[[email protected]]

The government doesn't collect as much tax as it should from

When you said, "(and their customers) so it has to collect more from
everybody else"

That's the point, all corporate taxes are paid by everybody else.
So why not let everybody else pay the taxes and let corporations make
business decisions instead of tax decisions.

Because then people would see how much they're *really* paying for the federal
government.

 

[Martin Brown]

Don't you think that businesses ought to pay for some of the
infrastructure they use like roads, railways, utilities and the like?

VAT intelligently hides the real magnitude of taxes.

Why on Earth do you think that? Almost every consumer receipt in Europe
has the amount of VAT prominently displayed - the VAT rate is well known
and widely discussed if they ever alter it. Or as the current bunch of
jokers we have in government tried to apply it to meat pasties.

The present UK chancellor has trouble working out which way is up but
for the moment he has VAT at a stifling 20% which although it makes the
mental arithmetic easy is not good for business. The previous lot had it
down as low as 15% to try and jump start the economy after 2008.

http://blog.nealandassociates.co.uk/2011/03/10/historic-uk-vat-rates/

We are now stuck with "Plan A" which isn't working and a government
cabinet consisting mainly of thick super rich former public schoolboys.
(note for US readers "Public" schools in England are private fee paying)

The main problem with VAT is cross border carousel frauds.
And that VAT is a regressive tax in that the poorest pay a much greater
percentage of their income as tax (or at least they do if you don't zero
rate food and other "essential" items like the UK does).

 

[[email protected]]

Don't you think that businesses ought to pay for some of the
infrastructure they use like roads, railways, utilities and the like?

No, for the reasons already stated here. Businesses pay nothing. Their
customers pay. You can only collect income taxes on "local" businesses so
foreign businesses have an unfair advantage - stupid.

Why on Earth do you think that? Almost every consumer receipt in Europe
has the amount of VAT prominently displayed - the VAT rate is well known
and widely discussed if they ever alter it. Or as the current bunch of
jokers we have in government tried to apply it to meat pasties.

Because the customer doesn't have to reach in his pocket for the money.

<irrelevance snipped>

 

[[email protected]]

Businesses don't pay taxes, their customers do. Every additional
'tax' on a business just raises the consumer's costs at every level in
the distribution system. The companies need more employees for the
paperwork, at every step from raw material, to the customer's final
use. It also creates thousands of bureaucratic jobs and tens of
thousands of pages of tax code that no one person can understand. All
you do is shift the collection point with those taxes, and maybe double
the total additional costs.

Very well stated, Michael.

 

[Martin Brown]

It need not, but I will concede that in practice what you end up with is
a scheme where the hyper rich can employ a handful of former tax
inspectors to help them completely evade paying any taxes at all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18944097

Some of it is even legal but very aggressive tax avoidance where a
complex web of international moves is constructed for the sole purpose
of not paying tax. Mrs Trump said "only the little people pay taxes".

A tax which is a small proportion of profits is a reasonable option as
is one on capital gains provided that farms and so on are exempt where
passing the business on to the next generation are concerned.

I happen to think that VAT as done in Europe is madness because it does
generate a lot of inter business paperwork (though computers take it in
their stride) and there is scope for cross border carousel fraud.

My two favourite daft Belgian taxes were the "Typewriter Tax" and the
"Car Radio Tax" - which as far as I could tell *nobody* actually paid.

Not exactly. Taxing individuals doesn't kill jobs, but taxing
businesses does kill jobs. The worst job killer is an incremental tax
on having employees, like FICA, unemployment insurance, and worker's

What sort of percentage or fixed cost are they in the USA?

comp. Taxing equipment as assets is also very bad, as it grossly
increases the cost of business expansion. This is so simple that it's

We are in complete agreement on this one.
Is this kit tax something specific to California or USA in general?

Most of the ROW *encourages* investment in new equipment (although UK
bean counting senior management have often been too penny pinching to
buy any). The tax code is shifted to encourage capital investment and
expansion of existing businesses.

proof that the majority of Congress and the majority of economists are
stupid or evil. Probably both.

