Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jimnotgym | Hacker News Reader

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My thoughts are that this is a moot point. They are being anti-competitive and are beginning to be shown to be in courts of law, at least in the <snark> free world </snark>[0][1]. In all seriousness the USA seems to have lost all appetite to pursue anti-trust cases, whereas it seemed rather keen on it in the early-mid 20th century.

Regarding the tax avoidance, I notice Suckerberg and Thiel and their sub-Randian tax free fruitopian ideas. Perhaps we should let them avoid tax, and at the same time deny them the capital and property protecting powers that the state was designed for. No more copyright, patents, no access to courts at all. No criminal protection either, from hackers/DDOSers et al. At the same time if they want to use our state educated employees they can pay a special transfer fee to buy them of the state school system. There has developed a cult of 'I did this whole thing myself', which massively downplays the role society has in allowing the formation of a corporation and providing the protection of property and capital. None of which is free, and why should the regular Joe payroll tax payer pick up the tab?

[0]https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/27/google-brac... [1]http://www.techradar.com/news/new-standards-for-the-indian-o...

edit: I feel like I should have expressly mentioned limited-liability. Imagine if the investors in a private equity outfit hat to pick up the tab of all of the start-ups that go bankrupt? That is libertarian

Just because tax-funded services play a role in somebody's success doesn't mean that person morally owes arbitrary amounts of money to the government.

Taxes are proportional to earnings, but the amount of money you cost the government is not. Why should you start paying more just because you were successful?

If you actually wanted to implement "Suckerburg" and Thiel's "fruitopian" ideas, you should charge them a reasonable price based on the services they use, rather than based on how much money they earn.

I suspect they pay substantially more taxes than most of us do.

>arbitrary amounts of money...

No proportional amounts of money

>Taxes are proportional to earnings, but the amount of money you cost the government is not

You don't think Google places rather more demand on the government than me? For instance I go to court occasionally to collect debts from customers. These are single 10 minute sessions before a judge. Compare this to Oracle Vs Google.

Or we have a fleet of 11 delivery vehicles using the highways that society created, Amazon has hundreds.

We have 100 employees that the state brought up, kept healthy (Yeah I know this is different in the US), educated and delivered to us at 16 ready to work. Google has 74k employees, Amazon has 566k.

Then there is regulation, I am not in a position to abuse the market, these guys are and should pay for the arbitration and oversight that this needs.

> charge them a reasonable price based on the services they use

Yes, a reasonable price, hundreds of millions of dollars every year in every territory where they operate.

Why do you believe the taxes should be proportional to what they earn rather than what they cost the government?

Because the profits a company makes are a good proxy for the amount they cost the government, because larger companies require much more state intervention. I think I covered that above already.

Turning the question back on you, how would you measure the cost to the government? Per patent, per line of copyrighted material you are protecting? Per mile driven, per minute the regulator had to spend on them? Per employee they take on? Per police call perhaps? Per crime they were a victim of? Per minute the politicians had to spend on them? Per the amount of debt that the government is allowing them to run up, whilst offering limited liability?

That sounds like a pretty expensive return to fill out?

I don't have any idea how taxes should be based on what you cost, but I don't see punishing success as a fair way to do it.

For me personally, it's quite clear that in years where I make more money and therefore pay more taxes, I haven't cost the government any more.

>I don't have any idea how taxes should be based on what you cost

The system is unfair, but better than any other system then?

> punishing success

Is an emotive term, and nonsense. How is it a punishment? I know Zuckerberg looks like he can't afford a suit, but he doesn't seem to be particularly oppressed by the state. In fact he seems to have scrimped and saved $70bn despite the pillaging. How about a different term, 'sharing success with the society that helped create it'?

> For me personally, it's quite clear that in years where I make more money and therefore pay more taxes, I haven't cost the government any more.

And your business operations come at no cost to society, and don't use any of the benefits society created? Could it be the inverse is true, in the years where you were less profitable the government reduced your tax burden below your actual cost to nurture and encourage your enterprise? And later you earned more and paid something back towards it?

I see a dangerously double-edged argument. To base the deriving of society’s expenses per a person on that person’s earnings is odd. Especially if you limit your view to the 99% of population who are either just normal employees, or their dependents, or even welfare receivers of some kind. If I am making 50% more in my 30s than I did in my 20s - do I really cost more? In my 70s I would likely make nothing, except the pension, but my healthcare bills would grow.

So taking your point to extreme - should my “taxes” (on what?) be the highest in my 70s?

The OECD suggest that one measure of good taxation is it's efficiency. Progressively taxing profits seems to meet that goal. 'Cost to the government' sounds tricky to measure however

>The OECD suggest that one measure of good taxation is it's efficiency.

This suggests we should not tax at all. This suggests we should simply invent money as-needed. Destroy it when not-needed.

Some call that "Marxism".

I think you may have misunderstood. When the OECD talk of efficiency, they mean a tax that is efficient to collect. It is one of the fundamental principles of taxation in the study of economics.

"Efficiency: Compliance costs to business and administration costs for governments should be minimised as far as possible."

That is a quote from

OECD (2014), "Fundamental principles of taxation", in Addressing the Tax Challenges of the Digital Economy, OECD Publishing, Paris.

This seems like a fair criticism of the post above where something other than a progressive income/profit tax was being suggested.

RE: Marxism

I don't really think you have taken the time to find out who the OECD are. The OECD are the "Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development". Their role is to spread the market economy, and in particular work on double taxation treaties between countries. The antithesis of Marxism.

> This suggests we should simply invent money as-needed. Destroy it when not-needed.

This is the kind of misunderstanding you get when you model national finance like a household budget. Money is created and destroyed constantly by governments, and even more so by banks. When banks lend money it comes from nowhere. Governments run deficits for years, where they create money that didn't exist before.Taxation is exactly the destruction of money. This is not Marxism, it is economics.

Not the OP but one reason to tax by earnings could be to capture unmeasured externalities, like fewer choices in the absence of competition. (Although that example would assume earnings strongly relates to marketshare.)

Does that mean a society where we have the disabled and sick pay extra? And those who have children and attend school services should also potentially pay extra? And those who are rural should also pay extra?

Yes

> At the same time if they want to use our state educated employees they can pay a special transfer fee to buy them of the state school system.

You may not have known this, but those people aren't owned by the state. They can't be sold. Or are you advocating for something else...? Maybe you think it's better than libertarianism?

That is a complete straw man and you know it.

You should use your words in a better way if you'd like to convey why these companies should have to "buy" "employees" who were educated by the state. You should also explain how these companies are more special than others and why they in particular need to pay. You should also explain how they should pay in some way meaningfully different from the taxes we already pay.

But mostly, I am curious about what you actually mean about buying students. I'm not being obtuse, I don't understand what you meant because I'm sure you're not really advocating what it sounds like.

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