Don't be evil(?)

[rakesh mailgroups]

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/378085/is-tax-avoiding-google-telling-the-truth-about-uk-engineers

[Simon Ochsenreither]

It's certainly entertaining how these tax evasion schemes force companies to make interesting claims about their work force. :-)

I wonder if there is any scientific work regarding the design of taxation laws which would prevent or at least decrease the exploitability of loopholes.
Maybe the idea of taxing profits is just outdated in a world where IP and brandmark licensing schemes allows companies to create almost arbitrary profit/loss numbers. (But what would be the alternative? And how would the transition from system A to system B work?)

The companies mentioned in the article aren't the only ones cheating, but it is certainly interesting that the same companies which are lobbying for a renewed tax "break" in exchange for moving their money back into the US are claiming that no value is generated overseas.

[Cédric Beust ♔]

This is about tax avoidance, not tax evasion. There is a big difference.

-- 

Cédric

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Mon, 12 Nov 2012 23:10:56 +0100, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>
wrote:

> This is about tax avoidance, not tax evasion. There is a big difference.

Correct. But often the practical difference is hard to tell. I mean:
technically, when it's legal it's avoidance, when it's illegal it's
evasion, the difference is clear. But is it legal to lie about facts, as
Google is allegedly doing about UK engineering, according to the cited
article?

In any case, the moral obligation of corporates is to maximize
stakeholders' revenues. This obviously means they *have to* do tax
avoidance. Just do your business and don't tell me foolish things, such as
"Don't do evil".

--
Fabrizio Giudici - Java Architect @ Tidalwave s.a.s.
"We make Java work. Everywhere."
http://tidalwave.it/fabrizio/blog - fabrizio...@tidalwave.it

[rakesh mailgroups]

"We're not accusing you of being illegal, we're accusing you of being immoral."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20288077

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:03:31 +0100, rakesh mailgroups
<rakesh.m...@gmail.com> wrote:

> "We're not accusing you of being illegal, we're accusing you of being
> immoral."
>
> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20288077

Putting together "moral" or "immoral" and "corporate" is a stupid thing,
IMO. Moral is a category for physical human beings, not corporates. Since
some corporates do use the "good" / "evil" categories, they can rather be
blamed of being hypocrite.

[Ricky Clarkson]

I just listened to the Jeremy Vine spot on BBC Radio 2 where they discussed this.  The government is encouraging boycotts of Amazon, Google and Starbucks and I don't believe they are pursuing any legal action.  I think that's reasonable, although I'm not going to partake in a boycott as I would do the same if I was Google (plus, I'm not in the UK anymore so I only have Starbucks and Google to boycott).  The government should be giving tax breaks to at least Google and Amazon (especially if they start creating jobs somewhere other than London).

Corporates are composed of human beings, and those human beings do have morals, so I don't see why you wouldn't expect a corporation to behave like the human beings it's composed of (or at least like its finance department!).

[Raul Guiu]

"The government is encouraging boycotts of Amazon, Google and Starbucks" 

Why dont they "fix" the rules/laws? If the current systems allows people to avoid taxes, fix it. I am sure is not only Google, Amazon.... I may not understand Brits, but if you choose a Chancellor who is a tax evader himself (or at least someone who is skilful finding loopholes), what do you expect?

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[Russel Winder]

On Tue, 2012-11-13 at 15:09 +0100, Raul Guiu wrote:
[…]

> understand Brits, but if you choose a Chancellor who is a tax evader
> himself (or at least someone who is skilful finding loopholes), what do you
> expect?

[…]

This isn't particularly British, it's about politicians in a democracy.
Politicians con voters in order to get elected. Once in power they are
nice to their friends and to themselves. The borders between tax
avoidance and tax evasion generally favour the rich and powerful, whilst
the voters get shafted en bloc. The last four years have been an object
lesson: the voters have been battered into depression and/or poverty,
whilst the rich have been getting very nicely richer.