Probably just stupid and making work for their friends in the legal
profession by drafting long opaque laws open to reinterpretation.
Economics is not called the dismal science for nothing. BTW The Euro
debacle is looking seriously dodgy at the moment - markets are spooked.

The Chinese companies that compete with domestic manufacturers don't
pay those US taxes. A sales tax hits imports and domestic production
equally.

The great thing about sales tax is that it's voluntary. If you don't
want to pay the sales tax on a BMW, don't buy the BMW.

That assumes you have a choice. If the sales tax is on food and basic
utilities as opposed to luxuries it hits the poor very much harder.

Defining luxuries then becomes a bit of a nightmare...

 

[amdx]

Don't you think that businesses ought to pay for some of the
infrastructure they use like

roads,

When they buy fuel they are paying for roads.

railways,

When they pay their shipping charges, they are supporting railway costs.

utilities and the like?

When they pay utility bills that includes infrastructure costs.

Mikek

 

[amdx]

Because then people would see how much they're *really* paying for the federal
government.

I think that is a great bandwagon to design and build. Show the
average person how much tax they actually pay. Federal income, FICA,
Medicare, state tax, property tax, and then with the money you have left
you get to pay sales tax, taxes on your phone, taxes on your electric
bill, gasoline taxes, then every item you purchase costs more because
you are paying the taxes that the manufacturer had to pay in federal
taxes, state taxes gasoline taxes, inventory taxes, FICA on every
employee, etc,etc,etc.
Anyone that has other taxes I didn't include please insert them.
Mikek

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

The real way they affect the poor is by killing jobs, which makes
people poor. And Chinese companies don't pay US corporate income
taxes.

Chinese corporate taxes are considerably higher than Canadian
corporate taxes. Of course you're in California so you get the deluxe
treatment, about as much as both added together.

The tax structure should encourage employment. It doesn't.

If you hire someone the costs are current and 100% deductible, so
effectively discounted 30-40%.. if you buy a machine you have to
depreciate it, so it does sort-of reward employment and thus encourage
inefficient manual processes over automation.

 

[Mike]

If you hire someone the costs are current and 100% deductible, so
effectively discounted 30-40%.. if you buy a machine you have to
depreciate it, so it does sort-of reward employment and thus encourage
inefficient manual processes over automation.

Then you have to add health insurance, unemployment insurance, maternity
leave, paid holidays, vacations, sick leave, office furniture, cafeteria,
free coffee, computer & Microsoft Office, replying to email, time wasted on
gossip, time wasted in meetings, training costs, travel expense, handling
personnel conflicts, employee theft, embezzlement, consequences of human
error, legal costs when sued by employee, retaining staff while waiting for
new contract, ad infinitum.

Robots can be much cheaper.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

Then you have to add health insurance, unemployment insurance, maternity
leave, paid holidays, vacations, sick leave, office furniture, cafeteria,
free coffee, computer & Microsoft Office, replying to email, time wasted on
gossip, time wasted in meetings, training costs, travel expense, handling
personnel conflicts, employee theft, embezzlement, consequences of human
error, legal costs when sued by employee, retaining staff while waiting for
new contract, ad infinitum.

Robots can be much cheaper.

For sure, but my point is that that type of tax tends to tilt the
playing field toward employment over automation. If there was zero
corporate income tax then it might look even better to automate.

 

[tm]

The real way they affect the poor is by killing jobs, which makes
people poor. And Chinese companies don't pay US corporate income
taxes.

The tax structure should encourage employment. It doesn't.

Democraps love poor people. That's why there are so many of them.

 

[tm]

I think that is a great bandwagon to design and build. Show the
average person how much tax they actually pay. Federal income, FICA,
Medicare, state tax, property tax, and then with the money you have left
you get to pay sales tax, taxes on your phone, taxes on your electric
bill, gasoline taxes, then every item you purchase costs more because you
are paying the taxes that the manufacturer had to pay in federal taxes,
state taxes gasoline taxes, inventory taxes, FICA on every employee,
etc,etc,etc.
Anyone that has other taxes I didn't include please insert them.
Mikek

We should hold the elections on April 16th.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

We should hold the elections on April 16th.

