Predisent Donald J. Trump: James Comey and the Giant Peach Part II: The Ripening

[Zetanio]

Just when you think he couldn't be more retarded.

[Salodin]

Idk, Gorsuch said he really doesn't like when people diss the judicial system. I don't see how his boy is gonna help see him through this one.

[Fiye]

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525683...rumps-tax-plan

Oooooh boy. This is gonna be fun to see.

[Ratatapa]

Feels scary that Trump says 1 thing on Monday then Tuesday he changes idea

After Canada'S milk it's now the wood

[Kaslo]

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525683...rumps-tax-plan

Oooooh boy. This is gonna be fun to see.

[Ragnus]

http://www.npr.org/2017/04/26/525683...rumps-tax-plan

Oooooh boy. This is gonna be fun to see.

"—Trump himself stands to gain tens of millions: This plan would be a windfall for Trump. He pays taxes for his businesses through the income tax code, so his plan would slash his own tax liability potentially in half, saving himself tens of millions of dollars."

That's all that needs to be pointed out in this article. Dude is looking to cash out as much as possible from his position before either quitting or not running again.

I have to admit that the comment about being able to fit your taxes on a large postcard certainly sounds good. Especially when you seemingly need a PhD or tax software to even be able to come close to doing it yourself.

[Byrthnoth]

I don't see any movement on the estate tax, which is where his family really stands to gain. I wonder if he's leaving that for a later tax plan.

[tyven]

I have to admit that the comment about being able to fit your taxes on a large postcard certainly sounds good. Especially when you seemingly need a PhD or tax software to even be able to come close to doing it yourself.

A lot of this is thanks to HR Block and tax software companies who actively lobby to keep it confusing as fuck so they don't go out of business.

[kuronosan]

OH BOY I CAN'T WAIT FOR TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS TO FINALLY WORK THIS TIME!

[TsingTao]

OH BOY I CAN'T WAIT FOR TRICKLE DOWN ECONOMICS TO FINALLY WORK THIS TIME!

I know, right? I'm sure those job creators will create so many jobs this time. America will truly be great again.

[chazzyphizzle]

i know that i want to buy more goods when i know the companies will pay less taxes on my money

[Xajii]

It's a bit reductive to discuss the corporate tax reduction as trickle-down economics, don't you think? The money isn't coming out of your pockets to support the corporations. The entire argument is that the prohibitive tax rate actually reduces our nation's ability to collect taxes from revenue generated by US businesses, because they establish presence abroad and pay more reasonable rates to other nations even though all of that money would otherwise be here. When your corporate tax rate is one of the - definitely not the only, but probably the biggest - reasons that some of your country's biggest corporations are moving jobs overseas, you lose money at an exponential rate because you're losing jobs and taxable income of those potential workers as well as the property and income taxes of the corps themselves...

I just don't see how you can look at what companies like Apple have done in the past decade and not consider reassessing your corporate tax rate. They've been very outspoken about this being the driving factor for them, and you can villify corporations all you want, but as long as they continue to be our nation's economic drivers, you're only hurting yourself by reducing legitimate potential solutions to buzzwords devoid of context.

We can and should question the actual rate of reduction and the use of a flat rate at all, but I can't help but cringe when people shout "trickle down" about this

[Fiye]

Yeah but 15%?

[kuronosan]

It's a bit reductive to discuss the corporate tax reduction as trickle-down economics, don't you think? The money isn't coming out of your pockets to support the corporations. The entire argument is that the prohibitive tax rate actually reduces our nation's ability to collect taxes from revenue generated by US businesses, because they establish presence abroad and pay more reasonable rates to other nations even though all of that money would otherwise be here. When your corporate tax rate is one of the - definitely not the only, but probably the biggest - reasons that some of your country's biggest corporations are moving jobs overseas, you lose money at an exponential rate because you're losing jobs and taxable income of those potential workers as well as the property and income taxes of the corps themselves...

I just don't see how you can look at what companies like Apple have done in the past decade and not consider reassessing your corporate tax rate. They've been very outspoken about this being the driving factor for them, and you can villify corporations all you want, but as long as they continue to be our nation's economic drivers, you're only hurting yourself by reducing legitimate potential solutions to buzzwords devoid of context.

We can and should question the actual rate of reduction and the use of a flat rate at all, but I can't help but cringe when people shout "trickle down" about this

So please elucidate for me how this is not a revisiting of Reagan's "tax cuts" that have proven to be a colossal failure?

Cringe all you want. It doesn't make it any less true, unless you can offer up a reasonable explanation.

[chazzyphizzle]

cutting taxes on corps is something that should be considered and looked at, but them claiming the tax cuts will pay for themselves by spontaneously causing 5% growth is pretty disingenuous and makes no sense

[Salodin]

It's a bit reductive to discuss the corporate tax reduction as trickle-down economics, don't you think? The money isn't coming out of your pockets to support the corporations. The entire argument is that the prohibitive tax rate actually reduces our nation's ability to collect taxes from revenue generated by US businesses, because they establish presence abroad and pay more reasonable rates to other nations even though all of that money would otherwise be here. When your corporate tax rate is one of the - definitely not the only, but probably the biggest - reasons that some of your country's biggest corporations are moving jobs overseas, you lose money at an exponential rate because you're losing jobs and taxable income of those potential workers as well as the property and income taxes of the corps themselves...

