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Comment by altairprime | Hacker News Reader

It makes sense when you consider that there is no minimum tax rate on businesses.

Given the choice, Amazon would rather spend 100% of its profits on itself than allow any of its profits to be paid out in taxes. Section 174 was implemented without a minimum tax on corporate profits before voluntary deductions such as research. Therefore, it’s exploitable and all companies ought to hire and fire staff to ensure their profits show as 0%.

This tax code defect is now closed by accident, but could have been done much more intelligently than it was. Oh well.

(EDIT: My first sentence is potentially confusing when I reread it later. To restate: section 174 was defective as implemented due to the uncapped 100% deduction, but the concept of a significant research exemption is still excellent. Just need to close the effective 0% corporate tax rate loophole.)

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The company already pays payroll taxes on those salaries, and the employees pay income taxes. And the people hurt by this aren't the shareholders or top executives, it's the rank and file workers getting laid off, losing benefits, and being asked to work more for the same pay.

What this change effectively did was make software developers significantly more expensive, without increasing the amount those developers get paid.

The company does not pay payroll taxes. Individuals pay those taxes.

It doesn't actually matter that much who actually writes the check to the government (although in the US, both parties pay taxes).

Either way, the total cost of employment is higher for the employer than the after-tax income of the employee.

It matters alot. Both the employee and employer are benefitting from government spending, the employee shouldnt have to foot the whole bill. That is dytopian

If corporations were able to operate in a high trust fashion and actually take responsinility for their tax burden properly, instead of trying to shirk it, then this policing wouldnt be needed, but we dont live in that world

Suppose amount of money an employer is willing to pay for an employee is $100,000. For the employer, if there is a $20,000 payroll tax, then the employer would only pay the employee $80,000 to keep the total cost at $100,000. If the employee pays the tax, then the employer will pay the employee $100,000, then the employee pays $20,000 and has $80,000 after taxes. Either way the employer pays $100,000 and the employee gets $80,000. It doesn't matter which party is paying the government $20,000*.

Now, there are other tax schemes that aren't based on how much an employee is paid, but that is a completely different matter.

And FWIW sales/vat tax is somewhat similar. It doesn't matter if the buyer or the seller pays the tax, either has the same effect on the total amount paid.

For anyone wanting to read more on the topic:

https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence

It’s split but the company pays more. Both pay SS and Medicare. Company also pays unemployment.

Software developers are already too expensive in US, so this applies some downward pressure on those salaries. Frankly the economy will be much better off when tech salaries equalize across geos, thus avoiding the deep whole US manufacturing is in (for example, manufacturing wages in Vietname are one tenth of US manufacturing wages, and thus it is better to open new plants there).

If you want equalized poverty, feel free to move to the EU. Say goodbye to owning a nice house, or building any kind of wealth - that's reserved for the old money class.

In the US, software is one of the few remaining ways to achieve the American dream. I came to this country to work hard and earn money.

Weird, I live in the USA make $180k yet still can’t own a house and building wealth is extremely hard.

EU has better societal benefits than the US (access to healthcare, education, mandated vacation time (often starting at 3-4 weeks).

The vast majority of people care about living a life without suffering. In the US this is only reserved for the rich it seems.

What part of the country and what is your take home? Monthly expenses? $180k can be a lot depending on your location.

Exceptions are HCOL tech hubs, but comp in those places is much higher.

I live in Boston where I make double(-ish) the household median income ($80k to $100k). For individual median incomes, I make $140k more. I'm able to save over half my monthly income and it's still not enough. I absolutely can't imagine living in this city on anything less and I don't exactly live a life of exuberance here.

This is the sign of a broken economy.

I don't think we share the same definition of poverty.

I'm in the EU. You have no idea what you're talking about.

Yeah, make everybody equally poor. That'll solve things.

If you look at happiness and indexes versus taxation rates - yes, making everybody poorer does tend to solve things. Not too soon in the growth curve - but certainly not never.

Those two scenarios are only comparable if you isolate happiness and taxation and completely ignore things like social services and inequality.

I think you're referring to Nordic countries which consistently rank as the happiest countries and also have relatively high tax rates (4 of 5 Nordic countries rank in the top 11 tax rates globally. Norway has oil.) The high taxes that "make everybody poorer" also fund extensive social services that contribute to happiness.

However, this conversation is about making (a class of) workers poorer by using tax policy that puts downward pressure on their salaries. Tax revenues will stay the same, so social services will not be increased. Economic inequality increases because the workers became poorer, the C-Suite and Board Members don't.

Don’t forget the other stakeholder - the general public.

Yes it sucks for developers, but does it make any difference for any other employee? Why does Joe’s plumbing have to pay those taxes, but Jane’s AdTech company doesn’t?

Sure, there are benefits to investing in R&D in general, and tech has fueled a lot of growth, so incentivizing it has likely paid off for the whole economy. But will that forever be true? Maybe?

If Joe's plumbing hires an assistant plumber, they get to fully deduct the assistant's salary.

Why do I, the hardworking tax payer, have to subsidize Joe Plumber, who already has a big house with a pool?

In some parts of the world we have a sales tax which is a form of minimum tax on business outputs. The consumers of plumbing and software pay 10% regardless on a businesses profitability.

