will fix this?

https://news.vice.com/article/us-companies-stashed-trillions-in-tax-havens-last-year

2 trillion dollars stashed abroad in tax havens, which would yield 620 billion in taxes if brought here.

Can the US enact legislation to stop this, or would it need cooperation with/legislation by the tax havens too?

10/6/2015 10:29:02 PM

Uhh, just cut the corporate tax rate.

10/6/2015 11:34:38 PM

Yeah, it wouldn't happen if we weren't literally the only first world country that tries to tax foreign profits and if we didn't also have one of the highest corporate tax rates. No other country punishes its corporations or citizens that way, it's insane that we still have as many multinationals operating here as we do.

Now, I know many will reply with the "but GE payed less in taxes last year than I did!!!!!!!!!11one" which while true, is a separate issue entirely.

10/7/2015 12:04:26 AM

I consider myself pretty progressive, but even I would be interested in simplifying and greatly reducing the corporate tax rate in the US. I think this is true for a lot of liberals (Some, certainly not all) and, of course, conservatives. There have been discussions in Congress, w/ the president, A GRAND BARGAIN, etc etc etc. But we lack so much leadership, both from politicians and from a majority of corporate America, that it just seems insurmountable. I really do believe that a grand bargain on corporate taxes is possible in our lifetime, but that is such a significantly long time, I think taxes should be tweaked on a 2xdecade basis, minimum.

To keep it close to revenue neutral I'd love to see a Carbon tax replace most of a corporate tax reduction. Imagine harnessing corporate America's slippery ability (and single-mindedness) of avoiding corporate taxes to instead avoid paying carbon taxes, and thus reduce carbon emissions (assuming a good, structured carbon tax). I'm not sure what trillions in a carbon tax translates to, but I gotta think its significant.

10/7/2015 7:32:10 PM

lowering tax rates alone isn't enough to reshore money, tax havens would still exist

10/8/2015 9:13:48 AM

^ now I know you will get pissed but that sounds similar to the gun control argument of "well less guns means that criminals will still have guns". Some corporate decisions that are on the edge of profitable would change if the rate went down and made them profitable.

10/8/2015 9:20:07 AM

you're missing the point. our rates are only a little higher that similar countries, we would have to drop them to basically nothing for that to be incentive alone. we should drop them some to be competitive to similar countries, but we can't compete with tax havens.

As long as it's profitable and legal to camp it somewhere else, why would you not?

10/8/2015 10:09:50 AM

to hell with that. We should just drop all corporate taxes and raise personal income taxes (or drop all income taxes, too, and replace it with a consumption tax of some sort). It's not like we aren't paying the corporation's taxes already anyway. At least this way, it'll be more obvious what the actual tax rates we're all paying are, as opposed to hiding it by shifting rates onto other entities and pretending they are different

10/10/2015 2:04:08 AM

You guys don't get it. It's all because of the corporations.

10/10/2015 3:13:59 AM

^^yep, bring that 2 trillion back instantly to create jobs

fairtax dot org

10/11/2015 6:36:20 PM

They just need to clear up the uncertainty. Either the profits get taxed or don't, it doesn't matter, it just needs to be clear what happens.

Once this is done corporations might start spending the money and with free trade this is good for everyone.

10/11/2015 8:20:03 PM

Again, if we just went to the same standard as the rest of the developed world this wouldn't be as much of an issue.

There will always be tax shelters, places like Luxembourg pretty much only exist because they're tax shelters, but if it wasn't so cost prohibitive most US based multinationals would bring most of their money back to the US.

10/12/2015 9:59:37 PM

Quote :

"Can the US enact legislation to stop this, or would it need cooperation with/legislation by the tax havens too?"

It would need cooperation unless you want to undermind their sovereignty/enact trade embargoes or restrictions.


Saw yesterday a BBC article that said Facebook paid about 4500 pounds in UK taxes in 2014.

10/14/2015 7:04:45 AM

Quote :

"Saw yesterday a BBC article that said Facebook paid about 4500 pounds in UK taxes in 2014."

Is there a reason they should pay more? Unless they employ people in the UK or have servers there, etc. it's hard to see why they should be paying much in UK taxes.

Facebook is a really bad example, they don't produce a physical product. Pretty much all of their revenue comes from advertisers so unless they're somehow circumventing UK laws to collect from their advertisers I'm not sure why they should pay a bunch of taxes.

10/14/2015 4:54:23 PM

The Tax Justice Network ranks the US 3rd in its Financial Secrecy Index (behind Switzerland and Hong Kong). In some ways, the US has tax laws that do exactly what we are accusing other countries of.

http://www.financialsecrecyindex.com/index.php/introduction/fsi-2015-results

11/2/2015 7:12:07 PM