Comment by dachworker
4 days ago
Corporate taxes don't work and taxing the rich is super hard. Could this be a way for the state to suplement tax revenue?
4 days ago
Corporate taxes don't work and taxing the rich is super hard. Could this be a way for the state to suplement tax revenue?
It creates a lot of perverse incentives, and is probably a bad idea in the long run. If the govt makes more money when intel is successful, then the govt is incentivized to sabotage Intel's competitors (e.g. through tariffs, export controls, and many other powers). This distorts the free market that is (allegedly) at the center of America's success
The answer is probably an automatic state in any company over a specific size given to the government. The only competition is then international.
Still perverse incentives. In this case the government is implicitly biased against startups competing against a giant.
I read recently that corporate taxes used to be a lot higher on large conglomerated companies, which used to deter monopolization somewhat. Under this automatic-stake idea, it'd be interesting if the government's stake in corporations increased as they got larger? Companies try to avoid this and so don't combine so much?
Of course once the government does have a large stake in the largest monopoly-like companies, it's immensely motivated to keep them large. Hmm. This idea isn't good.
Reinventing Socialism from first principals
See also: confessions of an economic hitman, the mysterious affair of Olivetti
US government has always had a policy of sabotaging international competition
No, not enough money in it.
Tax the rich.
Just remember Piketty too, Capital in the 21st Century: the purpose is not generate revenue. Taxation's primary purpose is to prevent extreme concentrations of wealth & power, to diffuse the un-democratic dangers hazards and threats.
That's confusing. The rich make their money and hold their assets in economically productive (or extractive) enterprises. Land, factories, services, arms, etc are the real storehouses of wealth. If you take that from the rich, they have nothing.
The rich already pay most of the income tax in our country. We probably have the most progressive tax system in the world.
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> Corporate taxes don't work
What does this mean?
I am not the original commenter, but I interpret it to mean that large corporations can almost always arrange it so that they don't pay tax or don't pay their fair share of tax. 88 companies paid $0 tax on $105B in profit in 2025[0]
[0] https://itep.org/88-profitable-corporations-paid-zero-income...
I agree that corporate taxes are not working at this time for one specific country. But the claim of "corporate taxes don't work" is much more broad and not something I've seen specific evidence for. My understanding was that historically corporate taxes have been extremely effective, even if those taxes aren't paid the profits of a company are instead redirected as other investments.