Hacker News Reader

Comment by hailhash | Hacker News Reader

When was the last time a corporation went to local Starbucks to drink a cup of coffee from all of the tax savings from the double Irish Dutch sandwich?

When you tax a corporation that gets passed on to its employees and its customers, who already pay those taxes.

View on HN

Google and other big tech companies that were doing this shady accounting stuff are sitting on the money. If they had paid taxes on it, they would just be sitting on less money and we would have a little bit more money for public programs. Public programs that are run by people that stop at Starbucks some mornings.

Google employees pay the taxes Google shareholders pay the taxes Google customers pay taxes

Wonder where is all that tax money going to? Just curious?

Or maybe you could siphon just a teeny little bit from your military-industrial complex.

It isn't an either-or situation. Everybody should pay their taxes and we (government) should spend the money carefully.

Is this some kind of trickle-down taxes meme? The employees and customers did not pay those taxes. They pay taxes, but not those taxes.

Starbucks also used similar (the same?) tax loopholes... https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-starbucks-tax/spe...

so does every non-bankrupt decent sized "Corporation" with accountants who can do kinder garden level additions and subtractions.

If you tax a corporation the employees suffer, but not the billions of profits? Hm, sounds far fetched.

Here is a simple back of the envelope calculation to demonstrate the idea.

  Revenue Cost Gross Rate Tax Profit
     1000  700  300    20  60    240
     1020  700  320    25  80    240
     1000  680  320    25  80    240

Of course, in reality there are many more factors to keep in mind e.g. you can't increase the price while expecting the sales to stay steady, and you can't expect the quality to maintain (and hence keeping the sales) while reducing the cost (personnel or material). But the idea is that the directors can find many ways to keep the shareholders happy even in the face of corporate tax hike.

So didnt the employees benefit from google s avoidance scheme all this time?

Um...no. So much no.

When you tax a corporation it comes from shareholders.

When you tax a corporation it comes from the revenue and holdings of that corporation

Exactly! And since the "revenue and holdings" of a corporation are owned by the shareholders, it comes from shareholders.

And when the shareholders want to maintain their after-tax income, they can certainly pass the buck to the customers or the employees, to a certain extent.

If a public company can increase prices to increase its profits, it means it is not setting prices correctly!

Prices should be set at the profit-maximizing price. Taxes have nothing to do with it.

Employee compensation is decided by the market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com