
The Perfect Number: Federal corporate income tax rate - mohiblues
http://theperfectnumber.pedal.tech/
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splintercell
Not only it is a bit annoying way to present the data, it tries to hide bs
interpretations in it.

For instance, when Trump said that when he is going to reduce the taxes, jobs
would come roaring back in. To prove how this wouldn't happen, pedal.tech
tries to study the amount of growth, companies who currently pay less than 20%
tax, showed. But that's a ridiculous way to see the merit of that argument.

Imagine if a teacher said, "I am going to reduce the amount of time people
currently spend in doing homework from 3 hours to 2 hours. This will result in
more well-round development of students as they will have more time to do
other things.

Now of course not all students spend 3 hours doing homework, some spend more
than 3 hrs, some 2 hrs, some no time at all. So according to pedal.tech, we
need to look at any student who is spending only 2 hours and see what rounded
development they are having, but that does not tell you what the students who
spend 3 hours would do in their extra time, or what the students who only
spend 2 hours would do (since now they are able to finish their homework).

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bradleyjg
This is kind of an annoying way of presenting an argument. I'd rather be able
to read and look at the animations at my own pace.

That aside, to the main point, I don't think it is really an argument against
lowing nominal rates, but rather an argument against lowing effective rates.
Classically tax reform is involves broadening the base (eliminating
exemptions, deductions, credits, etc) while lowering the nominal rate. That
may not be what the Republicans are planning on doing, but won't really know
until the details are hammered out.

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bradknowles
I gave up bothering to try to follow it.

Maybe that was their goal? To present the data in such a way to make people go
somewhere else?

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CalChris
That and the Cheeto quotes.

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epx
I like the part that shows how similar companies end up with different tax
rates.

Otherwise, I am not sure that federal corporate income tax isn't high, if you
consider that any dividends paid to actual persons pay income tax again. I can
agree paying 35% of my profits in either way, but not twice.

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gggggggg
I gave up on that page very early. Its horrible.

That being said, I have a tax theory. Forgetting about the political power
required to do such a thing. Would it be possible to do away with all the
taxes and replace them with a very low sales tax that gets applied to
everything. e.g. Farmer buys a cow, pay 1% sales tax Milk wholesaler buys the
milk to process, pay 1% sales tax Shop buys the milk to sell, pay 1% sales tax
Shop buys labour to work in the shop (staff), pay 1% sales tax I buy milk to
consume, pay 1% sales tax

More examples. Trade BitCoin, pay 1% sales tax Sell a house, pay 1% sales tax
Trade shares, pay 1% sales tax

I accept some of this will be hard to police without the incentive for smaller
businesses to claim the tax back.

I believe the key to making this work, is having no possible way to get
exemptions. Doesn't matter if you don't make a profit, you still pay, doesn't
matter if you are a organisation looking to on-sell or a consumer, every
transaction pays and no way to offset this.

Finding the magic % would be difficult, but is the key part. Would this be
possible? Where could I go on the inter webs to ask if such a scenario would
even be possible

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bradleyjg
That would really strongly encourage vertical integration.

Consider a company that owns oil wells, pipelines, refineries, and gas
stations. It never pays sales tax on its petroleum products. Only the final
consumer does on the gasoline he buys.

A competitor network made up of independent parts has an oil drilling
independent pay sales tax after it sells crude to a trading firm, the pipeline
owner pays sales tax on the money it gets from the driller for the use of its
pipeline, the trading firm pays sales tax when it sells the crude to a
refiner, the refiner pays sales tax when it sells the oil to an independently
owned gas station, and finally the end consumer pays the same sales tax as the
integrated firm when it sells to the end user.

Countries that raise significant revenue from sales taxes generally use a VAT
(value added tax) to avoid this problem.

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humanrebar
...and it's worth noting that the VAT is very susceptible to judgement calls
and therefore lobbying by special interests and weird edge cases where canned
tomatoes get one tax rate and fresh ones another.

