[onlooker]

http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/07/ ... llars.html
Here is a story that epitomizes the irresponsible and corrupt nature of the business world in the US. Corporations never cease to amaze how low they can get.

[Cog]

Hmm nothing in the article suggesting that corporations are doing anything illegal here as the thread title implies. As a stockholder, I would expect a corporation to avoid paying any tax by using legal methods. Which is apparently what the corporations are doing.

A corporation is not a charity and is not designed for your taxing pleasure. It is designed to maximize profits for the stockholders. The OP can certainly set up his own corporation and give away to government as much money as he can. Tell me how that works out for you.

[onlooker]

Big Companies Pay about a Third of their Required State Taxes

. Is not this sentence quite clear. They avoid paying their required share of State taxes. Now just because they find loopholes in the system and are avoiding paying taxes in a quasi legal way does not make it right especially considering that Education is the foundation of a countries future. Your mention of stockholders is especially salient, as it demonstrates your bias towards the rich at the expense of the middle and low classes.

[Cog]

If the local governments believe there is illegality going on, then they are free to sue the corporations involved for tax avoidance. But as long as the corporations are staying within the law, I fail to see the problem. The governments involved wrote those various loopholes into the tax law that seem to enrage the OP. Your argument is with the politicians you put into office.

The OP is not alone in believing that corporations are some sort of bank at which they are free to withdraw money to fund their progressive schemes. Sorry, it simply doesn't work that way.

Your bias is you dislike rich people for some reason. Jealousy? Don't really know.

Start a charity or contribute to one if you want to help poor people. A for profit corporation has a fiduciary responsibility to the stock holders not to waste their profits paying taxes when they don't have to.

[Keith_McClary]

If the local governments believe there is illegality going on, then they are free to sue the corporations involved for tax avoidance. But as long as the corporations are staying within the law, I fail to see the problem. The governments involved wrote those various loopholes into the tax law that seem to enrage the OP.

Some of the loopholes are actually written by corporate lobbyists. The legislators often don't even read them.

[Tanada]

If the local governments believe there is illegality going on, then they are free to sue the corporations involved for tax avoidance. But as long as the corporations are staying within the law, I fail to see the problem. The governments involved wrote those various loopholes into the tax law that seem to enrage the OP.

Some of the loopholes are actually written by corporate lobbyists. The legislators often don't even read them.

True as far as it goes, but the legislators who vote in these loopholes get kickbacks campaign contributions from those same corporations.

[vtsnowedin]

A couple of things:
First school taxes are usually paid as property taxes and at somewhere around two percent of the value of the property. A corporation has to pay property taxes even if they are losing money that year on that property. That is a deductible expense that reduces profits and the amount of tax on profits.
Second school enrollments are going down nationwide and per pupil expenditures are going up not down in most states.
The problem is in the tax code and it is time for a complete rewrite of it.
And while we are rewriting it we need to take a hard look at all the Grubbers from K street that are writing sections of the new code and see who's ox is being gored by each section and which politicians have been bought off to vote for each loop hole.

[evilgenius]

There seems, actually, to be a bit of confusion here as to the purpose of a corporation. Like any business, they exist to provide goods or services in order to supply a perceived need or want. They are not in business to 'make money'. That's not so much a lie as a misconception.

As for the problem with taxes, what is the issue other than greed? There are two types of expenses that a business has to concern itself with along these lines, fees and taxes. Fees, being set at a certain price, are easily overcome in their gravity by the application of economies of scale. Taxes, seeing as how they are usually set as a percentage of profit, will not respond to economies of scale. Since economies of scale are the most useful tool for establishing market share against all comers public and private any business would like to believe that their investment in the creation of them might extend also toward such issues as taxes. To the extent that the public accepts tax relief for big corporations, like say tax cuts for Walmart or some big tech company to come to town, they are saying how much they agree that economies of scale somehow improve the social context enough to make it good in the balance to issue a reduction.

Tax breaks are always traceable to the people. Most of us blame politicians when we discover them. Few of us are willing to point the finger at our common fears, that ma and pa hardware isn't really as good as Walmart or that our community doesn't have a genius working in his garage that can provide me with that same level of quality as the mass produced product at anywhere near the MSRP I can look up readily. The trouble begins when ma and pa hardware can, or there really is a genius. Then, those tax breaks may prevent such local talent from succeeding. Nationally, they may create barriers to entry into a business which are too onerous for start ups or smaller firms to overcome.