I just don't see how you can look at what companies like Apple have done in the past decade and not consider reassessing your corporate tax rate. They've been very outspoken about this being the driving factor for them, and you can villify corporations all you want, but as long as they continue to be our nation's economic drivers, you're only hurting yourself by reducing legitimate potential solutions to buzzwords devoid of context.

We can and should question the actual rate of reduction and the use of a flat rate at all, but I can't help but cringe when people shout "trickle down" about this

Ok, and? What incentive is there to bring the money back to the States when you already have the infrastructure overseas and are paying even less on it there then you would back in the states with a new code. Still don't see how any of this benefits anyone other than the wealthiest.

[Xajii]

I'll expand upon this topic then. Some data to start with.

1. USA has the highest corporate tax rate in the world. This is not on its face a problem - we have the most profitable corporations in the world, too. However, this will be worth noting for later content in this post.
2. US companies have approx. $2.5 trillion in cash overseas.
3. This figure is a marked growth over the past 2 years (approx 20%) and equates to roughly 15% of our entire GDP.
4. The most recent data point I can find suggests that current corporate tax revenues equate to roughly 1.3% of our entire GDP.

Why corporate tax rate should be a focus

15% of our GDP isn't even in our economy but we're patting ourselves on the back for getting < 2% of it with the current system. This is a colossal issue. There are some industries where this is an unfortunate reality due to a host of converging factors (mainly labor and environmental regulations relative to other nations'), but there is really very little excuse as to why nearly half of Apple employees are hanging out in Ireland et al. working office jobs and putting money into other countries' economies besides the fact that we tax them out the ass to do so here.

A brief recent history of attempting to tackle this issue

Repatriation Tax Holiday, AKA Bush 2 admin tries the simple way and sort of succeeds but also fails: The 2004 repatriation tax holiday is a good proof point as to why a cut alone will probably not suffice. Companies that benefited the most ended up cutting 20,000+ net jobs and pocketing profits along with shareholders. This went awry for a few reasons - 1. blanket application of a flat rate disproportionately benefited a few industries while having virtual no or net negative impact on others; 2. there was no mechanism to require or incentivize the actual "jobs creation" the act branded itself around; 3. advertising it as a one-time holiday actually disincentivized companies from bringing all profits in, and convinced them it was safer to keep a sizable amount overseas, because they wouldn't have the ability to repatriate it at any later date, so what good is it going to do over there when I'm gonna have to keep running business abroad. That being said, there is a bit of a misconception among some of the analysts here that to have this money pocketed by rich people and to have it not lead to more jobs is an abject failure. Even if the money came back into what we feel is the wrong hands, it's still back in the US economy, and it's still being taxed again. I think the main flaw in this methodology was that it was a one-time tax holiday with a lot of weird threats around it, that it applied a ridiculously low flat rate, and that it lacked mechanisms that incentivize job growth in particular (again, despite its name...)

Transition tax, aka Barack Obama had some ideas about getting this money back too but it probably will never happen: As most agree that tax reform would include some form of taxation on foreign profits, the Obama admin floated the concept of a one-time compulsory transition tax on existing foreign profits at 14% that would coincide with the reform. This never made it into the budget, of course, but idea was to recoup funds we've been screwed out of and invest in infrastructure or just lowering the deficit in general. This is vehemently opposed by most industry.

What I personally think should probably happen

I think a proportional tax system with lower overall rates should probably be put in place for corporations, but I think it absolutely has to come in the same step as a tax on foreign profit, with or without (and preferably with) a one-time compulsory transition tax. Going full hog in either direction is going to lead to abject failure, either in trying to get the damn reform passed or in ever recovering enough money to offset rate reductions (if you ONLY did the rate cut).

This is an annoying balancing act but if implemented soundly it could tip the scales enough for our major players to bring some jobs back here. If the people who are way smarter than me go through this whole process and find that there is no corporate tax rate reduction that would work in tandem with foreign profit taxes to make it a smarter decision for our businesses to bring some work back here, then fine. But you can't tell me this isn't worth looking into and that it might not be one of our only pathways to repatriation.
It would be nice to see some mechanism for regulating the use of repatriated funds to stimulate job growth, but it's hard to see a Constitutional path to doing so. Again, I question how much this matters; the money would be coming back and being taxed regardless. It's just not analogous to the insane Reagan cuts that included flat cuts on individuals and took place before the outsourcing crisis really hit its apex anyways. Reagan's policies lined people's pockets with money that was previously going to the government, but Reagan didn't see his country stashing 15% of its GDP overseas, so it's really just not in the same conversation here.

Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/b...y/03rates.html
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/09/20/us-co...-overseas.html
http://www.epi.org/publication/ib364...onomic-growth/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001...23771022129888
http://www.taxhistory.org/www/featur...5?OpenDocument
http://ctj.org/ctjreports/2016/02/te...p#.WQDayNy1uUk

[Andalusian girls]

wow for once i didn't have to make that post

but basically if you don't think the marginal corporate tax rate should be cut you're economically illiterate. Sweden did it, Denmark did it, Canada did it, Obama wanted to do it, it's not ideological, it's not 'trickle down', it is simply recognizing corporate tax is in general the worst possible way of raising revenue and our system does it in the worst possible manner.

[Salodin]

Didn't they do it with some social guarantees in the background to help out the rest of the citizens? Cause as far as I see it, we're just trying to ram this through with no lube on.

[archibaldcrane]

I'm really stoked to pay only 15% taxes on my S-Corp pass through income you guys

my body is ready