention, most executive pay is in the form of stock and options, and in order to increase the rates on Capital gains, you’d have to changes taxes in a material way- a way that would discourage investing, not encourage it. Not to mention a decent amount of executive pay is in the way of non-taxable benefits, like $10M Life insurance policies, lear jets, huge expense accounts, limousines etc.
And you were wrong- but wont admit it- that cutting Corporate taxes is/was indeed part of the now debunked 'trickle down". It didnt work then, and your plan wont work now. In fact, it did the very opposite of what they claimed it would do.
You are arguing tax policy with a man who was a Treasury Agent for twenty years.
Correct, to the extent we are talking about physical objects like new machinery. True, many of those things are depreciated rather than written off all at once, but still, they reduce the taxes in the end. Companies are often run by greedy men who have the authority to give themselves huge pay increase, massive stock options and fantastic benefits- and few resist that temptation. HMS_Irruncible blithely ignores this. .
The downside I see to zero corporate taxes is when there is foreign ownership of a company in your jurisdiction - foreign owners can reap the benefits of the value of the company, while your country only gets the benefit of taxing the domestic owners and workers.
This is also a fair point.
They can do that anyway, since employee pay is not something that the company has to pay tax on.
And, just because they want more pay doesn’t mean that they get more pay. I have been an employee, and I wanted more pay, and my boss could have paid me more, but didn’t.
And they will be paying taxes on those pay and benefits.
No, you just increase taxes on capital gains, and extend how long “long term” rates are set at.
Those can be taxed. You can only write off a certain amount (it was $30 a day about fifteen years ago when I was getting one) for a per diem for food, and other amounts for lodging and transportation. Make and enforce caps on company benefits of that sort.
He never said that it was not a part of it. The contention is whether it was the most important part, or whether not capturing the revenue as it traveled into an individual’s pocket was more important.
It was a different plan, with different goals, and was ineffective because the money was not taxed as it traveled to an individual’s pocket, not because corporations were not taxed at as high a rate.
Does that make you an economist? If not, then that is a fallacious appeal from authority.
You dont have the power to set your own pay, like CEOs do. Sure they often need the BoD to rubber stamp that demand, but as has been shown- they nearly always give in. Executive pay has risen like 400%.
So? We already agree that higher tax rates on high income earners is a good idea. It is part of the Democratic platform even.
Which many would say would do the reverse of what is wanted, curbing investments. (like i said, this is debated , but it isnt totally debunked like 'trickle down" is.)
Which has nothing whatsoever to do what HMS_Irruncible
is talking about. Here and above, you are not talking about a simple “cut corporate taxes to zero, so they will invest, and raise personal income taxes”. You are proposing a huge re-write of the Tax Code. And WHY and what is the benefit of cutting corporate taxes? That is what I was disputing. There is exactly Zero benefit. Certainly there is a value to tinkering with the tax code to see that the rich pay their fair share. But that is not what was proposed. What was proposed is the wrong “trickle down” idea that somehow, against all experience, that companies, given a huge tax cut, with spend that on investing. There is exactly zero evidence for this, and massive evidence against it. ** They did not, have not and will not.**
Indeed he did, repeatedly.
Economists are not tax experts. But economist have disproved and debunked the fallacious "trickle down’ theory, and I have posted the cites that show that.