And British electorate didn't choose the Chancellor. Voters are given a
selection of people to choose amongst, all of whom come from the ruling
elite. Choosing "no victor" is not an option, so one of them gets
elected. Since only people from within political parties ever have a
chance of getting elected, this means parliament is composed of parties
that profess policies that people have to choose as a block, they are
not permitted to select which policies they wish to vote for. In the end
the leader of the party with the majority chooses the Chancellor and he
does what the party leader says.

Basically the system sucks, but sadly all other systems suck worse.

Thus it is important for there to be a strong investigative media in
order to bring the worst excesses of power and cheating, to some form of
book. Hence the importance of the expenses scandal a year or so ago. MPs
were cheating the tax payers quite widely. No investigative media and
they would have got away with it. Politician tax evasion comes in the
same boat.

The sadness of the moment is that the BBC made a couple of small lapses
of journalistic judgement recently and now the politicians are baying
for blood and trying to decimate the BBC, principally to stop it being a
strong investigative media entity, prying into their cheating of voters
and tax payers.

It's is basically the same story everywhere one way or another.

On the other hand, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Starbucks could, by paying
their taxes clear the entire UK national debt that is crippling the
voters and tax payers of this country.

Google may have the slogan "Do no evil", but that doesn't mean they
believe in doing any good, they are there to make a profit. It is just a
pity that these four are not concerned with the fact that the UK will
stop being a cash-cow for them.

--
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=============================================================================
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41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@winder.org.uk
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[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2012 at 7:39 AM, Russel Winder <rus...@winder.org.uk> wrote:

they are there to make a profit.

There is plenty of evidence that this is far, far from being their main priority. For example, if it were, food would have stopped being free for employees (and guests) on the day they went public in 2004. They wouldn't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars each year to give all their employees a free phone. I could go on.

Anyone who has worked there will tell you that the leadership at Google is absolutely convinced that their #1 priority is their employees. I would even argue that "Do no evil" would come way before "making a profit" on that priority list.

-- 

Cédric

[Robert Casto]

But you could say that being good to employees is helping them make a profit. For without happy employees, they tend to leave or do their job poorly. So the food, phones, and other expenses are probably tiny compared to salaries. Some companies like Fog Creek Software believe it doing everything for employees to help them be more productive. So Google is probably doing the right thing by their stock holders in trying to attract the best people and keep them happy and engaged.

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 14:57:45 +0100, Ricky Clarkson
<ricky.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Corporates are composed of human beings, and those human beings do have
> morals, so I don't see why you wouldn't expect a corporation to behave
> like
> the human beings it's composed of (or at least like its finance
> department!).

As you wrote, it's not that a corporate is-a bunch of people, but it
contains a bunch of people. These are two different things.

(I'd also say that a bunch of people is not the same thing as a single
person: in most cases you have multiple morals, and this is a different
story).

Raul wrote:

> Why dont they "fix" the rules/laws?

Agreed. Generally speaking, I see moral entities such as associations,
churches, or such to call for moral behaviours, including boycotting. If a
government calls for boycotting, most likely it's to cover its
incapability of doing something (or its secret desire of not doing it).

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:01:56 +0100, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com>
wrote:

> Anyone who has worked there will tell you that the leadership at Google
> is
> absolutely convinced that their #1 priority is their employees.

This doesn't counter the previous argument. I'm pretty sure that Google
does care about employees and also spends lots of money in public
relations. This is because being able to hire the best employees and
improving their imagine allows them to make more money.

[Oscar Hsieh]

How about mortgage lenders that pushed mortgages to people who cannot possibly afford to?

[Ricky Clarkson]

I'm quite glad that the UK government doesn't just change the laws on the spot when something happens that it doesn't like, and having lived in a more.. latin country the last couple of years I've seen the dangers of a government that can propose an idea and have it become law in one sitting.  A more predictable government helps individuals and businesses.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:37:51 +0100, Oscar Hsieh <zen...@gmail.com> wrote:

> How about mortgage lenders that pushed mortgages to people who cannot
> possibly afford to?

