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Increasingly, businesses don’t generate profits – they generate capital gains

82 点作者 deafcalculus将近 8 年前

11 条评论

mrmcd将近 8 年前
Unrealized capital gains aren&#x27;t income because I can&#x27;t pay my rent and buy groceries with Amazon stock. Even if I could once I did it would be realized same as if I sold it for cash, and I&#x27;d owe tax.<p>You could argue that capital gains rates are too low, but that&#x27;s a different argument than saying stock owners are getting &quot;invisible income&quot;.
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mikekij将近 8 年前
This article gets two big things wrong:<p>1) Amazon&#x27;s lack of profits appears to be due to reinvestment back into the business, not because the margins are non-existent. If the margins weren&#x27;t there, there would be no money to invest in R&amp;D.<p>2) The author never comments on the issue of double taxing corporate profits. Is it really the spirit of the tax code that $1 in profits earned by a business should really yield $0.48 to the federal government? The best way to address the author&#x27;s concern is to put the effective corporate tax rate (35% corp income + 20% dividend) more in line with capital gains rates.
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dboreham将近 8 年前
A principle well known to economists is that if you tax some activity, you are going to see less of that activity. This applies to business profits. Heck when I started my first business our newly engaged accountant told us &quot;whatever you do don&#x27;t make a profit&quot; (meaning pay any money mad to employees&#x2F;managers). Hardly a new or specific to Amazon concept.
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toyg将近 8 年前
I&#x27;m all for raising taxation, but I&#x27;ve always felt Amazon is often the wrong target to pick on. They are a rare example of an old-school business in the digital age - they pinch every penny and then reinvest all revenues in the business itself or send them out as personal compensation. They don&#x27;t stash billions in Bermuda accounts, they don&#x27;t give them to Wall Street players with the right connections, they don&#x27;t leverage their might to spike property prices, and so on. Amazon is what every big business could be if people at the top were a bit more concerned with actual efficiency and growth, and less with pure greed.<p>But: in their actual business practices, Amazon often squeeze the little guy - both their workers and their small-retail competitors - so they are easy to hate. They clearly display all the problems with cyberspace (who should be taxed where, when bits go up and down some fiber? Where is my data &quot;in the cloud&quot;? Etc etc), so they are at the nexus of a number of critiques, and rightly so. I personally don&#x27;t think, though, that their overall investment&#x2F;growth strategy should be attacked, because it&#x27;s actually <i>very good</i> from a social perspective.
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mgamache将近 8 年前
Avoiding double taxation? Evil!<p>How about removing the corporate income tax? <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;06&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;abolish-the-corporate-income-tax.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2014&#x2F;01&#x2F;06&#x2F;opinion&#x2F;abolish-the-corpo...</a>
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EADGBE将近 8 年前
&quot;Simple: don’t show any profits&quot; is a concept that&#x27;s been used forever to avoid paying taxes from the local handyman all the way to Amazon.<p>It isn&#x27;t evil, but just try and convince some people that.<p>Especially that handyman, who&#x27;s trying to avoid those estimated payments in a slow business part of the year.
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taxicabjesus将近 8 年前
Almost six years ago, before I took to taxi driving, I spent almost two months as a &quot;seasonal associate&quot; at an Amazon warehouse in Phoenix. It was such a relief to get laid off... In the warehouses, people are servants to the machine, and are entirely replaceable.<p>&quot;Humanity&#x27;s Second-Best Hope&quot; was based on my experiences at Amazon: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taxiwars.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;humanitys-second-best-hope.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.taxiwars.org&#x2F;p&#x2F;humanitys-second-best-hope.html</a>
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lazyjones将近 8 年前
Amazon&#x27;s net profits increased to $1.17b in 2016 and are likely to stay healthy. So the article is already a bit obsolete. It&#x27;s not like it isn&#x27;t onto something, but the ingenious scheme used by evil megacorporations isn&#x27;t just not posting a profit, but moving that profit to some tax haven to avoid taxation.
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anovikov将近 8 年前
Am i the only one so cynical that i don&#x27;t see how is this a problem for anyone?
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toddh将近 8 年前
Of course their unrealized gains are not included in income... that&#x27;s not what income is.<p>The online reason this works is because the tax code specifically preferences investment &amp; the gains thereon vs interest &amp; wages&#x2F;Self Employment income.<p>Wouldn&#x27;t that be an interesting discussion to see as part of tax reform...not holding my breath.
carsongross将近 8 年前
We get more of what we tax less?<p>Weird.