🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@admitsWrongIfProven

And people who start with nothing have a pretty sweet deal on taxes too... they get **negative taxes**... That is not only do they not pay taxes, they get free money, free healthcare.... Sounds pretty fair to me, from a tax perspective.

You are of course right there is an unfairness in the world that is unrelated to taxes that make it so some people cant get a good start in life.. This is an open problem that needs fixing, but you have given no indication that this problem is at the fault of the tax system in the USA or any other country for that matter.

@Pat @johnabs @rbreich

@admitsWrongIfProven

> Exactly. Not everyone has the same ability to take risks. Some have more support than others, if someone with no backing from family for example tried this, they are much more likely to end up poor and in debt. Your assertion that “everyone” could do it is a romantization, not a fact.

Yup and that is absolutely fair.. take the risks and have flexibility in when you pay taxes and some breaks on how much... or dont take the risk and pay a fixed rate... absolutely fair and the risks companies take are open to everyone.

Moreover its structered, in fact, that middle-class people have a huge advantage over big companies. People can start a class of corperations limited to only smaller companies (companies with caps on who and how many investors they can have). Basically smaller companies can avoid the double-taxzation i mentioned above while large companies cant.

So yes having the choice of stability vs risk, and each having their own set of advantages is absolutely fair.

> Can you source this in a way that actually goes over more than a specific example? First time i have heard of that and the results we see are not consistent with it. Even if Amazon payed high taxes one time, your assertions that winnings are always invested in growth is not consistent with bezos being a billionaire.

I do not have a source off hand other than the one example I already gave you. I just looked up the amazon tax record to get you that info, you are welcome to look up other big companies tax data and see the pattern for yourself.

I also never said the winnings are **always** invested, I made it clear that is not the case... also im skeptical of the whole "results we see is not consistent with it"... the results we see absolutely are consistent with it, chances are you just arent looking at the actual data and are instead relying mostly on memes, and gossip which paints a very biased and inaccurate picture... Do what I just did, go out and pull up some raw tax data and look for yourself.

> That is not how it works. With the power they have, they can do things to guarantee income not available to everyone. A nice example is their practice of ripping off successful items and placing them higher. You did say that monopoly regulation is lacking and this is dependent on having a quasi-monopoly, but the “no guarantee” is just not consistent over company size.

Large companies fall all the time, the idea that they are so powerful they cant fail is not born out by the history... think of how many mega-corperation house hold names that no longer exist or barely exist today.

That said you arent entirely wrong, we **do** have a problem with monopolies and as I've said before I do feel we need strong anti-trust laws (monopoly busting laws).. but as I have also said before thats not an issue with the taxes, its an issue with monopolies.

@Pat @johnabs @rbreich

@admitsWrongIfProven

> The "how to structure" you are referring to is not available to everyone.

The structuring absolutely is ava8ilible to everyone. The problem is taking such a structure has inherently more risks.. more risks mean potential for more rewards, the same risks companies take in the first place... but yes, everyone can choose to operate under a 1099 as long as they are willing to take the risk that they might not find clients and dont have a garunteed income stream (just like any company risks).

> Put simply: even if this kind of deal is available in all other contries, it is not sustainable.
> Even if you suppose everybody did it successfully, the infrastructure would collapse (faster than it is now), since there is no tax money to pay upkeep from.

Again no, this is because you dont understand how it works. You are under hte impression that big companies pay 0 taxes forever, they dont.. They have years where they pay very low taxes and then years they pay extremely high taxes, in the end it blaances out and over long periods we see fair tax rates.

Take Amazon as an example, in 2018 everyone was livid and screaming about how they pay 0 taxes (in fact slightly negative, they got taxes back)... But then they ignore the years they pay extremly high taxes, for example just a few years earlier in 2014 Amazon paid an effetive tax rate of a whopping 91.7%! If you average their tax rate from 2014 to 2018 to create a more fair picture their tax rate would be about 22%, which is a pretty reasonable amount when you consider corperations undergo double-taxation (that 22% is ON TOP of the huge tax rate the owners see when they take money out for themselves).

So yes, the world is quite sustainable at those rates.

> But that everyone did it is not realistic, even if you ignore infrastructure: some people are not able to finess this, and i would severely doubt that every job would be open to such workers.

Of course not every job allows it, most people dont WANT it because those benefits come with risks. In a w-2 job you have a garunteed income, garunteed work, fixed hours, etc.. as a consequence you dont get to expense things and cant get the sort of cuts a 1099 can get on taxes. Likewise someone on 1099 saves on taxes but risks having access to fewer clients and no garuntees on income (just as amazon has no garuntee on income)... Companies take risks and get certain advantages in taxes, you have the option to take the same risk, some cant, thats fair.

> To companies investing in growth: i doubt that too. It would not be sustainable from an ecological perspective, so even what they do spend on growth is harmful, but a lot goes into other channels, i'm pretty sure.

Thats a seperate issue, obviously growth can be good (generates wealth makes everyone and economies healthier) or bad (they can destroy ecosystems, etc)... We need to ensure the proper laws are in place that companies cant grow in ways that are harmful... but that is outside of the scope of taxes for the most part.

> How do you explain the upshoot of billionaires if they spend all their profit on growth? Magic?

I never said they spend **all** their money all the time on growth.. The years they pay 0 taxes are either spent on growth or they had legitimate losses. But as i explained many other years they pay huge tax rates well above baseline. In the end it averages out. The years they spent little or nothing on taxes is not every year, some years they profit and pull money out, on those years rich people become richer, and they also spend a lot on taxes (remember the double taxation above).

@Pat @johnabs @rbreich

@admitsWrongIfProven

I am refering to the USA

Yes you can pay no taxes as well if you do what these large companies do (I pay no taxes quite often despite making well over a million most years and the same was true when i was making much less)... As I said its largely due to a misunderstanding of taxes on your part that 1) you dont know how to structure it so you can get those deals and 2) You dont understand why it is fair since you dont understand the mechanisms at play.

A simple example of how you can do this is to work as a 1099 worker (as opposed to w-2) and ensure your expenses exceed your profit. You can even manage this if your expenses are things you spend on growing your career (for example expenses on training, and other resources).

When companies pay near 0 its usually because of just that, they spent all their profit on growth, the money taken out by the owners (usually at dividends) is still taxed normally however so the owners arent getting a free ride. This has the consequence however of the company growing and thus int he future making even more profit (hopefully) and in turn paying even larger taxes differed into the future.

@Pat @johnabs @rbreich

@timezoneless Not really, not much to it than what is on the surface im afraid.

@timezoneless

Yes, there is ;)

@timezoneless You have cracked the puzzle, i see no way to manipulate your words into a sarcastic and irrelevant remark. You may pass to thr next level.

And no i cant be more concrete because it was really just a random comment not tied to anything specific. I just know people can be quite nasty and personal when they start disagreeing with them.

@timezoneless

Yes, I can be more vague. (<--- an example of a statement that is more vague)