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Comment by akvadrako | Hacker News Reader

Base rate of what? The problem is that their profit is artificially low.

Presumably they are thinking of revenue, that would of course be tricky, and quite apart from that set up an incentive to limit revenue. Just as we've seen profit limited by taxing profit (for example Amazon could be making obscene profits, but chooses not to), we would see revenue limited by taxing revenue. I've no idea what that would look like. Has anyone tried it?

Just as tax rates have an impact on architecture, they also help to shape companies.

https://99percentinvisible.org/article/vernacular-economics-...

Why humans have AMT, but corporations don't?

What? Corporations absolutely have an AMT.

Hmm... Looks like you're right.

How do they manage to pay zero taxes then? I thought AMT assumes that once you're beyond a certain level of income, your lose most deductions and essentially pay a certain percent of the income.

The tax code taxes wins, not revenue.

An org that invests all their margin into growth doesn't pay (as much) tax.

The best way though is to create an offshore subsidiary, and then have the subsidiary invoice the main office for "services" or "IP licensing". The invoice becomes a cost and is deducted from revenue. "Everyone" (all the big players) do things like that. It's 100% legal.

Through subsidiary companies and assigning IP rights, they move their income to a low tax country like Ireland. Its kind of like movie studio accounting. Take Ikea for example. It doesn't make much money because all the profits are sent to a charity that owns the Ikea name.

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