Originally Posted by Jim Gunther If this is what you've chosen to believe to help fuel the unwarranted hate you have for corporations you keep going with this, but I'd like to point out to others some flawed[..]umptions in your statement.
For 99% of corporations, attempting to "simply raise the cost of their products to pass all tax costs to their customers" would quickly result in relinquishing a critical portion of their market share to competition. "Moving to another jurisdiction" could potentially place the corporation under a less costly tax code, but the resulting disentegration of their customer base along with the HUGE costs of moving a corporation would almost guarantee a complete business failure. Penalties from moving could be reduced, but this would either require a corporation to abandon their company name (along with their name equity) or a complete and immediate shutdown of operations in the state they're moving from.
The only companies that have the brand loyalty and loose cash to possibly survive such an irresponsible decision (Apple, Google, etc) have such large headquarters that moving while avoiding liquidation or foreigner tax penalties (i.e. moving under the scenerios I previously stated) would result in epic facilitory abandonment that would raise all types of ethical flags and probably result in lawsuits. The other companies that could survive this are essentially monopolies and have their product prices fixed...and they barely pay taxes ever.
In this fantasy, how many times could a company jump jurisdictions? Wouldn't they eventually land in the bottom taxed area? It's just such a fictional, illogical and totally irresponsible opinion man. I understand the desire to rip "Big Companies" but be more informed. |
Wow, dude, reach much? Nothing that I said even slightly insinuated a disdain for corporations. And I wasn't even responding to what you said, I was responding to the article, hence the reason why I didn't quote you. I actually agree with you that corporate taxes shouldn't even exist, mainly for the reason I stated though--corporations don't pay taxes, their customers and shareholders do.
How many times could/have companies jumped jurisdictions? Literally THOUSANDS of the biggest corporations in this country have moved either their headquarters or entire divisions of their companies overseas and suffered almost zero backlash in terms of sales. Google and Apple, as you stated, have "offices--aka mailboxes" , but so do thousands of other sizable corporations. The result is, the earnings are those of foreign divisions of the company which are not subject to the U.S. taxcode. The problem with that though is that they build up billions of dollars in foreign currencies that they must subject to U.S. taxes if they choose to repatriate. Instead, they lobby year after year for a tax holiday and will usually get one after ten or so years of persistence.
And I'm going to keep it strictly taxes, I wont even talk about all the companies that have moved their labor overseas to avoid U.S. regulation and having to match social security, etc.
Top Companies Paid 9% U.S. Tax Rate On Average - YouTube 
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