Re:The missing profits of nations
by jaredklewis on Thursday July 26, 2018 @08:32PM
(#17622563)
Interesting. Comment makes more sense now.
The amount of law and international agreements that would be overturned by such a change is truly staggering, so I’d still say this is the antithesis of simple.
Further, I’m not sure China’s model, and protectionism in general, is a better strategy. No way to know, but I expect China’s economy would be stronger if it didn’t have these protections.
Like I said, there are a hundred things we can tax; why do we only want to tax the one that’s easy to evade?
I’d apply the same logic to everything. I’d also forbid money transfers to/from tax havens and ownership of property/companies by entities in tax havens or other countries that don’t reveal beneficial owners... There’s a lot of abuse happening, and it mostly involves the same few countries. The rest of us (i.e. employees and small business owners) end up paying so much more.
(By “forbid” I of course mean “tax so heavily it just doesn’t make any economic sense”.)
No, I'm referring to the fact that foreign (Western) companies cannot sell in China unless part of the products are made there, and can't own Chinese companies without Chinese co-ownership. It all resulted in a massive transfer of IP to China, simply because for most companies, the tradeoff still made sense (short-term at least) (Google is a notable exception).