>Yep, you could do this. Only problem is, uh, you never make any money. If you're running a hobby or something, that's fine, but most people owning business want to realize some profit...
Debt is technically profit in that sense, as long as you can pay it back.
When you first invest 100k and then sell something for 2$ you don't make a profit for a while. You may be arguing for some other tax but it's ridiculous to argue income tax should be paid until revenue > costs.
>>If you dont make profit on that sale, I have bad news for your business idea.
When doing business you often don't know if you will make profit or not. In the coffee example you don't know how many you are going to sell so it's impossible to "include costs in the cup of coffee" because that depends on how many you are going to sell and that's unknown. Your whole line of reasoning makes 0 sense.
Every unit of coffee you sell should turn a profit. Which in turn should be taxed. Even cigarettes that probably only turn micro cents profit should be taxed by per unit sold. They even are, given their sales are heavily regulated.
No company is giving out "free" products without making a profit just to go even on their initial investment.
>>No company is giving out "free" products without making a profit just to go even on their initial investment.
Profits appears when your revenue exceeds your costs which doesn't happen on the first or second (or sometimes 10000th sale). You are arguing for some completely different tax system which luckily we don't live under.
>> If you do that you can actually calculate the amount of coffees you need to sell to turn a profit and if the business even makes sense in the first place.
You can't calculate "if the business even makes sense in the first place". It's a bureaucrat's dream but it's not how the real world works. You make a bet and and hope it works out. I may or it may not (the usual case with businesses).