On: Ask HN: Is there a quick summary of how much tax various corporations pay?

[runawaybottle]

I think we’d want real taxes paid, which many people have parroted as ‘zero’ for a long time (I think Sanders claimed this for Amazon recently).

You’d think there would be a simple site where you can look up a company ticker symbol and see a straight taxes-paid number and how much is off-shored to mitigate tax burden.

[londons_explore → runawaybottle]

What if places like the NYSE started saying that quarterly reports are no longer allowed to report on revenue and profits, and are only allowed to report on taxes paid and dividends.

Then investors will have to guess revenue and profit figures from how much tax was paid. Suddenly companies have no incentive to hide revenue behind obscure schemes because their shareholders can't reward them for it.

[prepend → londons_explore]

Companies would have massive incentives to hide revenue.

If we didn’t force companies to reveal revenue and only required tax and dividend, then there would be many ways to manipulate their stock.

Want to look successful? Borrow money and pay out a huge dividend.

Don’t need capital, pay zero taxes by offsetting private revenue. Offset forever paying no tax, issuing no dividends and just buying back stock.