Nostr Web Client

The higher the percentage of a market the company controls, the higher the tax rate for transactions in that market.

Big companies would just file paperwork that says they're "splitting up" without actually putting a table saw through the CEO

Wholly-owned subsidiaries can be considered the same company for this thought exercise.

Bribing politicians to consider the subsidiary "separate" rather than "wholly owned" would always be cheaper than losing a company like Google or Microsoft to newer fairer tax laws

Sure. We definitely need to abolish Citizens United. That goes without saying.

Not that that would completely eliminate bribery, but at least it would make bribery illegal again.

Disagree. Citizens United is just the so-called "supreme court" admitting they can't control what people do with the money they give them after printing it. They'd have even less control under a Bitcoin standard so that would be insane to reverse. Tariffs are a method of taxation that you can actually do pretty consistent enforcement of.

I kinda switched trains of thought without enough explanation there. Difficulty of enforcing taxes is related to difficulty of controlling what people do with money, but not the same topic, of course.

Citizens United determined that corporations are people. That’s dangerous. Corporations should not be able to “contribute to” (bribe) political campaigns.

I don't get why people say that or why the court-brained people involved framed it that way. What makes it ultimately about corporate personhood moreso than the simple pragmatic fact of whether the court's gunmen are or aren't capable of enforcing dollar-by-dollar micromanagement?

It was the mental (or legal) gymnastics they had to use to force it into a 1st Amendment issue.

Corporations don’t (or at least shouldn’t) have 1st amendment rights. Only the people do.

But corporations are just people who call themselves corporations. You can't invalidate your rights by calling yourself a special name

Not invalidating the person’s rights. But corporations don’t have the same rights.

Example:

Corporation refuses to hire black people and blasts racist remarks across their web site. Illegal. Fines. Shut it down.

The CEO of that company refuses to shop at a black-owned store and blasts racist remarks across a personal blog web site that has nothing to do with his corp. Asshole. Might get his ass beat. Might make people not want to buy his company’s products. But not illegal.

Brilliant. I thought you were going to give me an example of some other right, but you had a great free speech example.

I still don't see an economic reason to overturn citizens united - like, if the legalisms about personhood don't add up, I'd still say courts and their gunmen aren't an effective mechanism for dealing with that kind of bribery.

No, corporations are contracts. They are pieces of paper. They have no natural rights under the law.

In the context of a bribe, a corporation is a person calling themselves a corporation. I don't see how the court can separate the brand name the person uses from the person committing the act of bribery.

In another context, like a bankruptcy trial, the corporation might be a piece of paper calling itself a person, having only the rights and accounntability of "corporate personhood" separate from the humans involved.

*accountability

They do separate, though. "Lifting the corporate veil" used to be limited to very rare circumstances, though the privileges are eroding.

That's how flunkies go to prison while managers, directors and shareholders are (mostly) free to do it again, barring unusual orders.

They totally do it, I'm just not sure what causes that disease - that's what I mean by "I'm not sure how" 👽

Sorry, I misunderstood your post. Cheers!

That's just it. Corporations are not people, because there are circumstances in the law that they beg to use in their defense that say that they are not. People can't pick and choose when to be considered a person and when not to be. So neither can corporations.

In the context of a bribe, it's not a corporation making the decision to sign the check, it's a person in some position of authority within that corporate structure. That person should be held accountable for that decision. Brand Names, Trademarks, those are all just contracts, information.

If people want to set up a DAO on some blockchain where "the code is the contract", then "shame on he who thinks ill". That's the pure form of "the corporation is just people with rules".

Corporations, ancient and modern, depended on the State to construct (and subsidise the defence of) the asymmetrical rights of shareholders against the Board, the Board against the managers, and the managers against the employees. Think of the thousands of pages of regulations, the dozens of state and federal agencies auditing and enforcing, and the court time required to enforce the status quo.

Without that structure and subsidies, the "Principal-Agent" problem would make corporations uncompetitive except in very niche situations. As they once were.

Citizens United was Treason. The 5 members of the US Supreme Court that voted for that decision should have been impeached and removed from office the next day.

How about 90% owned subsidiaries?

90% owned, but indirectly through a web of cross-shareholding and board members in common?

0% owned, but with Options to buy at a fixed price at some future date?

0% just with a long-term "off balance sheet" asymmetrical supply contract?