Eventually a business that is protected from competition by courting tax breaks may find itself suddenly unable to compete, in much the same way that many businesses cannot survive sea changes to their business models, because the competition has all along been working like bacteria to overcome the advantages that the big corporation relies upon. When this happens the public often finds that, in the face of such promising new alternatives, they are not so afraid anymore.

If you want Google to pay taxes, then you have to address the public's fear that they will have to go back to using Alta Vista. If you want Apple to pay taxes, then you have to address the public's fear that they will see the same cell phone in the hands of everyone else as they see in their own(that they won't feel special because of their own selection).

[Cog]

I wonder where Evil genius got his MBA. A corporation provides goods and services to obtain a profit. I pray to God you never tried to run a business.

[evilgenius]

I wonder where Evil genius got his MBA. A corporation provides goods and services to obtain a profit. I pray to God you never tried to run a business.

Actually, that is as false an assumption as Marx's Labor Theory of Value, and almost for the same reasons.

[Outcast_Searcher]

Big Companies Pay about a Third of their Required State Taxes

. Is not this sentence quite clear. They avoid paying their required share of State taxes. Now just because they find loopholes in the system and are avoiding paying taxes in a quasi legal way does not make it right especially considering that Education is the foundation of a countries future. Your mention of stockholders is especially salient, as it demonstrates your bias towards the rich at the expense of the middle and low classes.

You are showing your bias by calling what is legal illegal (i.e. you're lying).

So which is worse, lying because you don't get your way, or legally avoiding taxes (which almost everyone does by something called (legal) deductions, by the way).

Just because the word "required" is used, the point about legality doesn't change.

Do you want YOUR state taxes to triple to pay for more education? Why don't you just donate money to institutions which help fund and improve education? Why aren't you for more efficiency in public education? (Like the teacher's unions which the Democrats support so strongly (for votes, of course). Funny how you bemoan legal tax avoidance but ignore many other options.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I wonder where Evil genius got his MBA. A corporation provides goods and services to obtain a profit. I pray to God you never tried to run a business.

Actually, that is as false an assumption as Marx's Labor Theory of Value, and almost for the same reasons.

So in your world, businesses exist to provide a good or service, not to make a profit? Would you care to substantiate that? (Would you PAY someone to work a job for them, just because you want to provide a good or service? Hint: Not unless you are independently wealthy and want to do charity work).

In my world, profitable businesses grow, and unprofitable ones die or become profitable by changing.

[Lore]

I guess you never heard of NPOs?

[evilgenius]

I wonder where Evil genius got his MBA. A corporation provides goods and services to obtain a profit. I pray to God you never tried to run a business.

Actually, that is as false an assumption as Marx's Labor Theory of Value, and almost for the same reasons.

So in your world, businesses exist to provide a good or service, not to make a profit? Would you care to substantiate that? (Would you PAY someone to work a job for them, just because you want to provide a good or service? Hint: Not unless you are independently wealthy and want to do charity work).

In my world, profitable businesses grow, and unprofitable ones die or become profitable by changing.

You are making the mistake of treating this like quantum physics, where it isn't possible to observe two characteristics as related as profit and demand at the same time. Why do businesses become unprofitable anyway? Or maybe this is like quantum physics after all, wherein if you focus solely upon profit you lose sight of demand? It's easy to look upon demand as unlimited, just like it's easy to look upon natural resources as unlimited, and then upon our efforts to meet it as only some small part of the puzzle, where we can charge as we like because we only see our niche. Profit must be kept in check, according to whatever business type you are, in order for the concept of the going concern to reign. Otherwise, you risk running out of demand. From there is only the peril of the reality of your customers, that you offer only diminishing marginal utility.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I guess you never heard of NPOs?

NPO's are all about legally avoiding taxes (and sometimes illegally).

NPO's want to legally avoid taxes in order to benefit their owners and people with a vested interest in them (like beneficiaries, members, etc) with as much money (their PROFIT -- whether it's called that or not) as possible.

