Focus Fusion and Nuclear Proliferation

[alexjrgreen]

Please follow the hyperlink.

I did. You don't appear to have read it.

[MSimon]

Given a choice of jurisdictions, a multinational corporation can always successfully avoid most of its tax liability:

But they don't have such a choice. In the link it says (very correctly) that corporations also end up double taxed.

To tax them effectively would require a world government.

No, it just requires consistent accounting.

It's hard to be worried much about this when

a) Corporations are creatures of statute, and any state can do whatever it wants to them

b) Other countries are using monopsony purchasing power to force the U.S. to carry an unhealthy portion of the R&D that goes into medical innovation

Nothing to do with Polywell or FF, but true. In the EU, e.g., it is generally illegal to charge more for drugs than a small markup over production cost. That means there is no margin for researching and covering the cost of the many failed compounds for each successful one. So they allow the American pharmas to cover all of that. And that wellspring is drying up. There were about a score new drugs approved in the last year, vs. hundreds per year a couple of decades ago.

Golden geese don't produce well on starvation diets.

Even Marx knew socialism was for stasis. He said that if you need capital - capitalism is the way to go. It is always interesting to find out that socialists have less respect for capitalism than Marx did.

[alexjrgreen]

Given a choice of jurisdictions, a multinational corporation can always successfully avoid most of its tax liability:

But they don't have such a choice. In the link it says (very correctly) that corporations also end up double taxed.

They can almost always claim it back through double taxation arrangements. More important are the areas where they don't get taxed at all.

To tax them effectively would require a world government.

No, it just requires consistent accounting.

Worldwide, that's a rather scarce commodity...

It's to be worried much about this when

a) Corporations are creatures of statute, and any state can do whatever it wants to them

b) Other countries are using monopsony purchasing power to force the U.S. to carry an unhealthy portion of the R&D that goes into medical innovation

R&D is often tax-deductible in the US. That's why they incur the costs there...

[alexjrgreen]

Please explain again why it is wrong for corporations to organize themselves to minimize their tax burden?

Or to put it in an American context: why shouldn't corporations move from California to Texas (they are) to minimize their taxes?

BTW it seems that Texas is doing well in this downturn while California is in the tank.

Differing tax jurisdictions encourage governments to minimize taxes to keep the lower tax jurisdictions from capturing their corporations.

===

Currently the American income tax system is skewed so that high earners pay most of the taxes. High earners are having a bad year. So are the tax collectors.

I don't have a problem with low tax regimes - the Isle of Man, for example, has a zero corporate tax rate for space activities. Perhaps someone should tell Rick...

Nor do I have a problem with companies managing their affairs to be tax-efficient. I'd like them to be resource efficient, too.

The issue for public policy is that multinationals manage to pay between 8 and 14 percent tax when the going rate is 35 percent.

Revealed: how multinational companies avoid the taxman

The Hidden Entitlements

How Multinational Corporations Avoid Paying Their Taxes

I don't necessarily endorse these links - consider them illustrations of the general issue.

[MSimon]

Please explain again why it is wrong for corporations to organize themselves to minimize their tax burden?

Or to put it in an American context: why shouldn't corporations move from California to Texas (they are) to minimize their taxes?

BTW it seems that Texas is doing well in this downturn while California is in the tank.

Differing tax jurisdictions encourage governments to minimize taxes to keep the lower tax jurisdictions from capturing their corporations.

===

Currently the American income tax system is skewed so that high earners pay most of the taxes. High earners are having a bad year. So are the tax collectors.

I don't have a problem with low tax regimes - the Isle of Man, for example, has a zero corporate tax rate for space activities. Perhaps someone should tell Rick...

Nor do I have a problem with companies managing their affairs to be tax-efficient. I'd like them to be resource efficient, too.

The issue for public policy is that multinationals manage to pay between 8 and 14 percent tax when the going rate is 35 percent.

Revealed: how multinational companies avoid the taxman

The Hidden Entitlements

How Multinational Corporations Avoid Paying Their Taxes

I don't necessarily endorse these links - consider them illustrations of the general issue.

And that helps make them more successful and their products cheaper.

Because in the end it is the buyer who is paying the taxes if the seller is making money.

Does it give the multinationals unfair advantage? Yes. However, there are dis-economies of scale for a world wide logistics network. And some world wide logistics (think airlines and all the supporting industries) are required. The same for any planet wide distribution and support network.

If government was just a dead weight loss it would be bad. The bigger problem is that government is slowly strangling the goose laying the golden eggs.