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Kasz216 on 05 March 2012
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green_sky said:
SamuelRSmith said:
green_sky said:
Marks said:
Why do people obsess over what the rich are making? The top 1% of earners pays something like 40% of all taxes, and there are like ~50% of people who don't pay taxes at all in America...so quit your whining.

I'm not saying the thread creator is whining, but whoever keeps making these articles and getting upset about being poor. If you want equality go to Scandinavia.

I see your point but it becomes hard to objectively debate these serious issues when people see things like this.  http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/lookout/g-e-paid-no-taxes-5-1-billion-20110325-082417-878.html 

GE paying no taxes on $5.1 billion in profits. Taxing the donald trump's  less ego maniac rich cousin is nothing when things like happen. More importantly countries are so divided on this issues of taxation not sure just in US but here in Canada too. I am sure the rest of the world has such issues. 

What about all the taxes GE had to pay to make that profit? (There are taxes for hiring people, owning property, importing goods, etc.).

And what do you think they do with that $5.1bn? They either invest it, where they have to pay all those taxes I've highlighted above. Or they pay it to their shareholders. The shareholders, depending on their jurisdiction, will have to various taxes on that money - capital gains, income, sales (when they buy stuff).

Well from pure capitalistic perspective there should not be any taxes (i'll have to check Adam Smith's book again). Individuals and businesses will provide the services we need. SInce that is not the case and everyone in the world (mostly everyone) is running a giant national debt. Eliminating taxes from corportations would make the situation much more worse. 

I am assuming other corporations should not be paying taxes either as they re-invest some of the profits, pay dividends and employees they hire pay personal income taxes. United States is running a debt of $15.5 trillion dollars and Britain just crossed $1 trillion. These are massive numbers compared compared to their relative GDP. For example http://www.debtbombshell.com/ the interest britain paid in 2010 is more than their entire military budged. 

As for the american side of things. Just looking at this debt clock should make anyone's head spin (its design is pretty creepy) http://www.usdebtclock.org/. So yea. Somehow this has to go down or the entire modern society finances go crazy. Thus the corportations need to take responsibility and governments need to grow some balls to tax them and close the loopholes. If we didn't have these problems are were starting from scratch than yes don't make microsoft, GE, Apple pay any taxes. 

Thanks :)


For what it's worth, the "GE didn't pay any taxes" story seems to be largely fabricated.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/17/new-york-times-tax-story-mistake/

They paid less taxes though for sure, because you can push foward losses into future quarters.   They took such a beating in 2008, they've gotten a tax discount for a few years now.

 

Still.  Corporate taxes should be put at something like a flat 19% with no deductions.  The current system just favors some companies while tons of othes are forced to pay at 35%  Which is ridiculiously high compaired to most of the rest of the world.