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Comment by danschuller | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't serve society at all for this type of non-violent crime to result in prison time.

It's never made sense for copyright violations to be a criminal offense.

Naaah. If you're doing it for profit, and running a big duplicator farm or selling things online, it can make sense for it to be a criminal offense. But the laws are not crafted that well.

If it's morally right to do for free then it's also morally right to do in exchange of money

If it's mildly morally wrong it can be harmless/handled civilly when done on a small scale, but require a criminal punishment on a large scale.

Why would that be the case. It's a breach of contract.

They should repay the damaged counterpart if they can prove they had a sales contract in place.

> It's a breach of contract.

Says your own novel legal theory, which has as much basis as trying to tell the cop that's pulled me over that I'm a sovereign citizen.

> They should repay the damaged counterpart if they can prove they had a sales contract in place.

We give monopolies on copying to encourage production of high quality yet easily-copyable work. If someone can just immediately start selling the good without any of the production costs, that's no bueno for society. It's the free-rider problem.

> It's the free-rider problem.

Uuh. Free software would be to differ. Commoditization of intellectual property enable people to do useful productive work as a hobby. And everyone gets encouraged to work with the strongest stream collaboratively.

Free software is one option that is enabled by current copyright. In many cases, there's sufficient incentive ("fame" or marketing, lowered shared maintenance burdens, etc) to make it happen. I have a ton of diff that I've gotten into free software and have had maintainer roles and lead projects.

But I don't exactly think you're going to make a blockbuster movie or AAA game as free software. Some things cost money in a way that any other incentives aren't going to pay it back.

But it serves corporations that governments work for.

and it's ironic that we pay for it while big corporations can avoid paying taxes as they please.

I'm the last person to defend corporations. That said, US corporations definitely don't avoid "paying taxes." The corporate income tax rate imposed by the federal government is 21%. Employees pay income and social security taxes on top of those earnings after. From the moment a company earns income until it lands in the hands of employees the government can take as much as HALF of it. This includes everyone on salary. Execs would be wise to issue themselves stock so they "ONLY" have to pay 15% or 20% (LTCG) as their "income tax." Companies can reduce their tax burden by engaging in behaviors which the federal government has deemed worthy or risky and incentivizes those behaviors with preferential tax treatment. For instance the R&D tax credit. It means that organizations that invest in qualified research and development activities to incentivize innovation and growth (as defined in Internal Revenue Code section 41) may be eligible for a general business tax credit.

No, wages, salaries, payroll taxes and contractor expenses, along with most other expenses, are subtracted from gross profit to make net profit, which may undergo further reduction in various charges (depreciation, etc) before being subject to tax, and then various tax credits may be applied that reduce the corporate liability further.

Double taxation occurs when a corporation is subject to corporate tax and then pays a dividend, which is after tax, but counts as income to the investor. There are arguments to be made that this is fair or unfair.

> Double taxation occurs when a corporation is subject to corporate tax and then pays a dividend, which is after tax, but counts as income to the investor. There are arguments to be made that this is fair or unfair.

Even calling it double-taxation seems like BS. Generally, we tax at the point of exchange: income, sales, etc. Money moves around endlessly. It's taxed when the consumer pays the corporation (often twice! sales and income), when the corporation pays the shareholder, when the shareholder dies and gives it to their kids, when the kids buy a house, when the homebuilder pays their contractors, etc. etc. etc.

I don't disagree, but S-corporation profits are only taxed once, regardless of distribution, and C-corporation profits are taxed on the corporate tax bill even if distributed in a dividend to shareholders. It's a little peculiar.

Still. The corporate tax rate is way lower than personal tax. In my country some workers pay over 50% tax on their income, while corporation they work for pay 10% or less if they have good accountants.

In the US we've historically arranged thing so that the corporate tax rate + long term cap gains rate is approximately equal to the income tax rate.

If the combined rates were much greater it would create an incentive against creating c-corps.

> If the combined rates were much greater it would create an incentive against creating c-corps.

Are you implying that sole proprieterships would be alternatives to C corps? Facebook would be a personal asset of Zuckerberg?

> If the combined rates were much greater it would create an incentive against creating c-corps.

This argument isn't sound. If high tax doesn't create an incentive for creating corporations, then it also doesn't create an incentive for people to work and be productive. Now the taxes are pushed on the workers that have to pick up the corporations tab. It may have worked in the past where corporations had high head count and were not outsourcing, but now governments rather than working to correct that imbalance, they increase workers' taxes. We can see this system is slowly collapsing as your can tax the workers only so much before they feel like slaves and stop working.

I am not following your reply. Consider that you face two options for organizing your business activity-- you can operate it as a pass through entity of some kind (s-corp, sole proprietorship, etc) or you can operate it as a c-corp. The c-corp path will result in double taxation, corp tax and LTCG. But the combination of the two is a similar rate to the tax on income (e.g. 21+20% vs 37% top marginal).

Cranking the CG or corp tax rate even higher will result in more businesses with less diverse ownership, even if only on the margin, which would result in increased wealth consolidation.

Every US person pays for taxes on capital gains and income tax at some point and those taxes ain't zero for executives of large corporations. Not even close. This extreme focus on taxation of corporations is bizarre. Eventually corporate profits need to be used by people. Companies cannot buy houses and living properties for executives either unless there is a legitimate business purpose rolled in somehow. You can try to bullshit the IRS but they will come down on you like a bag of bricks if you feed them a load of crap.

> Every US person pays for taxes on capital gains

Much of America never pays such taxes and has no such investments. About 40% (? IIRC) don't have $600 saved.

> taxes ain't zero for executives of large corporations

Taxes on wealthy are relatively low, in part because capital gains, the source of revenue for the wealthy, are taxed at a lower rate than income, the source of revenue for working class Americans.

> This extreme focus on taxation of corporations is bizarre.

I don't see the argument. Corporations pay relatively low taxes, and it has a large effect on other Americans who lack government services and have to pay more themselves to cover the corporations' share.

> You can try to bullshit the IRS but they will come down on you like a bag of bricks if you feed them a load of crap.

The GOP cut IRS enforcement to the bone, and it was restored only ~1 year ago.

Long term capital gains tax on the wealthy is 20%.

About the other point: IRS will come after you even after many years have passed so its a dangerous game of chicken to even attempt.

It's the concept of a corporation as a fictional person that is source of the peculiarity. If it's a fictional person, with its own assets, income, and expenses, then it pays taxes. It serves real humans by providing a place they can safely pool their investment.

S corps are more extensions of a real human than separate fictional entities.

Yet the total tax burden of US corporations is low relative to similar countries (IIRC), and some corporations pay nothing.

> That said, US corporations definitely don't avoid "paying taxes."

Multinational corporations definitely do. They'll register themselves in a country with a cheaper corporate tax burden then argue that their income / sales is generated from that country rather than their actual country of origin. Thus reducing the amount of tax they have to pay in the US (or UK, etc).

Irrelevant due to Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income (GILTI)

It is relevant since the tax is low, so it makes it worthwhile. Foreign big corporations that are not US controlled have even better situation.

Countries like UK have for instance DPT (Diverted Profit Tax) but it is discretionary and our tax man tends to look away.

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