Yeah, VAT would help tremendously in alternative here, but for gestures at United States sociopolitics reasons the existing U.S. taxation methods can’t keep up and won’t be repaired any time soon. I could boil the ocean on this down to bedrock (citizens should be taxed on [redacted] in excess of threshold, services and goods should be VATed) but I stand by “section 174 with a sub-100% cap” as what at minimum would have balanced research and taxation.

In many parts of the US there are sales taxes, but they are state or local taxes, not federal taxes.

Joe's plumbing doesn't have to pay those taxes. Operational costs, including paying employees for normal operations, is deductable.

But with the change, the cost of R&D employees is now only partially deductible (right now, you can eventually deduct the full amount over the course of several years), and software development has to be considered R&D.

> Given the choice, Amazon would rather spend 100% of its profits on itself

And why is this bad, exactly? Money will be spent and will go back into the economy. Amazon will have to use the funds to build new offices, datacenters, do research, whatever.

And even if execs give themselves $10^11 USD in bonuses, they will be taxed as personal income, at even higher rates than corporate income.

It is complex - is it better for the money to go back into the economy by paying high salaries to a specific group of highly-educated people? Or is it better for the money to go back into the economy through taxes, then disbursing the benefits to lower-income benefit programs?

I’m not sure what the answer is. The former is likely to drive some innovation, which I’m sure varies by company. Where the latter could also unlock innovation by giving the bottom-quartile of earners a chance to improve their situation.

Those salaries are also taxed, and at the highest tax brackets. The government may end up getting more revenue that way.

The answer is simple: it's the biggest growth generator in USA.

Growth has its own problems of course (I don't want to estimate the health impact of Coca Cola), but it's a prerequisite of a country not falling behind others.

It can do both, by eliminating corporate taxes.

At that point, do we need to fundamentally rethink political donations by companies (outright ban them) and SuperPACs? No representation without taxation.

Absolutely, companies should not be involved in politics. It's impossible to _fully_ get them out of politics, but we can at least minimize it.

> It is complex - is it better for the money to go back into the economy by paying high salaries to a specific group of highly-educated people?

Yes. Also, the salary will not go _only_ to highly-educated people. For example, if Amazon decides to build a new distribution center, it will employ blue-collar workers to build it, not software engineers.

> Or is it better for the money to go back into the economy through taxes, then disbursing the benefits to lower-income benefit programs?

No.

> I’m not sure what the answer is.

The answer is pretty clear: invest money into the private sector, rather than divert it into the Federal budget. Private actors are more efficient at allocating funds than the government.

I'm not against social spending, it's a necessary evil for any real state. Pure libertarianism leads to dystopian outcomes. But it should be understood that it's a very real artificial inefficiency that is imposed on the economy.

There are also situations where additional social spending is necessary, but they are VERY easy to detect: when your interest rate is near zero.

Jesus man, how can you look at the economic history of the past 30 years and still think neoliberalism is the way to go?

because a high percentage people on HN fall into the group that benefits more from neoliberal economics than the larger group of people within those economies who don't benefit.

Same as the communists, in that it hasn't been truly implemented anywhere?

I don't have the brain-rot of calling all of mainstream economics 'neoliberalism' so I have absolutely no idea what you are trying to say here.

I used to think like you, until I saw what the lack of neoliberalism does to countries. And before I witnessed the magic of market economy that adapts to changes far, far, far better than anything else.

If you want a static economy that supports gradual decline (preferably with a mineral-based income stream), then a lot of state spending is fine.

Being opposed to neoliberalism does not mean being opposed to free markets in general.

Real neoliberalism (with land value tax and pigouvian tax) has never been tried.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

Then you misunderstand, the markets and economies of the past 5 decades have been two children playing Candyland. Saying it's not is a No True Scotsman fallacy, because clearly since I labeled it as Candyland economy it must be so.

Sure, and you could argue that we haven’t actually tried communism, or that US democracy is so gerrymandered and neutered (eg Citizens United), etc about any political system. I don’t think we’d be where we are in the US if we had a “pure” democracy, I don’t think Russia would be where it is if they had actually gotten to communism. South America might be a much different place if the US hadn’t looked at the budding socialist movements and said “no way, buddy”.

The brand of neoliberalism where the fox sets up shop in the henhouse does not work.

State spending is not a panacea.

Mostly, Amazon will do stock buybacks, so that its investor can invest into other top stocks.

Funds for the stock buybacks are not R&D, they'll be taxed.

> Given the choice, Amazon would rather spend 100% of its profits on itself than allow any of its profits to be paid out in taxes.

"on itself"???

You mean it would rather spend its profits on hiring more developers than sit on it? That sounds great, doesn't it?

That isn't a loophole. It is working exactly as was intended. Reinvesting is good.

The deal is that you can delay taxes by reinvesting (and either make the government more money at the end or lose it all if you were a fool, but you gain nothing by losing it all) but you cannot skip them when it comes to taking the profit out. The entire point of it was to promote investment into businesses which has kind of been a crucial factor in international competitiveness since the Industrial Revolution. Remember the fall of US Steel? That happened because they didn't reinvest.

after 5 years then every year is deducting a whole year's worth of R&D - as long as that investment is not too lumpy from year to year you are back where you started

Which is fine for steady companies, but perpetually drags down any rapidly growing company

exactly. so this policy which was ostensibly about closing a loophole used by big tech is actually a benefit to big tech because it keeps disruptive new competitors from arising. regulatory capture strikes again.

In this theory you should tax revenue and not profit. Welcome to VAT.

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