Doesn't make any difference. They are still corporates, right? I consider
obvious that any business would push its behaviours to the edge of
legality. If this sounds immoral or wrong for most people, they only have
to elect politicians to declare that practice illegal. Now, please don't
make me comment on the relationship between moral and politicians, or I'll
cry bad words out loud.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:40:54 +0100, Ricky Clarkson
<ricky.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm quite glad that the UK government doesn't just change the laws on the
> spot when something happens that it doesn't like, and having lived in a
> more.. latin country the last couple of years I've seen the dangers of a
> government that can propose an idea and have it become law in one
> sitting.
> A more predictable government helps individuals and businesses.

I definitely agree (unfortunately I live in a latin country, from this
respect). But this doesn't affect my point. Take some time to decide what
should be legal or not, then once you've decided just live with it for a
while.

[Uberto Barbini]

Still at the end it's the US/UK law makers that allowed for loopholes like the one Google and other are exploiting.

It's unfair to blame the companies, when it's clearly their fault. It's like blaming the users if they found bugs... no wait, blaming the users is ok.

Uberto

[Ricky Clarkson]

That's like saying it's ok to murder someone if you happen across an area without any laws against murder (e.g., the Moon, Antarctica(?)).

There's no law against writing a bug in your code but svn blame and git blame still happily put the blame on you.

[Uberto Barbini]

I'm pretty sure it's illegal to kill people in Antarctica as well :)

Anyway I agree that is dodgy for Google avoiding tax using Luxemburg, while Starbucks situation seems morally ok. But the main culprit is are the law makers IMHO.

And anyway the "don't do evil" Google rule is completely bullshit, like anybody who had commercial relation with Google can testify.

Uberto

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 12:39:52 +0100, Ricky Clarkson
<ricky.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

> That's like saying it's ok to murder someone if you happen across an area
> without any laws against murder (e.g., the Moon, Antarctica(?)).

Let's not confuse the personal and public profiles. Most people here would
hopefully say it's not ok to murder someone in such a case. This is
because in most people moral attitude killing is not good. But there's no
doubt that nobody would be able to prosecute the murderer and jail him. I
presume we're here talking about practical things, right? That is, have
the murdered jailed and corporates paying the taxes we think they should
pay.

It's also to be said that things aren't so black/white as in your example.
In many countries, for instance, people can be legally killed because they
have been sentenced to death, or because they are homosexual, or because
they have had sexual intercourses outside the marriage, or even just
because they expressed some personal belief which is not approved by the
authorities. While we can express our strong disagree (moral point of
view), as soon as there are laws in those countries that allow to kill
them, they will be still killed. I'm not interested in talks, rather in
concrete actions.

In all these cases, no law, no solution. Moral points of view of people
are useful as they translate in a political view and elect governments
that apply them.

So, back to the origial topic, I'm with Uberto, the "bug" is with
governments that are not able to design the proper laws. As soon there's a
loophole, a skilled lawyer will find it and elaborate a strategy to
exploit it. No big talk will prevent him from doing that.

[Kevin Wright]

Someone will ALWAYS find a way around whatever laws are put in place, perhaps a better approach would be to play these companies at their own game.  A game where brand is *everything*

Prime-time TV adverts, funded by government, in which the worst tax evasion offenders are daily named and shamed.  It doesn't matter what loophole a company finds, if they're evading tax then they'll be named and a boycott will be inevitable.

The goals then change from minimising tax to balancing it against potential loss of revenue from being caught.

The arrangement should easily pay for itself.  Legislation could even mandate such adverts as being in the public interest and set the price that broadcasters must accept to avoid them milking the system.

