Amazon is a master of tax avoidance
usatoday.com
usatoday.com
The tax code could be simpler and eliminate the holes, but these companies love the complication because it allows them to invent these things, so they actually lobby for even more complicated, convoluted rules at any given chance.
Apparently not required.
Apparently it didn't matter as much 4 years later. The media are a fickle bunch.
But he became president anyways. maybe as a result of it.
Follow the incentives - no individual or business knowingly pays more taxes than it is obligated to.
Everyone joining in on funds like vanguard is making this question become less of an academic one
The same money is still spent, just by different decision makers. Shareholders may very well prefer the decisions being made by the private enterprise.
Most shareholders preferences don't mean more than the air they use to say them
If they don't directly spend it either by cashing out, borrowing against it, etc. The fund manager controlling that savings fund will deploy some of that capital and put it to work.
If the money is saved and then put to work like just established, then it becomes a multiplier. If the money is taken as a tax and spent by the government it doesn't become a multiplier.
Take $10 sitting in savings. It can be spent/invested buying a good and that circulates to all the intermediaries and suppliers around the economy. That is not what happens when you tax Peter to pay Paul.
If you dont think that companies are capable of doing the same sort of thing to society but at a larger scaled I don't think we can have a discussion on it.
Not every transaction is zero sum at worst and growing the pie at best
Also, you're saying what do people do with the money "they spend it", but when the government takes the money and uses jt, that just dissapears? I actually believe that can happen because I think individuals/corporations/governments can engage in destructive actions but the way you are arguing it is talking out of both sides of your mouth. When the government spends money it goes to people too
Assume an economy valued at $100. If you taxed it and passed that money to another party, it’s not going to grow the $100 at all. Because all you’re doing is shifting that ownership of that money around and in between steps losing some to intermediaries.
So taxing $10 and passing it around is really some value less than $100. Meanwhile that $100 could be used to grow to $300 and everyone is vastly better off.
Now these are extremes, if you took some extreme tax like 90% then the whole thing falls apart and you have the state running things and we know how that goes.
Same for the opposite side, at 0% tax then things like national defense and the like wouldn’t be supported and we’d have things like other nations/parties trying to invade etc.
Clearly there’s a middle ground but I’d say it’s definitely not at the current ratio of tax burden which is what 30% roughly of GDP? Might be more with future liabilities
On the flip side youre also valuing all private transactions as being a multiplier. How is it a multiplier when a monopoly just charges higher prices one day with no improvement to their product? That's just extracting money out with no equivalent increase in value, which does not make it a multiplier
They are valuing all government actions at substantially less than the original value in private hands.