So NPO's aren't fundamentally different than for-profit corporations in wanting to maximize their income (profit). The difference is that politically (both in terms of policy favors and in terms of perception) they get a pass.

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/n844.pdf

Examples:

1). Churches avoid paying taxes, and often pay a huge proportion of their profits (from the collection plate) in terms of salaries and non-salary benefits like nice houses and other amenities to the people that run them. So it's not "profit", but it's maximizing income by legal tax avoidance. Something the left would despise in a for-profit corporation. (And something many of the church members often despise themselves, when it is abused).

2). Pick any from a large group of 501(c)(3) charitable organizations. There are all kinds of games, from hiring outfits which telemarket and take a HUGE proportion of checks received, and taking their cut of course -- to hiding income from events run under the organization's mantle for the (illegal tax sheltering) benefit of those who run it. (My state's chess organization comes to mind. )

http://www.irs.gov/Charities-&-Non-Prof ... tion-501(c)(3)-Organizations

I guess you never thought about the real nature of NPO's in a balanced way? Were you assuming all NPO's were totally in it for charity with NO benefit in mind to the NPO or the people who run it?

[Lore]

You're confusing legal NPOs and Charities. Different classifications.

A nonprofit organization (NPO, also known as a non-business entity) is an organization that uses its surplus revenues to further achieve its purpose or mission, rather than distributing its surplus income to the organization's directors (or equivalents) as profit or dividends.

[Outcast_Searcher]

I wonder where Evil genius got his MBA. A corporation provides goods and services to obtain a profit. I pray to God you never tried to run a business.

Actually, that is as false an assumption as Marx's Labor Theory of Value, and almost for the same reasons.

So in your world, businesses exist to provide a good or service, not to make a profit? Would you care to substantiate that? (Would you PAY someone to work a job for them, just because you want to provide a good or service? Hint: Not unless you are independently wealthy and want to do charity work).

In my world, profitable businesses grow, and unprofitable ones die or become profitable by changing.

You are making the mistake of treating this like quantum physics, where it isn't possible to observe two characteristics as related as profit and demand at the same time. Why do businesses become unprofitable anyway? Or maybe this is like quantum physics after all, wherein if you focus solely upon profit you lose sight of demand? It's easy to look upon demand as unlimited, just like it's easy to look upon natural resources as unlimited, and then upon our efforts to meet it as only some small part of the puzzle, where we can charge as we like because we only see our niche. Profit must be kept in check, according to whatever business type you are, in order for the concept of the going concern to reign. Otherwise, you risk running out of demand. From there is only the peril of the reality of your customers, that you offer only diminishing marginal utility.

In the business world, there is this thing called competition. Over time, that constrains profits (i.e. keeps them "in check", to use your words. Funny how the left hates profits so much, yet LOVES taxing them all they can).

1). I never said anything about unlimited profit.

2). I never said anything about unlimited demand.

3). Quantum physics has no place in this discussion, and you seem indecisive about that anyway.

4). Why all the straw men? Because you don't have a meaningful argument? All I said is that businesses primarily exist to make a profit. Just because, as you imply, you don't like profits -- that doesn't change the reality.

5). Finally, shifting of supply and demand curves and all the micro-economics 101 terms you care to throw out like "marginal utility" (yeah, I had micro-econ in college) have NO bearing on the fundamental point about businesses existing to make profits.

[onlooker]

Nothing wrong with making profit but just pay your fair share upon that profit.

[Tanada]

Nothing wrong with making profit but just pay your fair share upon that profit.

The problem as always is, whose definition of Fair do we use? I guarantee your stance differs from mine and both differ from the major stockholder's of GM or Exxon Mobile.

[Cog]

Nothing wrong with making profit but just pay your fair share upon that profit.

And whom, might I ask defines what is a fair profit? Is it the same for a 100 employee company or a 400,000 employee company?

Its been a while since I took my business courses in college but I have worked in senior management for a sole proprietorship, a LLC and a C Corp.

Now I don't know if you are a barista at Star Bucks, on SSDI, or simply live in your mother's basement but I can dumb down the explanation of the purpose of a corporation as far down as I need to.

I am here to help.