Taxing high corporate profits

I read this comment on youtube about how corporations are taking really high profits and that if we heavily taxed it we could pay off the deficit. I know that most people here want lower taxes but how would i counter this argument that if we heavily tax the 1.75 trillion dollar profits we could pay off the deficit. Here is what he said:

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That's the stupidest statement I've heard in a while. If you kill every millionaire you eliminate over 50% of the tax revenue. Plus total corporate profits so far this year is $1.75 trillion. With 100% corporation tax that would eliminate the entire deficit and bring about a surplus of around $700 billion just from 1 years profits.

I'll suggest a better scenario. If the Bush tax cuts expired on the rich and military spending was eliminated the budget would be balanced.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-N19...eature=g-all-c

By the way I'm not the guy in the video who is replying to him.

Trying to control the "out of control" corporations in the country through taxation is insane. The loopholes are written before the taxes are passed.

We need to move the entire corporate structure back to the states to manage removing the federalist protection racket. You move the corporations back to what they were originally suppose to be prior to the corrupted Supreme Court judges decisions starting around the late 1800’s. This was about the time when they started supporting the notion corporations a "natural person" and endowed them with the Bill of Rights like a citizen. This enabled corporations to exploit with devastating consequences, the same "rights" of the freedom of speech, and the ability to participate in elections and lobby elected officials.

Here is what a corporation was prior to those decisions:

Corporations had limited duration, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years -- they were not given forever, like corporate charters are given today.
There were no limitations protections on liability -- managers, directors, and shareholders were liable for all debts and harms and in some states, doubly or triply liable.
The corporation had to be chartered for a specific purpose -- not for everything, or anything on the planet.
The states reserved the right to amend the charters, or to revoke them -- even for no reason at all.
Corporations were supposed to help the states and if they interfered with small businesses their charters were removed.
The amount of land a corporation could own was limited.
The amount of capitalization a corporation could have was limited.
The internal governance was very different -- shareholders had a lot more rights than they have today, for major decisions such as mergers; sometimes they had to have unanimous shareholder consent.

This is why the founders wanted a totally decentralized government so the crooks had to deal with hundreds or thousands of individual state, county and city governments to pull off this crap. Decentralization is the key to corporate control and moving the structure back to tens of thousands of smaller business's.

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Originally Posted by adams101

Trying to control the "out of control" corporations in the country through taxation is insane. The loopholes are written before the taxes are passed.

We need to move the entire corporate structure back to the states to manage removing the federalist protection racket. You move the corporations back to what they were originally suppose to be prior to the corrupted Supreme Court judges decisions starting around the late 1800’s. This was about the time when they started supporting the notion corporations a "natural person" and endowed them with the Bill of Rights like a citizen. This enabled corporations to exploit with devastating consequences, the same "rights" of the freedom of speech, and the ability to participate in elections and lobby elected officials.

Here is what a corporation was prior to those decisions:

Corporations had limited duration, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years -- they were not given forever, like corporate charters are given today.
There were no limitations protections on liability -- managers, directors, and shareholders were liable for all debts and harms and in some states, doubly or triply liable.
The corporation had to be chartered for a specific purpose -- not for everything, or anything on the planet.
The states reserved the right to amend the charters, or to revoke them -- even for no reason at all.
Corporations were supposed to help the states and if they interfered with small businesses their charters were removed.
The amount of land a corporation could own was limited.
The amount of capitalization a corporation could have was limited.
The internal governance was very different -- shareholders had a lot more rights than they have today, for major decisions such as mergers; sometimes they had to have unanimous shareholder consent.

This is why the founders wanted a totally decentralized government so the crooks had to deal with hundreds or thousands of individual state, county and city governments to pull off this crap. Decentralization is the key to corporate control and moving the structure back to tens of thousands of smaller business's.

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Where did you get this information from? Sounds interesting to read.

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Originally Posted by RPfan1992

I read this comment on youtube about how corporations are taking really high profits and that if we heavily taxed it we could pay off the deficit. I know that most people here want lower taxes but how would i counter this argument that if we heavily tax the 1.75 trillion dollar profits we could pay off the deficit. Here is what he said:








http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-N19...eature=g-all-c

By the way I'm not the guy in the video who is replying to him.

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Is this a serious question?

If you start (or have) a corporation.... And the government takes 100% of your profits, what point is there to have or start a corporation to begin with?

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Originally Posted by RPfan1992

Where did you get this information from? Sounds interesting to read.

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Here is the original article I found:http: http://reclaimdemocracy.org/corporat...rporations-us/

Here is some other good reading actually more in depth.

http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08...-1600-to-2100/

http://www.ratical.org/corporations/
http://prorev.com/corpsandus.htm

Corporations don't pay taxes. Employees, consumers and shareholders/stakeholders do.

