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Re:Netflix Made Record Profits in 2020, Paid a Tax Rate of L... by ysavir on Monday April 05, 2021 @10:42AM (#26699654)
Different how? Different in practice or in tax law?

The point of the thread is that the two are essentially the same in practice (investing current monetary influxes towards future revenues) but the tax law differences favor one over the other.

Re:Netflix Made Record Profits in 2020, Paid a Tax Rate of L... by castlecrasher2 on Monday April 05, 2021 @11:46AM (#26700512)
I see your point, but who would benefit most from making loans function the way you're suggesting? It obviously would be businesses.
Re:Netflix Made Record Profits in 2020, Paid a Tax Rate of L... by ysavir on Monday April 05, 2021 @12:33PM (#26701169)
True, but I think the sentiment isn't "make individual loans work like business investments" so much as it is "make business investments work like individual loans". In other words, if individuals are expected to pay taxes, businesses should be expected to pay taxes as well (rather than being allowed to minimize them due to earlier losses).

It's not black and white, of course, and I'm not an accountant, so my knowledge is limited and most likely filled with holes and misunderstandings. But I imagine there's also a matter of scale that's at play here, with tax laws meant to make things easier on small, privately owned businesses in their early years, having unintended consequences to the benefit of companies already behemoth in size investing in getting even bigger. Bigger in ways only made possible in the new digital, globalized world.