So basically global companies have unfair advantages over domestic via tax loopholes?

Bermuda is a British Overseas Territory.
And VAT isn’t seen as an act of aggression, is it?

Moreover, that suggestion just encourages relocation from first world countries…

No idea. My preference would be to lower corporate tax rates. Having a tax on corporations (who aren’t people) has always struck me as odd. Tax it when it gets transferred to people and have a tax on unrealized sins (the biggest tax loophole of them all).

Your property taxes go up as the value of your house goes up. But the rich don’t have a tax when their portfolio goes up.

Woah! careful fella!

That kinda talk will get you banned from the country club (at the very least!). It doesn’t matter that it makes perfect sense, but you know the whole deal with our corporate led democracies is all about the very opposite of this approach. ‘Revolution’ is just not going to come from the top (which is where all the tax stuff is decided), it’s going to be upto the peasants to work out they are being royally shafted before that kind of change can really happen.

Much simpler than what I posted.

Heh. The thing about American politics is that the ideologues have the people battling against strawmans.

I’m considered a right wing nut by some folks around here because I am very much against raising INCOME tax rates and against those who propose it. But I’m not against it because I hate the government or because I’m greedy (I am greedy but that’s not why I oppose income tax rates). I oppose them because they target people who are EARNING their money through labor.

I grew up poor (for an American). Like, below poverty poor. So I have a very high respect for people actually working. And by working I mean actually DOING something. That might be working on an assembly line, programming, teaching, engineering, etc. But they are DOING something. And under our system, they get screwed.

That’s one of the reasons why Warren Buffet bugs me so much. He’s full of crap. Raising income tax rates don’t touch him. Raising capital gains taxes barely touches him. But he’s some liberal icon because he supports higher taxes on…on other people. Suggest a tax on unrealized gains and he’d freak out.

We rail against Wallstreet investment bankers and the like and then we turn around and propose solutions that do nothing about how they game the system but harm everyone else.

Here is how rich people live (this isn’t the exception, this is how the 1% do it):

They have investment portfolios that go up on average 8% a year. Last year a typical investment porfolio went up 15%.

So let’s say I have $10 million in my portfolio at the start of 2012. At the end of 2012 my portfolio would be at around $11.5 million. Tax paid on that? $0.

If I did take money out, I’d be taxed at 15% (now 22% or so). But rich people don’t do that.

Instead, they BORROW, using that porfolio as collateral. They borrow at say Libor plus 25 (like 1.50% annual) to pay their bills and get goodies. They can do this indefinitely because the borrow rate is ridiculously lower than the rate of return they’re getting on their investments.

Meanwhile, everyone else’s major asset is their home which is taxed, typically twice a year, based on its value. But the rich guy’s porfolio? Nope.

I’d love for someone to explain to me why it’s ok to have a property tax (like on a house) but not ok to have a tax on ones portfolio - which is most definitely property. And yet I am supposedly the right wing nut.

Well said, Brad. I don’t always agree with you, but I definitely agree with your prospective on this.

So you want low income and low corporate tax.
This raises the poverty premium, sharply.

And you don’t tax the portfolio because it destroys pensions, for starters. Taxing capital is really not simple. It needs to be done, but you need to do economic impact analyses. And it in no way removes the need for reasonable taxation of income and corporations. The fact is, trend growth has faltered recently in lower-tax countries…

You say that like anyone in America has pensions anymore.

Doesn’t matter if they hold them collectively or individually, they don’t use the high-yield high-return funds which would be the only viable ones with more than token rates of portfolio taxes.

(Oh - I’m using pension in a generic way for retirement funds, rather than specifically as I believe the American usage is.)

I really don’t know what the best solution is in this case. Maybe loans should count as income for folks earning over $250k? I do like the unrealized gains idea.

That said, isn’t interest/profits from investments considered income?

Tax code isn’t easy- and those with means have the time and desire to exploit any loophole they can.

I don’t think going after loans would be the answer. I think you just treat assets as assets. You pay a propery tax on your house. You can have a tax on your portfolio. You can still make 401ks and IRAs exempt.

Graduated tax or straight? Also, would that still mean a company would save money by moving all it’s assets to a foreign country?
Something I found interesting is the PS4 is going to cost like $1,500 in Brazil because they have import taxes. So to avoid those taxes and make the PS4 affordable Sony may actually have a facility built in Brazil to make PS4’s for Brazilians. It would be nice if the U.S. could do something like this to bring jobs here, but on the other hand I can see it might be a nuclear arms race for import taxes between trade partners.

Oh I have no idea on the graduated or straight.

But individuals living in the United States have to file tax returns and their portfolio value, regardless of where that portfolio exists (it’s not relevant imo) should be up to scrutiny.

Without the federal government helping support the international system, those portfolios wouldn’t be worth the paper they’re printed on. It’s not unreasonable that people pay some taxes on them.

The rationale behind paying property tax on your house is that that money goes to pay for your schools, roads, police, sewers, etc. The rationale for having an assets tax is even stronger.

One of the architects and advisers of the Double Irish. Though he contradicts himself in a way to protect his own interests he makes a good point. “This is not an Ireland problem but a U.S. problem”. Unfortunately we have an utterly broken government that can’t count to 5 let alone fix tax code apparently.

By portfolio, do you include interest/ownership in a privately and closely held business? Say, one such as Stardock?

Even if you don’t have a problem with that being counted as part of a portfolio, how does the government assess value on such an interest so that it can tax it annually on unrealized growth? A publically traded company has a clear market value that can be used to assess unrealized gains. What do you do for a business like yours?

It gets murkier with private companies for the reasons you outline. I don’t have a good solution for thst. :(

When I look at this chart:http://consumerist.com/2011/08/31/25-ceos-who-made-more-than-their-companies-paid-in-taxes/ it makes me think we’d do much better to have corporations not be involved in taxation period, so profitable companies like DOW chemical are not netting half a billion free dollars in taxes each year. Or worse, GE taking in $3.2 billion from the tax payer each year.

Taxing corporations is kind of silly. At best, it’s a hidden regressive tax on consumers. At worst, they just won’t pay it at all.

That’s the problem with our tax code. We make it too complex, and we give individuals the means and the incentive to evade paying. I suppose it’s inevitable though.

So the poor will have to have the poverty premium raised massively on them again. Right. You’re ignoring the fact you’ve also called for a direct tax on companies - via portfolios. No company which makes less than, at a minimum, that tax in dividends will survive!

IL - Eh. Failure of political will to tax the rich, especially on capital.