Corporate Income Taxes Should be Regressive

[The Kin]

How about a regressive income tax for corporations? A highly profitable company would have a low tax rate. An inefficient company on the other hand, should have a much higher tax rate. Maybe even a hefty tax of lets say 1/5th of a quarterly loss.

Discuss.

 

[wareco]

That ridiculous statement is not even worthy of a discussion.

 

[The Kin]

You prefer a progressive tax system i.e. government subsidization of inefficiency?

 

[wareco]

No, I prefer a flat tax.

 

[The Kin]

I prefer a flat tax on personal income. However I believe corporations should be encouraged to make a profit and run their operation as efficiently as possible, and a regressive income tax would be one tool which may accomplish that.

 

[Epiphany]

Bye bye to all the small businesses

 

[The Kin]

Small businesses = inefficient?
Large businesses = efficient?

In that case GM and F should be super efficient since they're huge...

The fact is the Law of Large Numbers will favor smaller companies as it will become increasing difficult for large corporations to continue high constant growth rates.

 

[futures_shark]

Businesses are already encouraged to run efficiently, it's called competition. Inefficient businesses slowly lose market share until they either change their ways or go out of business.

If you want to talk about efficiency, taxing corporate income at all is inefficient. Corporate income is taxed and then dividends paid to shareholders are taxed again. That's one source of income being taxed twice. That's just plain wrong.

 

[The Kin]

Quote from futures_shark:

Businesses are already encouraged to run efficiently, it's called competition. Inefficient businesses slowly lose market share until they either change their ways or go out of business.

If you want to talk about efficiency, taxing corporate income at all is inefficient. Corporate income is taxed and then dividends paid to shareholders are taxed again. That's one source of income being taxed twice. That's just plain wrong.

Vaild point. Can the country still operate without corporate income taxes though? It would be $400 billion less in revenues for the government.

 

[Arnie]

I actually think a progressive income tax is fair. But I think a rate of 20%-25% for the highest income bracket is the upper limit. One trend I see more and more is to exclude the lowest income earners from ANY tax at all, and in some cases to actually give money back. I think this is wrong for two reasons. #1 It sends the message that a tax is a punishment, which it isn't, it's an obligation. We should all share a proportionate cost of running the government. #2 By excluding a large portion of workers, those workers are now in a position to vote for tax policy that would directly favor them at the expense of others. That's just plain wrong

I do however favor a complete repeal of all capital gains tax, both short or long term. I garantee you, if congress did that they would have more money than they could spend, at least for a day