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> They are unselfish entities designed to serve society, why would we tax them?????? It's f*** crazy.

This is about the most outlandish claim I've ever seen made in defense of big tech. They literally are not charitable organizations. They serve the selfish desires of their respective CEOs, boards, and shareholders. Second tier consideration to advertisers, then employees and users in distant third. "Society" doesn't factor in, until they arrive at the gates with pitchforks.

I'm not talking about big tech, I'm talking about all businesses/corporations (except for obvious sex/drug/alcohol businesses). Businesses and corporations are always predetermined with a purpose, that purpose is always and unequivocally (barring extremely unusual businesses) to provide some sort of service or product to society. That by definition is an unselfish entity. A corporation is not even a human being, so it cannot be selfish; only when money has been extracted for a business can it become selfish.

Humans, on the other hand, have selfish purposes: I want to become rich, I want to own fast cars, I want to travel the world, I want to eat good food. Businesses build services and products to earn a profit based on creating value for society. Businesses should not be taxed, only when money is extracted to individually should it be taxed!!

This idealistic claptrap has zero relation to reality. The purpose of a great many corporations is to extract maximum rent with minimum (often negative) value added.

Businesses are not human: agreed. Businesses are a legal mechanism to execute on behalf of its owners, while shielding them from liabilities, tax included. This is enshrined in supreme court cases involving Hobby Lobby, Citizens United, etc: corporations enjoy a freedom of speech because otherwise the freedom of the corporations' controllers would be infringed. They have more rights than you and I, and in many regards, less responsibility. The corporations may not be selfish, but their controllers are selfish human beings.

Private jets are a great example. If you buy one, that's expensive! If you start a corporation, the corporation buys a jet, and you make a symbolic effort to rent it out to a friend once and a while, you can write down all of the expense as a loss. Those get deducted from capital gains made in other ventures. Voilá, instead of paying tax, your money goes to luxury expenses instead! And if you're not going to tax the actual profit-making companies, then you get zero taxes from the people extracting the most rent from society.

Free market capitalism has been infected with a mind virus that rents are awesome for society and regulation, liability, and tax are a detriment. You're entirely turned around.

Of course, the system is abused, business costs are used for selfish human purposes by the controllers, but this is a super super minor issue in the global scheme of business. The advantages of taxes businesses have to outweigh the costs, and the costs of taxes business are the following:

1) create unbelievably complex laws to tax here and there and what's allowed, what is exempt, etc etc etc.

2) For all the complex laws, we need:

  A) politicians who can understand so that they can be changes
  B) Judges who can judges by them
  C) Auditors who can make audit businesses following them
  D) Business executives who specialize only in finding ways around them
  E) Accounts and Tax advisors who also need to learn them
  F) Business employees that comply with them (save every receipt, so the costs can approved!)
  G) Software developers who can write unbelievable complex software for those unbelievably complex laws (i.e. Accounting software, IRS software, etc.)
  H) All the IRS agents who have to do the back office paperwork

And of course all of ^ those have enormous costs. Biden for example wants to spend $60 billion to build IRS tax software. $60 billion. six zero - billion.

3) And finally #3 which you're not going to believe: we take the money from good business, most businesses are good businesses, and we give it the corrupt politicians who piss it down the shithole. Wonderful!!!!! All the work just to transfer the money to someone to spend it even it worse!!!

> It doesn't make sense to tax companies! They are unselfish entities designed to serve society why would we tax them??????

What world are you living in? These companies are absolutely selfish, by definition. Publicly traded companies have a "fiduciary duty" to their shareholders to act solely in the companies interest (i.e. maximizing profits). They are not "designed to serve society" - that is the purpose of democratic government - they are designed to make as much money as possible.

Any beneficial-to-society effects are secondary. Or only intended insofar as to generate further profit.

And so we're clear, this is the mechanism behind this popular new "enshittification" term. The name of the game is Money, or Power if you prefer. Google doesn't provide Maps for free to benefit society, they provide it because it's an enormous engine driving their digital moat (not to mention their immediate ad business revenue).

These companies are not your friends. And by this I don't mind that they are a priori your enemy, only that their actions are not intended for your benefit, and they can easily turn hostile if it is in their interest to do so. If you place implicit trust in them, and do nothing to curtail their acquisition of power, nobody will be able to oppose them when they take actions that are harmful to society.

I think your forgetting that the way the tax avoidance system got into the law is because the large players paid lobbyists and funded campaigns to get the tax code changed such that they could do it. It is "legal" but its also corrupt.

I introduce all of my male relatives to Ayn Rand when they hit 15. Libertarianism is an attractive idea at that age and this gives them a chance to explore it with actual adults.

It’s an inoculation. Three years later they’ll see how disconnected from reality it is and then I can spring On Walden Pond on them.

“Aha!” I say. “It turns out that Libertarianism works as a personal philosophy!”