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:08:01 +0100, Kevin Wright
<kev.lee...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Prime-time TV adverts, funded by government, in which the worst tax
> evasion

I'd be very worried of such a thing funded by a government, as this could
be used to retaliate corporates for other political reasons. While it
could be a very good idea if the initiative is carried on by e.g. an
association of citizens, or customers, or such. Still, I don't believe it
would change things: people are too infatuated of new technologies and
couldn't prevent themselves from buying products and using services. Let's
just recall a few years ago how many Java developers were upset with
Apple, and how the boycott failed (I mean, not only because developers are
a minimal fraction of Apple customers). The only good thing, at this
point, is that the initiative would inform people correctly, give them
some weapons to fight, and if people decide not to use it, well, that's
democracy.

[Kevin Wright]

It's the sort of thing that 38 degrees might be interested in (at least in the UK), but my main concern is that the whole thing should be funded by the increased tax revenue that it generates.

We certainly shouldn't expect private individuals to have to donate in order to get corporations to pay their tax!

and given that the only people with access to said tax revenue are the government...

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 13:45:43 +0100, Kevin Wright
<kev.lee...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's the sort of thing that 38 degrees might be interested in (at least
> in
> the UK), but my main concern is that the whole thing should be funded by
> the increased tax revenue that it generates.
>
> We certainly shouldn't expect private individuals to have to donate in
> order to get corporations to pay their tax!
>
> and given that the only people with access to said tax revenue are the
> government...

I understand your point - but, thinking of it, in a perfect democracy
politicians should be the only thing that we should pay for having a
governance. In the end, it turns out that we need other things
(associations, etc...) for exercising lobbying activities. All of these
things have a cost, and in the end the request for a better fiscal policy
is not an exceptional thing.

[Eric Jablow]

On Tuesday, November 13, 2012 10:39:49 AM UTC-5, Russel wrote:

The sadness of the moment is that the BBC made a couple of small lapses
of journalistic judgement recently and now the politicians are baying
for blood and trying to decimate the BBC, principally to stop it being a
strong investigative media entity, prying into their cheating of voters
and tax payers.

Accusing someone falsely of pedophilia is not a small lapse in

journalistic judgement. Covering up your fellow employees pedophilia

is not a small lapse in journalistic judgement. Not stopping your fellow

employees from raping children is a crime, not a small lapse in 

ournalistic judgement. Graham Spanier, former president of Penn State

University, will go to jail for covering up Gerry Sandusky's crimes.

Some BBC executives should face the same fate.

The BBC regularly covers up for its own faults. Look at the Balen

Report, for example. And, since the BBC is funded by the television

license fee, it is nearly immune to criticism. In short, the BBC

cheats the tax payers too.

Respectfully,

Eric Jablow

[Ricky Clarkson]

Actually the BBC fairly frequently criticises its own reporting, and it even goes a step more meta, criticism of its own criticism of its own reporting.  The Balen case is of an internal report into its own reporting that it decided not to make public.  I don't recall the case and am getting all context from Wikipedia, but that doesn't sound so bad.

If you know a report is going to be made public will you be as honest in its content?

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Wed, 14 Nov 2012 16:22:19 +0100, Ricky Clarkson
<ricky.c...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Actually the BBC fairly frequently criticises its own reporting, and it
> even goes a step more meta, criticism of its own criticism of its own
> reporting. The Balen case is of an internal report into its own
> reporting
> that it decided not to make public. I don't recall the case and am
> getting
> all context from Wikipedia, but that doesn't sound so bad.
>
> If you know a report is going to be made public will you be as honest in
> its content?

Don't get me wrong: BBC was one of my youthness myths, really. So I'm more
than sad to say it's no more fair as it was supposed to be. If I'm not
wrong, BBC should be impartial by statute, and the BBC Trust is supposed
to apply some vigilance on it. So, the fact that BBC criticises itself
should be the normality - unfortunately it's not happening as frequently
as it should, as the latest stories say, including a fresh, new incident:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/11/13/climate28_named_wtf/

In this case, it sounds as they opposed a bunch of lawyers against a
blogger to prevent him from having access to the list of participants of a
meeting. With success (well, when you can pay big lawyers against a single
citizen...). Too bad another blogger found the document they wanted to
keep secret, which seems to be of some embarrassment. Fresh case, I have
still to fully understand the implications. But it's not the behaviour
you'd expect from a public service, right?