IIRC, US corporate taxes are payable by April 17th.

 

[Spehro Pefhany]

Actually, we file based on our corporate fiscal year, but must pay
quarterly if we have a profit.

Yes, same here (estimated taxes quarterly) returns are not due for
6mos after fiscal year end. I don't know why one would want to have a
corporate fiscal year the same as a calendar year- can't see any
upside there at all.



Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany

 

[[email protected]]

We should hold the elections on April 16th.

....and abolish withholding.

 

[Jamie]

A couple of small reality checks. I'm not any kind of Eurosheep - I'm an
Australian citizen, and I'll be moving back to Australia in October.

And I'm not any kind of Welfare Queen. I did get unemployment benefit
from the Dutch system from June 2003 to November 2007, when I turned 65,
but I wouldn't have got it if I hadn't been working full-time for the
previous few years. Welfare Queens never have full-time jobs for years
at a time.

I do now get occupational pension checks from two different Dutch
pension schemes - neither is welfare, because Dutch pension schemes are
self-supporting.

Your problem is that you shoot your mouth off about subjects you know
nothing about, and you appear to be too dim to realise precisely how
ignorant you are.

Bill, you need to consider the source.

But on a second note, you sound like some one I know at work that goes
out of his way, all day, to do nothing but bull shit and brown nose into
trying to look important. He claims of knowing so much that it's hard to
fathom, it just boggles the mind! I've not yet seen him successfully
perform anything that shows him being special and a lot of maneuvers he
makes serves to make himself look worse. I suspect he may move on one
day, very soon. It's seems obvious by now he's starting too realizes
people around him are not that naive.

Does that remind you of any one, Bill?

P.S.
Before I forget:

Have a good day.
Jamie

 

[[email protected]]

No, we should withhold paychecks to politicians until the end of
their terms. If there's no money left in the budget, then they're just
out of luck.

Pay them 100% profit sharing.

 

[amdx]

The audio's a lot worse than the transcript. Obama was mocking,
caustic, sarcastic.

Just one small correction.
Obama is mocking, caustic and sarcastic.

Mikek

 

[Mike]

For sure, but my point is that that type of tax tends to tilt the
playing field toward employment over automation. If there was zero
corporate income tax then it might look even better to automate.

More and more articles are appearing that discuss the movement of
manufacturing from Asia back to America. Some factors are increasing
wages in China, cost of transport, and automation.

Reuters has a good article on these issues. Quote

After decades roaming the world in search of lower costs, US
manufacturers are finding that factories at home can compete with
China, India, Mexico and other low-cost countries.

As manufacturers have learned to run factories with fewer workers -
whose jobs consist of keeping high-cost, high-speed machines running
smoothly, rather than assembling goods by hand - they have found
that wages are a less critical issue in choosing a factory site.

(ED: Seesmart Inc. makes LED lighting products)

At Seesmart, shifting production from China to the United States is
cutting logistics costs by about 30 percent as it no longer needs to
fly merchandise across the Pacific. Products can also be made and
shipped to customers more quickly, Sjolseth said.

"The LED business involves a very compulsive buy, and the client
can't tolerate long lead times," he said. "So if you're not
delivering in four to six weeks, it's not going to happen. You're
going to lose the deal and they're going somewhere else."

Higher wages have not been a roadblock for the company because its
automated factories mean that labor costs represent less than 2
percent of the cost to manufacture lighting.

http://www.reuters.com/assets/print?aid=USBRE86N05M20120724

Automation is a key factor in bringing manufacturing back to North
America. This is good news for technologists like sed members, but not
so much for Joe Sixpack.

 

[josephkk]

It need not, but I will concede that in practice what you end up with is
a scheme where the hyper rich can employ a handful of former tax
inspectors to help them completely evade paying any taxes at all.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18944097

Some of it is even legal but very aggressive tax avoidance where a
complex web of international moves is constructed for the sole purpose
of not paying tax. Mrs Trump said "only the little people pay taxes".

Incorrect, that was Ariana Huffington. Who went to jail as well. YCLIU
?-)