Six months in a welfare state - Reflections on Higher Taxes | Hacker News Reader

Six months in a welfare state - Reflections on Higher Taxes

mohit.me

3 pointsnegamax4 comments

Ireland may have high personal TAX's like a very high VAT level etc, on the other hand the company TAX aspect is rather enticing for many large companies and with that it is very much a case of robbing people to pay companies to pay people. So in effect Ireland is a bit unbalanced and sadly it will take a while to get that balance back.

Yes you can blame the goverment, if say people had no TAX and companies had a silly high TAX would the people speak up for the companies, nope and who would blame them. Now companies in Ireland will just brow beat goverments into keeping things sweet with them TAX wise or they will go emo and pull out the country/cut jobs.

As for goverment staff working to rule, well they don't get performance pay rises, many don't even get pay rises these days and in effect getting pay cuts every day the cost of food and other indirect TAX's go up. Customer service wise they are not paid enough to care and have no motivation to engage that avenue. You do get the good one, usualy new to the job and still not had the life sucked out of them, sad is it not.

So in short yes you can stick it too the man but in effect your only sticking it to yourself and the only winners will be the share holders, who are innocent money investors who don't even know you and may well be part of your pension, if you have a private one.

Company TAX is a fine balance, Russia lower there high TAX rate and got more income from it, Ireland lowered there's way too low and inticed many companies to setup there and now they are somewhat peer preasured by the monster they created into not doing any changes fast and drastic.

Still perk there is plenty of cheap housing that with the lifetime of a mortgage the World population will do it's best in increasing and with that drive up the costs even more.

I like to consider a low corporate tax, maybe even 0, but taxes on all types of income. If the corporate profits are in the corporation, then it is just a collection of people, but when the money comes out of the corporation (to a CEO or other shareholders) it can be taxed appropriately. And no preferential treatment for capital gains or carried interest.

A interesting and maybe workable approach, though I do see the flaw in that companies can sometimes just hold onto the money and let it build up at which point it is not being taxed until that hold up stops. Bit like a beaver building a dam it stems the flow and in this case impacts the currency itself. You alsohaveto ring fence moneys earned in countries better as currently the ability to have all sales routed via one country and released the bulk of the money via those countries. This is easier in the internet times as you can sell and operate anywere in the World. Google sell from Ireland to the UK and with that for the UK economey it is leaking money out of the UK system.

But the real crux is just look at Ireland, they have a realy low company TAX rate and if that was even lower Ireland would still be cash poor and that money is not filtering into teh Irish economy. Money is like a river and companies are upstream and can divert and dam up area's and vary there impact upon supply to the stage that the people downstream can have droughts like they are now in Ireland.

So most countries count housing values to prope up the books moraly and thats fine until there is a crash and then the impact upon the country is beyond those individuals who own the various impacted homes. With that housing in Ireland is not cheap, its just a saner price having been overpriced. Large corporations still in Ireland, still making money, real impact is the sudden drop of the entire construction industry and knock on effect which dominoes.

Still I always find it funny how companies can find TAX loopholes in a game run by the goverment who also write the rules for the game and can change those rules at any time as well. Yet the goverment still loose, kinda messed up right there I'd say and does back up how ineffecient goverments are. Heck if you worked in goverment and had your upper managment changed every time you just about got used to the last lot and you pay the price for there mistakes and in effect seagull managment mentality. Well hard to see how it truely does work beyond being a juggerling act defering things for the next person to step into the role of goverment.

I am not sure if low tax rates cause them not to spend. I do see how corporations could accumalate a lot of cash and power though.

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