66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax.

Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by hvs on Monday April 20, 2009 @07:32AM (#570488)

Yeah, let's increase taxes on corporations. I'm sure that the costs won't get passed on to employees. Plus, the government is so much better at spending money than corporations that actually produce something.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by josefresco on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:00AM (#570506)

Yeah that extra tax money they save goes into paying their employees more, expanding and creating new jobs and growing our economy...

Oh wait, this is reality. It actually just ends up in their CEO's pocket which then gets passed on to their kids and other friends in high places. I'm so glad they're not paying taxes and forcing our government to 'waste' that money.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by nazgulnarsil on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:49AM (#570575)

the money used to pay CEO's is a drop in the bucket next to the operating costs of a large company. how about data instead of rhetoric?

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by DanielBMarkham on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:11AM (#570520)

Yes, the extra money of _theirs_ that is not taxed does go into growth, or into dividends, or into salaries.

In fact, for a company to be successful, they need to be better at allocating excess cash than their competitors.

CEO salaries are an extremely small subset of the profits companies make.

In fact, since all of the money is so well allocated, it's really impossible to tax a corporation, if you think about it. All you would do is increase their expenses, which would then be passed to their customers. You can't get money from a corporation that doesn't exist in a customer's hands at one point, and taxing companies is just another way of taxing the customers that use them.

I mean really, think this through. Do you really think that the .1% of gross profits that go to a CEO makes one speck of difference in the large picture?

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by ph0rque on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:15AM (#570525)

Do you really think that the .1% of gross profits that go to a CEO makes one speck of difference in the large picture?

Interesting... do you have any citations? (I am genuinely curious, not looking to continue an argument.)

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by DanielBMarkham on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:18AM (#570527)

I confess to pulling that one out of my ass.

I'd be curious to see some stats too.

But using common sense (which always isn't so good a guide) can you imagine being a board of directors that approved the CEO making 10 percent of profits? You'd have to be an idiot. (Unless he were also a founder and controlled the board)

Not that boards are very popular right now -- but I don't think they're that dumb.

I came up with that figure using an imaginary $10 Billion company paying their execs in the tens of million range, which seems reasonable to me.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by m_eiman on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:29AM (#570544)

"Plus, the government is so much better at spending money than corporations that actually produce something."

I'm not sure how things work in the US, but in some parts of the world the governments actually use the income from taxes to provide valuable services to their population.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by nazgulnarsil on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:48AM (#570573)

and without competition it is impossible to get accurate prices to see if those services are being provided at...well, competitive prices. Most government programs involve price gouging.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by m_eiman on Monday April 20, 2009 @08:59AM (#570590)

One of the common ways for the government here to provide said services is to buy it from competing companies. So the government decides what to buy, then the fabled "market" decides the price.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by nazgulnarsil on Monday April 20, 2009 @03:14PM (#571213)

government contracting private corporations is different from normal market conditions. observe any corporation that competes for government contracts.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by m_eiman on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @02:38AM (#572007)

How is it different? The buyer specifies what they're looking for, and companies tell them how much they want to do the job. It's a common practice in any market.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by nazgulnarsil on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @03:41PM (#572877)

i don't have a good intoductory book to recommend off the top of my head if you're unaware of the insanely corrupt world of government contracting. I thought it was common knowledge as it gets reported on from time to time.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by nazgulnarsil on Tuesday April 21, 2009 @05:44PM (#573072)

oh, the short answer is that government doesn't behave as a regular customer. with regular customers you don't have such binary outcomes of huge contract or no business at all.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by m_eiman on Wednesday April 22, 2009 @04:18AM (#573676)

Well, that depends on the size of the contract. There's no natural law that says that governments have to buy everything in vast chunks. And they don't, at least not over here.

Everything that takes place in the vast scale is prone to corruption, regardless if the buyers and sellers are private or public.

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Re:66% Of American Corporations Pay Zero Federal Income Tax. by anamax on Monday April 20, 2009 @10:38AM (#570750)

> I'm not sure how things work in the US, but in some parts of the world the governments actually use the income from taxes to provide valuable services to their population.

Are those services valuable enough that the folks that use them would pay what it costs to provide them?

I like it when other folks buy things for me as much as the next person. However, doing that on a large scale ends up being a way for middlemen to take from everyone and much of the "free stuff" is a mistake.

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