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Senate investigators: Apple sheltered $44 billion from taxes

Its a nonsensical tax anyways. Why do we need to collect corporate taxes? We already can tax the people in the corporation at the income level. Its stupid.

Why does any individual have to pay both income and property tax?
 
Its a nonsensical tax anyways. Why do we need to collect corporate taxes? We already can tax the people in the corporation at the income level. Its stupid.

Don't think I agree and I am by no means a leftist on economic issues. The problem you have is the same problem we had in Canada a while ago with income funds. They essentially were companies with no taxes, but the income flowed through the the owners of units to pay tax on directly.

Works decently well if the ownership of these funds are not in tax deferring vehicles (like IRAs) and they are ALL owned by domestic residents, but as soon as foreign owners pick up big peices of these interests you have massive outflows of earnings that are never taxed win the country where they are earned.

What you can do, though, is tax dividends at less than full income, such that corporate taxes plus dividend taxes translate into approximately what the individual would have paid had the income been earned as partnership income or from wages. Part paid by the firm, part paid by the individual. Some tax determent possible, some reduction in overall govenrment intake, but overall seems to work pretty well. But the corporate rate is too high in the US, while this ridiculous extra-territorial extension of the tax system to patriated forteign earnings is a massive deterrent to inflows of capital earned abroad.
 
Yep, that's what we need to do to make tax avoidance impossible. Then the corps may as well stay in the US. They won't benefit from spin offs and foreign divisions.

Again, you're missign the point. Corps that can leave have left. Corps that have spun off into tax havens have. They always optimize their tax avoidance. So we're punishing them, and that benefits the corps that haven't left.

Yeah cause who the **** needs those evil corporations located in the US employing people, let em move their headquarters!

:roll:

Forget shooting yourself in the foot this idea is shooting yourself in the nuts.
 
This is a non-answer. First off, government cannot be treated as market force because government is not business....it's government. But this is simple, yes? How do you make people not feel like a victim for paying for the things we all use and the technology we enjoy?

Again, I never asked them to provide any services outside of police and courts. I never asked that they do anything towards the internet, electricity, water, welfare, roads, etc. That is all their busy work that I would like it very much if the private sector picked it up completely. As for taxes, I support tariffs, but beyond that I really don't support anything they are doing right now.

If you ain't revolting, you're submitting.

I'm not submitting if I'm hiding my money.
 
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Why does any individual have to pay both income and property tax?

And a sales tax and a tax on alcohol, and a tax on gasoline etc.

The answer is because government is a beast and its appetite for wealth to spend and redistribute is insatiable.

what it wants cannot be collected in just one way because the distortative impact in those markerts would be too large. Replace all taxes with an 80% income tax and you have much less work and much more off the books work. You replace everything with a 50% sales tax and you have a massive underground economy and a system without enough domestic consumption. You throw a 60% tax on corporations you have far less investment. And so on.

But at some point, the real question is do we really need to take that dollar away from the pension fund or the sales clerk to give it to that old person or the doctor caring for that sick person or the large farming conglomorate (who pretend their subsidies accrue to "small farmers" when lobbying). Because unlike free markets, where resources are relatively efficiently used, the waste in public spending, the unjust and unnecessary welath transfers that are routine, are absolutely massive.

And we all pay for that.
 
Why does any individual have to pay both income and property tax?

The better question is how many different forms of taxes do they need?
 
Yeah cause who the **** needs those evil corporations located in the US employing people, let em move their headquarters!

:roll:

Forget shooting yourself in the foot this idea is shooting yourself in the nuts.

they'll grow back right?

Right?
 
Again, I never asked them to provide any services outside of police and courts. I never asked that they do anything towards the internet, electricity, water, welfare, roads, etc. That is all their busy work that I would like it very much if the private sector picked it up completely. As for taxes, I support tariffs, but beyond that I really don't support anything they are doing now.

It's the contract. You either work within the confines of it, or you revolt against it. Contract. You have unlimited right to it, which means you bear responsibility of it.

I'm not submitting if I'm hiding my money.

Nope, then you're just a criminal sponging off the work of others. I doubt you give up access to all the aggregate technologies and advantages we have because we did have a funded government which could support these things unsupportable by private entity. Hell even the internet was spawned from tax dollars. Cell phones? Yes. Medical tech? Yes. Useless tech? Yes. I will allow you to not pay as many taxes as you want, so long as you reap no benefit of government funding in those areas. You actually willing to put your money where your mouth is?
 
The better question is how many different forms of taxes do they need?

