Comment by ffsm8 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ffsm8 | Hacker News Reader

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The only realistic way to achieve that is to simplify tax law so there are no exemptions, deductions, incentives etc.

Just a plain rate.

It comes with funny side effects, eg companies will suddenly want to make simple things in-house again to save on taxes, and it necessitates tariffs as every other nation is following the current scheme where taxes are only due for the last trade.

The whole tax advisor profession vanishes - only book keeping and accounting would stay.

But let's be real here, it would massively impact the market, it sounds fun on paper for armchair analysts like myself - but real human life's would be ruined from the upheaval

And "the rich" for the most part are paying their fair share.

It's very few which employ highly intelligent tax advisors that skirt them. Same with companies, most play by the social rules. It's just large multinationals like Google, Apple and similar which get around paying taxes. And they're mostly paying some taxes in the US too, just in eg Europe they don't at all.

> And "the rich" for the most part are paying their fair share.

In addition to the usual tax dodges, and the lobbying for loopholes/preferential tax policy, companies push a lot of harm onto the rest of society so that it becomes everyone else's problem. "their fair share" should include all of those externalized costs. Tax companies for the air and water they pollute. Tax companies for every employee who isn't paid enough money to support himself. Tax companies for every time one of their products makes people sick. Tax companies for data breeches and security failures. Until companies don't leave everyone else on the hook for cleaning up after their messes, they can't be said to paying anything close to their fair share.

> In addition to the usual tax dodges, and the lobbying for loopholes/preferential tax policy

the latter is just something to do the former

> should include all of those externalized costs

if you actually want to have a serious debate on that topic, you need to actually cite real examples to look at, otherwise it comes off as a general platitude to capture simps who dont actually understand what theyre being told.

> Tax companies for the air and water they pollute

how exactly? and how would that not become a complete dumbsterfire of administration, with ever increasing dystopian oversight of the state? ever more complicated tax rules, ever more situation in which they can find loopholes etc. this sounds great until you actually think about how to implement it, then it should become quiet clear, very quickly that you'd only give exactly the companies that "arent paying their fair share" an even bigger advantage then they already have.

> Tax companies for every employee who isn't paid enough money to support himself

seriously, how. again it sounds great as an idea, like everything socialist inspired. Its just in practice to implent this, the state has to become an autocracy at the same level of a dictatorship.

> Tax companies for every time one of their products makes people sick.

isnt that already the case? thats why you get endless legalese on all purchases pointing out all the things you may not do with the product. If the product makes you sick, youre usually able to sue. That this doesnt actually achieve what you want should be obvious from the status quo. unless you were seriously talking about tax there. but if you were... what would be the point? the person that was harmed would still be sick and not have gotten any help?

> Tax companies for data breeches and security failures

how do you imagine this working? does the state get a backdoor into every company so it can monitor it for intrusions, so it can throw out punitive fines? like china basically, where every company needs to have a party member on payroll so the party is always informed on all developments?

Seriously, you didn't think any of those things through. If you got what you wanted, you get a society akin to the USSR. Thats not something any sane person would want.

> how exactly?

The EPA already has the means for on site tests of emissions, industrial discharge, etc. They are also capable of monitoring and investigating to locate the source of problems.

> Its just in practice to implent this, the state has to become an autocracy at the same level of a dictatorship.

What are you even talking about? The government already knows everyone who gets welfare benefits. They also already know who employs those people and how much money they were paid. If a company pays so little that their employee still needs food stamps, the government knows how much it cost taxpayers to subsidize the labor expense of the employer.

> isnt that already the case?

No. It isn't. Same with data breeches and security incidents. Some small percentage of the people who are harmed might join a class action, but most people won't get any compensation for their losses (which may include death) and those that do get something don't typically get anything close to fair compensation, just a few bucks and/or coupons. DuPont poisoned you. Knowingly. How much money did they compensate you for that? People should be directly compensated when possible, but often there are harms that impact everybody, even if not directly. Sometimes it's not possible to track everyone down. It'd be better to invest that money into the society that was harmed than allow companies to profit from it. It's not just about compensation, but also giving an incentive to avoid or limit the harmful behavior. Crowdstrike's fuck up in 2024 cost the economy tens of billions. Do you think they paid that all back? Even the shareholders got screwed (https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/14/crowdstrike-defeats-sharehol...). It sure didn't take "a backdoor into every company" to figure out who was responsible for that.

The idea that companies should pay for the harms they cause isn't "socialist inspired" and doesn't require turning into "China" or the "USSR". It's something that any sane person would want. There are lots of ways to get that result. A Pigouvian tax is only one of them, better suited in some situations than others.

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