Quote from: ariliquin on January 09, 2021, 02:03:45
Its ironic that Apple sees fit to Tax the users of their infrastructure 30% of their revenue yet pay our nation 0% in tax for using our infrastructure, economy, skilled labour, education and health systems while contributing nothing, and making money. Jobs are the crumbs that fall from the table of wealth, our infrastructure and community is just as an important contributing factor to their success. To be fair its not just Apple and it is also a lack of good laws that multinationals like Apple mercilessly exploit.
Even if you abide by the law, the expansion, the building of a business is generally not taxed. Profits are taxed. But expenses towards building your business, in turn increasing the value of a company, are not. I guess it's meant to serve as an incentive to build the business (which should mean more jobs or increasing the required skill) rather than pay out the profits. Except for VAT. Which seeks to tax any value created. The problem there is that it's generally not levied on exports and is instead levied on imports. So, it behaves more like a consumption tax rather than production tax. Despite the name (importers are not actually creating the value of a product they sell, they only provide a service of making the product more easily accessible and ensuring compliance with local laws; they're adding some value).
That's why arguing with X % of richest people owning Y % of all wealth is problematic. A huge chunk will be owned through companies. And creation of wealth is what they do and it's encouraged. It's usually brought up when it comes to income taxes or property taxes, but the typically proposed solutions don't really address the situation. I can own a billion euro company and have an average salary and a modest apartment. The company can spend all the money it makes on investments so that it makes even more money in the future, generating roughly zero taxable income. Still, I'm technically worth a billion euro. But it won't get taxed until I actually sell the company or I die and someone inherits it. Around here, when selling a company, the profit is exempt from income tax if you've owned the company at least 5 years (which is likely if you've actually built a successful business yourself). Also, gifting to direct relatives is exempt from gift tax. Which creates a trivial route for avoiding inheritance tax (barring unexpected death) and allows continued accumulation of wealth in a family (non-existent or negligible inheritance tax AFAIK played a significant role in accumulation of wealth by aristocrats).
When there is talk of taxing the rich, it's usually taxing the top earning, highly skilled employees. The truly rich laugh all the way to a bank. And that's before you consider the global aspect, that you can easily move capital and the shadier ways of avoiding or optimizing taxes.
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