Not many. The tax code has become quite convoluted in order to serve the government's means and to protect corporate interest. Land value tax, consumption tax, may still need a bit of the ol' income tax to make up the difference. But it should be clear, it should be straight forward, and there should be no shelters or anything of the like. We all realize and know what we pay so that we are better informed over such matters when addressing government concerns.
 
Excellent excuse to allow criminal behavior without consequences.

Crimes are committed by people, not the ideas they come up with. There I no reason a person could not be punished for a crime committed as a member of a corporation.
 
And a sales tax and a tax on alcohol, and a tax on gasoline etc.

The answer is because government is a beast and its appetite for wealth to spend and redistribute is insatiable.

Oh, this is true. Government loves its power and will hand out to those who recognize its power. That's not really the "poor", wealth redistribution actually favors heavily the excessively rich and the corporate entities which control our government.

what it wants cannot be collected in just one way because the distortative impact in those markerts would be too large. Replace all taxes with an 80% income tax and you have much less work and much more off the books work. You replace everything with a 50% sales tax and you have a massive underground economy and a system without enough domestic consumption. You throw a 60% tax on corporations you have far less investment. And so on.

Yup, and you have 0% and the government collapses. Fun.

But at some point, the real question is do we really need to take that dollar away from the pension fund or the sales clerk to give it to that old person or the doctor caring for that sick person or the large farming conglomorate (who pretend their subsidies accrue to "small farmers" when lobbying). Because unlike free markets, where resources are relatively efficiently used, the waste in public spending, the unjust and unnecessary welath transfers that are routine, are absolutely massive.

And we all pay for that.

What of those is necessary indeed. It's a question I fear too few actually consider.
 
It's the contract. You either work within the confines of it, or you revolt against it. Contract. You have unlimited right to it, which means you bear responsibility of it.

What in the hell are you talking about? What contract? I don't remember the social contract involving theft. In fact, I remember it protecting against it. Since what you're talking about has nothing to do with that contract I really have no idea what you are referring.


Nope, then you're just a criminal sponging off the work of others. I doubt you give up access to all the aggregate technologies and advantages we have because we did have a funded government which could support these things unsupportable by private entity. Hell even the internet was spawned from tax dollars. Cell phones? Yes. Medical tech? Yes. Useless tech? Yes. I will allow you to not pay as many taxes as you want, so long as you reap no benefit of government funding in those areas. You actually willing to put your money where your mouth is?

Don't dare tell me that the Internet is a creation of the state. They provided the market with something that didn't even boot and the market in turn had to fix their broken **** to make it work. In any event, I don't care what the government came up and to be frank I don't care who came up with it. The Internet is unmanageable in its current state due to how illogical the infrastructure is, which to a large part was put in place by the government without a care in the world how you manage something so illogical. Of course, the market could very well make that same mistake, but I highly doubt it could create the cluster**** the government made.

I don't need to give up anything just because the government did something and now I have it. That is retarded and logically speaking I would have to give my apple phone or anything the private sector did if I decided tomorrow that I hated whoever made it one day. It is my property and I paid for it, so why in the hell would I give it up?

I will avoid whatever taxes I can and I have no plans to give up anything in the process.
 
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What in the hell are you talking about? What contract? I don't remember social contract involving theft. In fact, I remember protecting against it. Since what you're talking about has nothing to do with that contract I really have no idea what you are referring.

The Constitution. It's the contract between We the People and the government. We may resend it at any time, but not just by bitching on the internet. You'll have to do something.


Don't dare tell me that the Internet is a creation of the state. They provided the market with something that didn't even boot and the market in turn had to fix their broken **** to make it work. In any event, I don't care what the government came up and to be frank I don't care if who came up with it. The Internet is unmanageable in its current state due to how illogical the infrastructure is which to a large part was put in place by the government without a care in the world how you manage something so illogical. Of course, the market could very well make that same mistake, but I highly doubt it create the cluster**** the government made.

I don't need to give up anything just because the government did something and now I have it. That is retarded and logically speaking I would have to give my apple phone or anything the private sector did if I decided tomorrow that I hated whoever made it one day. It is my property and I paid for it, so why in the hell would I give it up?

I will avoid whatever taxes I can and I have no plans to give up anything in the process.

Ahhh, it makes sense now. You're one of the people who wants free ****.
 
We agree but do you see how instead the Corporation paid the fine and the individuals that were facilitating drug crimes were not punished at all.


Crimes are committed by people, not the ideas they come up with. There I no reason a person could not be punished for a crime committed as a member of a corporation.
 
