Comment by rezonant
6 months ago
No, this is a misunderstanding of the kind of taxation policy progressives tend to favor. Taxation on profit for businesses should be high, and taxation on upper tiers of individual income should be high, but taxation on funds businesses use to reinvest should be exempted or deductable. Basically the taxation we had in place after WW2 and on, with a steep corporate tax rate and more or less a maximum income for individuals. The R&D exemption removed in the 2017 bill, and discussed in the article, is key to that, because it encourages corporations to reinvest their income in building new products and paying workers rather than taking it directly as profit-- after all, at least they could reap the rewards (in growth and revenue) of the R&D later, instead of just giving the money to the government as taxes.
I don’t think most progressives think about it in that detail. Raise taxes on the rich tech companies that are gentrifying san francisco.
At first glance I support ... "social and economic equality" and "reforms to improve human conditions, combat corruption, and reduce inequality". Am I progressive?
If you ask me "should corporations pay more taxes?" I will say, yes. Famously so does Warren Buffet, is he also a progressive?
If you ask me, "hey should we gut tax incentives for R&D spending in the USA?" I will say, uhhh no? probably a bad choice?
Recently the progressives have latched on to culture war agendas against the wealthy, educated, white, male, straight and/or over the age of 35 crowd.
In other words, they have a popular agenda, but are political morons that are going to eventually wonder why they can’t break out of solidly blue districts.
https://runforsomething.net/run/candidate-support-system/
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I‘m not American but the above description of a tax policy is what I hear a lot from progressives in media.
But this doesn't raise taxes on rich tech companies, it effectively does the opposite - the tax burden is proportionally lower the larger/more successful the tech company is.
Therefore, even by your own admission, this isn't progressive policy.