[Russel Winder]

On Wed, 2012-11-14 at 07:12 -0800, Eric Jablow wrote:
[…]

> > Accusing someone falsely of pedophilia is not a small lapse in
> journalistic judgement. Covering up your fellow employees pedophilia
> is not a small lapse in journalistic judgement. Not stopping your fellow
> employees from raping children is a crime, not a small lapse in
> ournalistic judgement. Graham Spanier, former president of Penn State
> University, will go to jail for covering up Gerry Sandusky's crimes.
> Some BBC executives should face the same fate.

Please apply the same metrics to the rest of the media, especially the
newspapers, and government. E.g., the Murdochs should have been
imprisoned for a long while many years ago. Likewise members of
parliament and I am sure senators and congress members.

[picolax]

it seems the basic argument expressed by those who support google's tax evasion/avoidance (and don't hit me with semantics, they are both the same it's just one is artificially within the law) is that seeing as the government can't come up with a decent law it is therefore the companies obligation to pay the least amount of tax because of course they are a company and need to put shareholders first. If that company, by doing this, destroys its own marketplace and shareholders (pension funds etc) then that is going against its own corporate goals. On a different note as they have a slogan "don't be evil" then it is them who have introduced morality to the argument. In a moral sense therefore they are also failing. 

On Monday, November 12, 2012 9:44:18 PM UTC, rakesh mailgroups wrote:

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/378085/is-tax-avoiding-google-telling-the-truth-about-uk-engineers

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Fri, 14 Dec 2012 12:49:11 +0100, picolax
<le...@hepatitisscotland.org.uk> wrote:

> it seems the basic argument expressed by those who support google's tax
> evasion/avoidance (and don't hit me with semantics, they are both the
> same
> it's just one is artificially within the law) is that seeing as the

Sigh, what a pile of confusion. They are very different and the lack of
seeing that difference is, IMO, the signal of the wrong instruments used
for analyzing the thing, and they can lead to dangerous consequences.

First, you're presuming that there's a thing like the "right" quantity of
money that Google (or others) should be paid to the UK (or another
country). How would you compute it? It's in the will of God? In the
numbers of Kabbalah? It's a function of some physics constants? None of
this, and of course the precise quantity is not even a matter of moral.
The taxation level is just a matter of convenience. Each country decide
and set it in its own laws. That is, the amount must be computed by laws.
Now, the point is that laws fail to determine a single number; instead
they determine a range. Figure out, once you're in the range everybody
tries to purse the lower limit. The only reason for which normal people
don't do that is that in simpler cases it costs more to figure out the
thing than the advantage you'd get, while in the case of a large corporate
it's different.

Second point, there's not only Google. Newspapers are talking of Facebook,
Amazon, and others. Yes, you're right that Google wrote that stupid motto
"Don't be evil" and the fault of pretending to be moral is theirs. I've
said this a long time ago. This is the only failure from them in this
case. The fact that there are multiple companies (in partial competition)
is imporant. In fact, if I owe company A and I have a competitor B, and
let's suppose we're equally skilled and have the same earnings, etc... and
company B applies for a strategy to avoid taxes, and I don't do, my
company will suffer some disadvantage in the competition not due to the
skills. In the end, if the difference is large, A could even fail. At this
point I have just to recall the obligations of A's stakeholders with
respect to people who invested in A and A's employeers.