We agree but do you see how instead the Corporation paid the fine and the individuals that were facilitating drug crimes were not punished at all.

Equal and fair treatment is not the goal of corporatists.
 
Don't think I agree and I am by no means a leftist on economic issues. The problem you have is the same problem we had in Canada a while ago with income funds. They essentially were companies with no taxes, but the income flowed through the the owners of units to pay tax on directly.

Works decently well if the ownership of these funds are not in tax deferring vehicles (like IRAs) and they are ALL owned by domestic residents, but as soon as foreign owners pick up big peices of these interests you have massive outflows of earnings that are never taxed win the country where they are earned.

What you can do, though, is tax dividends at less than full income, such that corporate taxes plus dividend taxes translate into approximately what the individual would have paid had the income been earned as partnership income or from wages. Part paid by the firm, part paid by the individual. Some tax determent possible, some reduction in overall govenrment intake, but overall seems to work pretty well. But the corporate rate is too high in the US, while this ridiculous extra-territorial extension of the tax system to patriated forteign earnings is a massive deterrent to inflows of capital earned abroad.

That is something that I haven't exactly thought of. But at the same time, that is exactly what we are seeing in this country anyways. Countries like Apple moving money overseas and not paying taxes on it. Also, you have to consider, that foreign capital may withdraw earnings over a period of time,but it still represents an investment in domestic companies. Also, I get the hunch that the US would have less of a problem with foreign capital overwhelming domestic capital because most of the world's largest corporations are American anyways. I suppose the easiest fix here is to just reduce the corporate tax to a level like say 20% where companies like Apple have far less incentive to move money offshore. I agree with most of the rest of your points.
 
The Constitution. It's the contract between We the People and the government. We may resend it at any time, but not just by bitching on the internet. You'll have to do something.

Why I should I honor something they refuse to honor? What do you take me for? I'm not a puppet?

Ahhh, it makes sense now. You're one of the people who wants free ****.

All I want is a system that works voluntarily on some level.
 
Crimes are committed by people, not the ideas they come up with. There I no reason a person could not be punished for a crime committed as a member of a corporation.

Actually corporations can and have been prosecuted for crimes, with the CEO being the person incarcerated. Such cases have been closely scrutinized by appellate courts since the don't seem to fit our usual notions of mens rea and the elements of culpability.
 
You're right. They probably should just pay property tax.

I would go with neither.

The property tax treats you as a renter to your property.

Income tax allows the government to assume control over your income and gifts you the remainder.
 
Yeah cause who the **** needs those evil corporations located in the US employing people, let em move their headquarters!

:roll:

Forget shooting yourself in the foot this idea is shooting yourself in the nuts.

Psssst: exactly -- who needs them if they don't pay taxes and the hire cheap labor overseas. You're catching on.
 
Psssst: exactly -- who needs them if they don't pay taxes and the hire cheap labor overseas. You're catching on.

Now why would they hire cheap labor overseas? Gee, I wonder.
 
Why I should I honor something they refuse to honor? What do you take me for? I'm not a puppet?

Then do something. If you just sit there and vote and do nothing to change the system, I'll have no sympathy for you when they throw you in jail for not paying up.

All I want is a system that works voluntarily on some level.

No you don't. You said so in your last post. You'll give nothing up, and you'll hide all your money regardless of the facts that government funding is what is pushing tech and advancement. That science and engineering has evolved to such a level that the money*time margin is not sustainable by private enterprise for base research. You think Verizon funded research into IC? Into cell tech? No, once that tech became engineerable, then they took over; they couldn't do it before. The days of Bell Labs are over, son. Medical science? Same thing. Pretty much all our tech, all our modern conveniences; more and more the base knowledge necessary to engineer such solutions is not obtainable through market. You require something much more stable and able to source massive amounts of money that is required to advance further; government. But you don't want to pay for that. You "paid" for your phone, but you paid a company for production+profit costs. Taxes are what funded the research that ultimately bore the fruit of that tech. But you don't want to pay that. Somehow you feel entitled to the work of others. You'll give up nothing and take everything. I've seen your sort before, you're a welfare queen. You don't want "voluntary" because you cannot live by the consequences of such. You want and you want and you want, but you don't wish to pay. That's the bottom line. You will not give up anything for your "voluntary" society, thinking instead that you deserve and are entitled to the sweat of other's brows.

I said it before, I'll say it again. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
 
You're right. They probably should just pay property tax.

Not a solution I am at odds with. But I will say, what is good for the goose is good for the gander.
 
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