There are various legal precedents we could refer to, but all are gamable, sadly.

In general, I think a sole-proprietorship with no employees would be exempt. Think: freelance developer. Presumably, that freelancer is hired by another company that IS paying the tax.

There’s also the situation of S-corps, LLCs, or married-couple-owned businesses. If a sole-proprietorship hires one employee, are they now subject to all the taxes?

Obviously this is a sliding scale that requires far more macro- and micro-economic study than I’m willing to put into it at this time.

I like the direction, though, and to ponder the edge cases.

Liberty Gal 1y ago

Corporations don't pay taxes. They pass their taxes on to the customers in the form of higher prices so their customers pay the taxes without realizing it.

Of course they do. And if corporate employees don’t have to pay income tax, their salary will be lower. It all evens out in the end.

The primary purpose of government is to protect its people from powerful entities who do not have the best interest of the people at heart. By definition, corporations do not have the best interest of the people at heart.

And of course you can argue that current governments do not have the people’s best interest at heart. But they’re supposed to.

Corporations are NOT supposed to have the people’s best interest at heart. They exist solely to make money, and they have a fiduciary duty to do so. Often, I dare say nearly always, they do so by taking advantage of the people, either via monopoly price gauging, or wage theft, or pollution, or any number of other things. This isn’t necessarily going to change, but taxes are a tool to curb behavior that damages the people.

I want a world where I don’t have to fill out my tax return every year, because my company has already paid all the taxes necessary. I also want to walk into a store and pay the exact listed price for an item so I don’t have to do 8% math on it in my head to decide whether I want it.

ChipTuner 1y ago

Right, i think it's simply a matter of perspective. Taxes would be an operational expense, it has to be balanced by some form of income, selling the product. IE: Passing the cost to the customer.

Taxation is theft btw.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

this is why a lot of big L libertarians advocate a flat sales tax, because you see it

Bad idea. Sales tax is a REGRESSIVE tax. It harms the poor more than it harms the rich. Abolish sales tax. 100% corporate revenue tax.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

taxation is theft

theft is a crime

abolish crime

Taxation can only (and it’s still a stretch) be considered theft if you are held against your will, including simply that you were born there and have no means to flee. As this is difficult to distinguish, I’m in favor of abolishing all personal income and sales tax.

Businesses CHOOSE (and go to great lengths) to be incorporated within a legal entity (or layers of legal entities: USA, California, San Francisco, etc) and therefore agree to be charged a cost of doing business in that jurisdiction. That tax is NOT theft.

ᴛʜᴇ ᴅᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴏꜰ ᴍʟᴇᴋᴜ 1y ago

taxation is theft

Corporations pay all kinds of taxes. It’s a cost of doing business in the USA. As it should be.

Fun fact: customers don’t pay sales tax, businesses do. It’s a massive scam that sales tax is added onto the purchase price to hide the cost from their customers. It makes customers side with businesses against raising BUSINESS taxes.

TallBrian 1y ago

This would force inefficient supply chains. The most profitable businesses would be those who can stay small and source their own raw materials. This is great for a small rancher but makes producing complex electronics and more advanced goods incredibly difficult.

Maybe. Maybe supply chains would become more efficient because the excess multiple levels aren’t cost-effective.

There would just be no corporations after a little while so everyone avoids all taxes by doing business under their own name. Revenue should really probably come from tariffs

I think that argument is as spurious as “if the worldwide currency is deflationary, then nobody will ever spend any of their money.”

There are too many benefits of incorporation (risk mitigation being a big one). And of course the tax rate is flexible and can be adjusted so that is continues to be worthwhile to incorporate.

Not sure if spurious is the right word, I hadn't considered the benefit of incorporation.

Maybe corporate taxes could make a big dent in or even replace tariffs, if the legal system can make incorporation beneficial enough in a fair way.

We still need a way to “tax” or “tariff”(or whatever word you want to use) foreign companies. Not sure the best way to do that. They will be able to get around the multi-level-supply-chain revenue tax, so maybe tariffs on those goods as long as the US has a competitive industry.

Tariffs are useless unless the US can compete. Otherwise it’s just another tax on the people of the US.

When bringing goods into the country, you pay the border guards a certain percentage of what they say your shipment is worth in currency, or they take that percentage of your goods.