Third point. Let's just focus on Europe: there are countries who apply tax
rates lower than others. For instance, Ireland has been famous for
attracting big companies with low tax rates. Recently, I've read of many
rich people moving out from France to Belgium to avoid the new super-rich
taxes introduced by Mr. Hollande. I've just mentioned these two countries
as an example, of course. Now, consider that this is perfectly legal,
since Ireland and Belgium have the right to decide their own tax rates.
Figure out, I've read positions by politicians shouting against the
"immorality" of Ireland and Belgium. So, what? What should we do to fix
this? Declare war to Ireland and Belgium? Do you see the dangerous
consequences of this type of reasoning?

The point should be back with politics. It's a matter of a country policy
to decide what's the proper taxation level and possibly have a simple
taxation policy which doesn't leave room for ambiguity. It's also
perfectly ok when a country carries on the debate with moral suasion, as
it's perfectly legal, so if, as you say, a company discovers that this
morals suasion destroys its image and revenues, and it decides to seek for
an agreement to a different taxation, it's still ok. For what concerns
different countries, it's a matter of the European Union to decide what's
the precise model of this union (it seems nobody knows) and define it in
legal terms.

In the meantime, laws will continue to make the difference, so the debate
is civil, Google has the right to pay UK taxes as low as possible, Ireland
has the right to attract investors with low taxation levels, and french
rich people has the right to move out to Belgium.

[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 3:49 AM, picolax <le...@hepatitisscotland.org.uk> wrote:

it seems the basic argument expressed by those who support google's tax evasion/avoidance (and don't hit me with semantics, they are both the same it's just one is artificially within the law)

Right, in much the same way that "stealing" and "cutting in line" are both crimes, it's just that one is artificially within the law. Don't bother me with semantics.

 

is that seeing as the government can't come up with a decent law it is therefore the companies obligation to pay the least amount of tax because

It's not an obligation, it's just common sense, which extends to individuals as well. Why wouldn't you strive to pay as little tax as possible while remaining within the law?

Ah that's right, you don't believe in the boundaries defined by laws.

-- 

Cédric

[Josh Berry]

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 11:03 AM, Cédric Beust ♔ <ced...@beust.com> wrote:

On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 3:49 AM, picolax <le...@hepatitisscotland.org.uk> wrote:

it seems the basic argument expressed by those who support google's tax evasion/avoidance (and don't hit me with semantics, they are both the same it's just one is artificially within the law)

Right, in much the same way that "stealing" and "cutting in line" are both crimes, it's just that one is artificially within the law. Don't bother me with semantics.

That seems simplistic.  This would be akin to complaining the those that took the VIP entrance were "cutting in line."  If you disagree with the existence of a VIP entrance, that is one thing.  But to just decry it as a crime that is "artificially" within the law (a strange phrase) is silly.

[Uberto Barbini]

I think the only really unfair thing here is that UK companies, like Caffe' Nero cannot enjoy this artificial tax cut, while Starbucks (being US corporation) can. Same for a UK startup against Google for example.

AFAIK US is one of the few country that allows for this behaviour of its corporation abroad. I'm not sure, but I think a German company with a UK subsidiary for example can decide to pay tax in UK or DE, but not in LUX or IE (apart from work done in LUX or IE of course).

Uberto

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[mP]

It's not an obligation, it's just common sense, which extends to individuals as well. Why wouldn't you strive to pay as little tax as possible while remaining within the law?

Its simply being a good citizen. All of Googles customers need schools, hospitals, roads, government, education and more, and its only fair to contribute towards paying for all these, especially when you make money from them. Everyone needs to be part of the cycle of life and not be predatory because one has lots of fancy accountants. If you take too much without putting back your not helping society continue to evolve and improve. Its pathetic that all those companies avoid tax, and yet they build on the infrastructure paid for by everyday joes taxes. 

[Cédric Beust ♔]

On Sat, Dec 15, 2012 at 10:58 PM, mP <miroslav...@gmail.com> wrote:

Its simply being a good citizen.

Paying more taxes than what you should is being a good citizen? I'm at a loss for words, here.

