Maybe I'm missing something, but no it doesn't, it doesn't say a single thing about that...rather it mentions the hundreds of people they employ here to dream up tax-avoidance schemes. That's the thing with tax havens - very few if any companies actually relocate themselves to tax havens, it's all fictitious. That's fine, I'm sure charts & times have changed, but see the part of your chart that says "top rate"? Again, same question as before - if the vast majority of income is subject to a much lower effecitve rate, what does it matter? Using the top marginal rate as a stand in for the effective tax rate is incredibly misleading. But it's great to encourage international races-to-the-bottom which starve governments of revenue, so it's got that going for it. EDIT: I should also add, I've mentioned ireland & "double irish" a number of times -> you do know that Ireland's tax haven status doesn't always work out the way it planned.... ...The probelm is that even if you have simple low corporate tax rates, like Ireland, corporations like Google, Facebook, etc have figured out ways around them (they're acting rationally, any amount of tax is worth avoiding), so they adopt the "double irish" strategy, which takes income, runs it through ireland, than flips it through various paper Bermuda/netherlands/etc subsidiaries that exist only in some registerd agents' computer file, - which means Ireland doesn't get any tax revenue either. So basically, Google doesn't pay the high nominal us tax rate, nor the low nominal Irish rate, instead it pays the basically zero Bermuda/Caymans etc rate. Lowering the US nominal rate isn't going to change this - there's always going to be a small tax haven out there willing to charge less.
umm if you pay attention to the thread, weslinder posted an article on how ge has obama in its pocket through contributions, and weslinder is a big supporter of some of the biggest contributors in this country. but that was cool analogy though
from the original article: Using the top marginal rate to discuss the top marginal rate is not misleading at all. That's the rate that's out of whack and driving schemes to lower effective rates. Again...why the reluctance to address a rate that, according to you, nobody is paying? (except Robbie and wes's friends from the Great White North). A rate that's so 1985. Helllooo....McFly....Using the effective rate to defend the statutory rate seems much more misleading. I've not said corporations are paying too much tax. I'd just like more of that tax to go to the US treasury, and investment decisions not distorted by 1980's policy. A competitive rate means less incentive to avoid it...and the barriers to bringing back income to the US for investment need to be reduced. I'm with you on the loop around tax avoidance schemes. A Double Irish should be something you get at a Dublin pub. Can we at least agree on that?
What does this matter when you can't show any causation? This is the "Lisa I'd like to buy your rock" argument, because off the top of my head, I can think of at least 10 different things affecting GE's business model in the last 10 years that were, intuitively, vastly more important than top marginal tax rates in the US (that they avoid), e.g., globalization, productivity gains due to technology, The Great Recession, etc etc etc. GE isn't employing fewer secretaries or typewriter repairmen or CDO traders because of tax rates. Sure, they have tons of overseas operations, but the ones that exist for tax purposes don't really have anything to do with the physical location of jobs -> go to dowtown Hamilton, Bermuda and try to find the GE tower if you don't belive me. Again, the vast majority of these tax avoidance schemes exist solely on paper, and as a consequence - probably employ more American workers mroe than they displace. This is the exact same argument that was lodged during the Reagan years when the top nominal rate was cut from 46 to 35 - as posted before, forgive me if I'm reticent when heeding the calls of those with tons of taxable income to overhaul the tax code in their favor. We've tried this dozens of times over the last few years and the consequences for revenues are always bad.
Originally Posted by esteban We have Weslinder working in the real world giving us his real world knowledge while the lefties are attacking him. Needed a good laugh in between clients. Weslinder in the "real world". The main attraction of libertarianism as far as I can see is that it is comforting to have a relatively simplistic abstract utopian model that you can filter out real world "incovenient truths" and therefore have faith that you have ready answers to all policy questions.
You guys might not agree with Weslinder but he does have real world experience working in the oil extraction industry. We can certainly disagree with him but I don't see why his experience isn't real and then worthless.
Cathartic a-hole rant! Spoiler [rant]Man I really really really forking hate paying taxes. There is no real way I can avoid them either. I get to pay my 4500 to Austin ISD every year cause I have a house, but I don't have any kids. Over half my prop tax bill goes to Austin ISD. How stupid is that? I think my tuition at UT was around that much. Then I gotta pay a ****load on April 15th for what? A government I will never have any influence in that is just slowly running itself into ground? It's a joke. If I could see progress (eg. not projecting trillion dollar deficits for a decade) or if I felt like my opinion mattered then it wouldn't be so irked, but it doesn't and it never will. [/rant] Oh well I can't b**** too much...as my dad always says "At least you have taxes to pay!"
I don't think anyone enjoys paying taxes but at the same time I enjoy having roads, schools, state universities, public libraries, a national military, fire fighters police and all the other things. Stuff like that has to be paid for and I think we should be paying for it rather than charging for it on credit.
Sammy, good thing that our Hopey Changey President has appointed GE's CEO as the leader of Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
It's definitely not a good thing, he capitulated to all the morons who banged the stupid "Obama is anti-business!" drum (out of pure pavlovian partisanship - "business" is doing just fine the last few quarters)
I like those things too, but it's obscene how over half of my property tax goes to the school district. I'm paying 375/mo just to Austin ISD. How silly is that? Either way it would be nice if corporations were paying something close to what I am paying as a percentage of income and not completely avoid taxes and putting more of a burden on people who actually have to pay them.
It's even worse. http://www.forbes.com/2011/03/16/chevy-volt-ayn-rand-opinions-patrick-michaels.html Makes you want to scream. This incestuous relationship between state and corporations is just a legalized form of money laundering using our tax dollars. Jeff Immelt is the modern day equivalent of the old railroad robber barons. Today it's high speed rail, windmills, and Volts. Real life imitating Atlas Shrugged.
Agreed, and it's even worse because it's an essentially anti-democratic relationship that makes the desires of the wealthy and powerful worth more than our actual votes.
but don't worry, Obama is "disturbed" by this and "has stated a desire to simplify the tax code" pathetic, where's the beef Barack?
My main problem is the one of "clean" energy and the crap electric cars. Our money is being poured into these crap technologies because it makes people feel better. The problem is they are garbage. GE doesn't care because the customer (the government) is paying the bills.
