"Who deserves a corporation's taxes?" is still an unanswered question globally.
A company pays employees who pay income taxes in jurisdictions where they live and work.
It pays payroll taxes in the regions it operates and employs people.
It pays sales taxes on the materials it purchases and collects and transfers sales taxes for stuff it sells, to the state/jurisdiction where the sale takes place.
It pays property taxes on buildings it owns.
All of this is obvious, but then the company as a whole likely has some revenue and (maybe) profit - who taxes those? The country where it is registered? Where it has the most employees? Every country and jurisdiction it operates in or has sales in, with some agreed-upon split?
This last question is the cause of every single "company XYZ paid nothing in taxes" or "company XYZ uses a tax haven" article out there.
Well, for a multinational corporation, the sentence still makes sense and doesn’t seem gratuitous or sensationalized, as they could say they shifted $39B of UK profit to Ireland or something. It does leave a vague and perhaps intentional implication of crossing some kind of border, so they could have said “$39 billion of profit in the incorporated US”, I suppose.
Except PR citizens and corporations don't generally pay US income taxes. There are exceptions though, like if the income is from US activity. They do pay a few other federal taxes (like FICA, FUTA), but those aren't relevant to the article.
I wish people were able to think about what is really doing on here for themselves for a few seconds instead of swallowing whole the prepackaged rhetoric from either side; on one side we have "corporations are evil and must be taxed just as heavily as we want to tax the life out of all citizens to support others against their will", and on the other side we have "corporations are benevolent angels who are constantly persecuted and hunted for their life blood while only ever having the most pure intentions and thoughts any angel could ever have.
Reality though is quite a bit in the middle-ground … corporations are enterprises headed by purely selfish and overwhelmingly people that are living embodiments of the dark triad of personality traits (narcissism fueled by psychopathy enacting machiavellianism), but on the other hand they are also very much not wrong in simply wanting to preserve and keep what they have, regardless of whether they got it illicitly and immorally in the first place, largely enabled by the other tribe of the dark triad that only carry a different banner, while also being corporatists, but feigning "concern for the common man" while devising ever more elaborate schemes for how to disposes people who actually earn things through productive and hard work of the fruits of their labor in order to support themselves and those who empower them.
What it all can be reduced down to when you start disassembling the various shields, force fields, lies, misdirection, and deception to get to the core of things; what we are really facing is an actual, real, objective new form of the parasitic exploitation model humanity has known in many forms, but most often refers to its most obvious incarnation as slavery … we have a system of modern slavery, one that long ago realized it is way more profitable to not have to worry taking care of unproductive slaves you physically control, but rather you simply take a huge chunk of most people who are productive and your net profit is wildly higher. It's precisely one of the reasons that oligarchs make sure to push everyone's attention to the trope of slavery, so most people do not realize that "slavery" (a term referring to the systematic exploitation of the slavs … a European people … even far and beyond feudal serfdom that was also a "slavery" business model) pivoted its business model.
Corporate "slaves" are some of the best paid in history. I'm sure the "model" figured out that if their labor is generally wealthier, it is far more productive and profitable.
I unfortunately did not see your comment until now and it seems this forum does not lend itself to actual in depth discussions of any substance, with a clear intent of attracting and harvesting technical skills and knowledge from gullible tech people; but I think you misunderstood something.
I am not referring to "corporate slaves" as being the well paid equivalent of the nobility or and even lower aristocracy of the past, or their equivalent in different times. I am referring to the fact that the "kings and emperors" of today developed a new model for "slavery", or, to generalize, exploitation of some by others to support their excessive and parasitic life. You are misunderstanding the relational nature of the system. What it comes down to is that the ruling psychopaths realized they could become extremely wealthy by simply shifting the "slavery" aspect to a kind of nickel and diming of everyone under a threshold that breaks their willingness to freely engage, rather than forcing unproductive and unwilling slaves that you also have to take care of. It is actually what is referred to when "economists" stalk about taxation stifling production or willingness to be productive … what they really mean or should be saying is that it is the rate at which you deprive the slave of their willingness to work, relative to coercive force required to overcome that innate will. There are dependencies; profit, free will, force … largely two will go up as one goes down, but not at the same rate, even though the ruling psychopaths keep trying to manipulate things, thinking they can have all of it … until things invariably break and snap.
I don't agree. labor is functioning as a collective noun here. it's common to use "it" to refer to a collective noun (even if the collective is people), especially when there is a sense of the collective acting as a single unit (eg, the jury delivered its verdict).
A company pays employees who pay income taxes in jurisdictions where they live and work.
It pays payroll taxes in the regions it operates and employs people.
It pays sales taxes on the materials it purchases and collects and transfers sales taxes for stuff it sells, to the state/jurisdiction where the sale takes place.
It pays property taxes on buildings it owns.
All of this is obvious, but then the company as a whole likely has some revenue and (maybe) profit - who taxes those? The country where it is registered? Where it has the most employees? Every country and jurisdiction it operates in or has sales in, with some agreed-upon split?
This last question is the cause of every single "company XYZ paid nothing in taxes" or "company XYZ uses a tax haven" article out there.