Link 1

Link 2

Link 3

Link 4

Link 5

[samk]

Totally agree with you, just because you're paying less taxes doesn't make a bad citizen or unpatriotic. And in the US alone the so called loophole are actually laws enacted by congress or some states like Delaware or Nevada, which are fll blown tax havens. There are some great reporting on planet money on this subject.
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/09/21/161498181/the-downside-of-tax-havens-paperwork
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2012/07/27/157499893/episode-390-we-set-up-an-offshore-company-in-a-tax-haven

[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Sun, 16 Dec 2012 07:58:40 +0100, mP <miroslav...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
>
>> It's not an obligation, it's just common sense, which extends to
>> individuals as well. Why wouldn't you strive to pay as little tax as
>> possible while remaining within the law?
>>
>>
> Its simply being a good citizen.

So why don't we act as better citizen and pay our taxes twice?

[Joseph Ottinger]

Even better, why doesn't mP lead the way in doing so - maybe the rest of us will be inspired.

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Joseph B. Ottinger
http://enigmastation.com

Memento mori.

[Kevin Wright]

Stop corporation tax entirely.

Tax is NOT a cost, even though it's typically accounted as such.  Tax is a "distribution" just as dividends are, and you don't very often see companies seeking to minimise dividends because they're cash leaving the company that should be treated as a cost.  Corporations should aim to maximise all distributions, not just dividends, that's their entire reason for existing.

However… That's not going to happen any time soon, there's far too much vested interest on the part of share-holding executives to maximise their own cut, at the cost of anything else.

A cleaner solution would be to claim that the government are a de-facto shareholder of ALL corporations, by virtue of their investment in education, infrastructure, communications, etc. and should therefore be considered to hold i.e. 5% stock of all companies in existence at dividend payout time.

This would then leave companies in a position of having to minimise their dividend payouts in order to minimise the "cost", something that wouldn't go down especially well with other shareholders.

It would almost certainly never happen, of course.  Political lobbying would take care of that (p.s. we REALLY need an effective lobby group for the 99%), but it's still a nice idea :)

[Joseph Ottinger]

Plus, the idea of the government being a de facto shareholder sounds like some of the nastier governmental systems from the last hundred years.

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Sun, 16 Dec 2012 14:51:20 +0100, Joseph Ottinger
<jo...@enigmastation.com> wrote:

> Plus, the idea of the government being a de facto shareholder sounds like
> some of the nastier governmental systems from the last hundred years.

I think that Kevin was thinking of a sort of "partial" shareholding, that
is that 5% would only entitle to have a fraction of dividends, but not
decision making.

In any case, Kevin, are you sure it would work? When I was member of a
real corporate (*), more than ten years ago, there was a taxation on
dividends bigger than 35%. Part of the usual tax avoidance practices was
to minimize dividends. Ok, this was for small/medium corporates without
stocks; I understand that it's a very different scenario.

(*) I'm referring to a corporate were there were more than one owner,
employees, etc... My current Tidalwave is a real corporation from the
point of the view of the law, but it's just me (no other owners, no
employees). It's a stupid thing that I was forced to do as a "wrapper"
around my freelance activities, since in my stupid country there are
stupid laws about employment that prevent me from having long-running
contracts (longer than a few months) with the same customer.

[Jon Kiparsky]

So long as companies like Google are dodging their taxes, the rest of us are in fact paying our taxes twice - once for us, and once for them.

On Sun, Dec 16, 2012 at 6:33 AM, Fabrizio Giudici <Fabrizio...@tidalwave.it> wrote:

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

On Sun, 16 Dec 2012 15:54:01 +0100, Jon Kiparsky <jon.ki...@gmail.com>
wrote:

> So long as companies like Google are dodging their taxes, the rest of us
> are in fact paying our taxes twice - once for us, and once for them.

You guys still avoided (or evaded?) my question: where's the "right"
number of the taxes Google should pay, so we don't pay twice?