Each corporation subject to the tax would move out of the US to avoid it if they couldn't dodge it with a loophole.

That's the plain truth.

The corporations would simply lobby the politicians for the loopholes. They would be passed burried inside a 600 page non-related bill that nobody would read.

As a matter of fact the corporations would literally write the legislation. As we saw in the 2008 meltdown, the politicians have been reduced to "presenters". We have not had a non-lobby written bill in decades.

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Originally Posted by John F Kennedy III

Each corporation subject to the tax would move out of the US to avoid it if they couldn't dodge it with a loophole.

That's the plain truth.

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In most industries I do agree this applies. What you tax you get less of, so why would we heavily tax our manufacturers? I do think however there are historical "windfall" industries that profit off of "common wealth"; tax payer subsidized oil being the prime example. Big Oil turned 200B last year in profit on US interests. Do you really think someone wouldn't be willing to pump the same oil for 10B profit? Do you think they'd stop pumping if Uncle Sam quit subsidizing them tomorrow?


Venezuela levies 50% tax on the oil industry, quota's oil profits to be used on national social programs, yet its 5th in global production, and its production levels are soaring.


I'm a believer that windfall industries that profit off the common wealth are fair game for heavy taxation after initial ROI. When you buy the mineral rights for 400 acres and drop a wellhead down to pull from a pool of oil extending 300,000 acres underground... you're pulling from the common... and profits should benefit the common. Other industries enjoy high profits BECAUSE of government backed monopolies on patents... pharmecuticals being a great example. In that case I wouldn't push for higher taxation I would push for a free market after ROI so competitors could bring price and profit down out of "windfall" mode.

I see no problem with "progressive taxation" of profits in "windfall commonwealth" industries after initial substantiated ROI. To that list I would add:

Oil
Pharmecuticals and Healthcare
Banking
DOD Contracts


I'm sure there are more I could come up with.

call me a leftist...

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Originally Posted by presence

Venezuela levies 50% tax on the oil industry, quota's oil profits to be used on national social programs, yet its 5th in global production, and its production levels are soaring.


I'm a believer that windfall industries that profit off the common wealth are fair game for heavy taxation after initial ROI. When you buy the mineral rights for 400 acres and drop a wellhead down to pull from a pool of oil extending 300,000 acres underground... you're pulling from the common... and profits should benefit the common. Other industries enjoy high profits BECAUSE of government backed monopolies on patents... pharmecuticals being a great example. In that case I wouldn't push for higher taxation I would push for a free market after ROI so competitors could bring price and profit down out of "windfall" mode.

I see no problem with "progressive taxation" of profits in "windfall commonwealth" industries after initial substantiated ROI. To that list I would add:

Oil
Pharmecuticals and Healthcare
Banking
DOD Contracts


I'm sure there are more I could come up with.

call me a leftist...

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Interesting point of view. It brings up some challenges to me. Some challenges with it are oil production is a very poor example. Since the oil is drawn from a fixed place inside the country it cannot "move" to a place with a better ROI. It is subject to whatever taxation or extortion the corrupt politicians, dictators or "mob" want from it. It is based on no more logic than what the ruler or mob wants at the time.

You fail to realize with pharmaceuticals/Healthcare and DOD taxation is simply a cost of doing business that is passed on to the consumer. They will simply raise the cost of the products/services to compensate for the taxation. The same is true with all commodities.

The only people benefitting from this type of system are the 49% US dependents who don't pay federal income taxes and financially take more out than they put in every year. They don't pay for defense and they don't pay for most, if not all, their pharmaceuticals or healthcare costs etc. Since they don't actually pay for any of those products they could care less.

So who actually gets stuck paying the additional progressive taxation on a corporation? THE TAXPAYERS through consumption. The dependents are dancing in the street because they just used the corporations to extort MORE money from the taxpayers to support more unconstitutional social programs. The corporations simply passed on the taxes. You can't stop this from happening given the current corporate and citizen entitlement structure upheld by this Federal Government.

This type of progressive taxation is the heart of the Communist Manifesto. It smells of a crude form of "mob rule" as an angry mob exploiting anything it can to raise its own standard of living while putting forth zero extra effort. It is always time to tax more because the mob ALWAYS "needs" more. The dependents grow and the "mules" decline until it collapses.

The key is to dissect and completely decentralize the corporate structure AND GOVERNMENT. Bust it up into thousands of small highly competitive companies and highly constrain any corporate growth. Stop all forms of financial lobbying. Move all the spending/taxation back to the states and communities decentralizing the government. At that point you have something to work with. Until then just sit back and watch the circus of corruption and mob rule.