Biggest companies pay the least tax, shows new research

Re:Biggest companies pay the least tax, shows new research by dboreham on Sunday April 05, 2020 @02:57PM (#22787596)

Imho "companies" should not pay income tax (they can pay sales taxes, asset taxes like property tax, payroll taxes). Companies should be able to retain profits to either reinvest in their business or to save for a downturn. Taxes should be paid by the recipient (shareholders, management) on distributed profits.

I suspect the only reason we have corporate income tax at all is because clever financial engineers find ways to make what is really personal income to shareholders and management look like retained corporate income.

(I would add "windfall taxes" to the set of ok corporate taxes since those aim to redress a monopoly profit situation).

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Re:Biggest companies pay the least tax, shows new research by goldcd on Sunday April 05, 2020 @03:34PM (#22787930)

Agreed

What f&cks up the system is differentiating money you've made by buying shares, from money you've made by working.

Owning shares isn't contributing to GDP - working is.

For some horrifically f&cked up reason (lobbying) the former is taxed less than the latter.

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Re:Biggest companies pay the least tax, shows new research by dennis_jeeves on Sunday April 05, 2020 @09:17PM (#22790143)

I would go even further and say that any form of income tax including personal taxes is very regressive. One could make a case for some forms of taxation, example a a carbon tax if one pollutes.

Taxes should be directly proportional to what one consumes, not what one earns.

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Re:Biggest companies pay the least tax, shows new research by nouveaux on Sunday April 05, 2020 @03:01PM (#22787632)

"Companies should be able to retain profits to either reinvest in their business or to save for a downturn."

Sure except profits end up as dividends or stock buy back. Companies end up with limited cash and will still need a bail out.

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Re:Biggest companies pay the least tax, shows new research by nightski on Sunday April 05, 2020 @03:09PM (#22787705)

Sure, if you eliminate corporate income taxes you'd need to increase capital gains taxes as well. But I am having a hard time seeing the disadvantage of that (although I'm not an expert by any means).

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