Pfizer’s Big Breakthrough: Global Tax Avoidance

Anyway, there are arguments to be made on both sides, and it's clearly not working very well.

This is the thing Elizabeth Warren spearheaded, and the Republicans have fought tooth-and-nail since before it existed.

Not at all. I'm suggesting the legislative process be used. You're inferring that trade protectionism is totalitarian rule. Seriously? Citizens and their quality of life is more important than you business and its profits. Full stop.

> I prefer being subject to laws and having recourse to a legal system where i am allowed to challenge even the behavior of the government.

But you are. If you operate in a country, you're subject to its laws. You have recourse under the legal system, and recourse for its legislation if you are a citizen and have a vote.

> Subjecting corporations to capricious bullying when they do something unpopular is not "protecting citizens" - governments that act like that invariably also abuse individuals the same way.

Today I learned that forcing companies to follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law is "bullying". Makes me found of how China and Russia do business sometimes.

I like the logic of trying to close it with domestic legislation, but the US sucks at that. For one, congress and the president cannot ever seem to work together to get anything meaningful done. But secondly, every single time we think we make an exception or a rule in the tax code, we learn that crafty investment bankers figure out how to exploit the rule. As Plato said, "know thyself." And we suck at playing nicely.

Completely hypothetically, say we could kill tax inversions. The whole thing has felt like a game of cat and mouse game for a century now. Inversions are the tax-avoidance scheme du jouer. For example, for years, Pfizer has already been paying virtually no taxes in the US by storing all of its IP in an offshore subsidiary. The "double Irish" trick is being done by companies who have never done an inversion. There are all sorts of holes in the tax code that other nations use to fuck the US. And there's no way we can compete on the rate, since we'd be competing with countries that have a 0% rate. Many companies pay a zero percent corporate tax rate on all of their offshore profits (which, IIRC, is attributed to a subsidiary in Bermuda), and mostly claim to have nothing but losses to write off in the US.

We need to finally say, "fuck this nonsense." Companies don't need laws to inform them when they're acting morally. It is immoral to act the way they are, and instead of playing cat and mouse like we have been doing, we need to put our foot down and MAKE every company obey the spirit of the tax laws, and not the letter. And the only way I know of to make that happen is to use extreme threats like invalidating their IP if they pull these tricks, or threatening the countries that aid them.

There is no such thing.

A single child raised to finish college costs the taxpayer in Germany 300'000 Euro in subsidized nursery, free school, and free college.

Additionally, each person costs a lot for roads, public transit, etc.

And then you have to add in that for every person who gets to become a billionaire, you have hundredthousands who won’t become billionaires, but still cost you equally much. There’s no way to find out who is going to become a self-made millionaire, and who isn’t.

And society already tries to provide many programs only to those kids with high potential, to save money. Programs like this [1] are already exclusive.

If you want to give the generation of your kids the same chances at becoming self-made millionaires, you have to provide all of them with this high quality service.

Which means you have to accept nominal tax rates of 48%+.

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As for the lack of stateless land that an anarchist may emigrate to, the lack of such land does not mean that the country of your citizenship is no longer valid. If you chose to renounce your citizenship and end your involvement in the social contract that your parents entered into on your behalf, where you go is up to you and no longer has anything to do with your former country.

Also, trying to compare me to the KKK? Really? Come on, you can be better than that.

I'm not even sure how to respond to the rest of this; it's difficult to make sense of it.

EDIT: It is so uncool to edit your remarks instead of replying! But I guess in the independent nation-state of nickfftopia you can do what you want, eh?

I think you mean "freeloader".

From the second one:

"But the testimony by the three wealthy businessmen from Texas, Oklahoma and Virginia also showed that the agents had reason to suspect they had come across a $300 million tax fraud in one case and a drug operation in another.

Holes and contradictions in testimony by two of the businessmen prompted Senate Democrats to complain that the hearings were not a search for truth but a one-sided propaganda show by Republicans, whose polling data show that attacking the I.R.S. is their best strategy for raising money and winning votes."

That's not a simple failure to pay taxes.

And the first article, the rapper was not jailed, he did have a bunch of stuff seized to pay off a $300,000 debt, however. No mention of a dog being shot, no mention of anyone being tazed.

On the whole though, yes, I agree that taxes are likely a necessary evil, and while I object to large swaths of the federal government, I think it would be naive, or even asinine to suggest that they do not have any good functions which I deem wholly necessary.

That said, at the end of the day, citizenship is something that can be relinquished, and as such, an income tax (of any sort) is something that ought to be competitive. California offers a lot of niceties, and presumably, the people who live there don't mind the tradeoff of high taxes and a generally higher cost of living. If they did, they could trade out to one of the zero-income-tax southern states, in exchange for a generally less educated peer group, less efficient state services, etc.

At the end of the day though, if taxes are to be citizenship criteria, then America is in competition with other nations to deliver good value. In addition to economic freedom, social freedoms, fair treatment, social services, safety net and a myriad of other factors are ways in which we compete. I am not likely to move to another country to save some money on taxes, but if another country offered the same freedoms that I value in America, with lower taxes, and a lower incarceration rate, a move would be worth strong consideration.

It would be an interesting though experiment to determine the exact cost those services provide, submit them an actual invoice, and then do the math on whether or not services rendered are more or less than taxes paid, but without it, it seems naive to assume that paying less taxes is in any way equivalent to paying no taxes.

Presumably, they get those same services in their countries of operation, and at a lower cost, which opens up an entirely new pool of questions. Are services in Dublin substantially less than what we have in America? Why is the cost of American services so much higher? If services are similar, how is Ireland able to provide them at such a discount? Will Ireland continue discounting their services as they attract more and more businesses? Etc.