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posted by n1 on Wednesday September 17 2014, @12:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the plan-for-world-peace-to-follow dept.

Reuters reports that plans for a major rewriting of international tax rules have been unveiled by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) that could eliminate structures that have allowed companies like Google and Amazon to shave billions of dollars off their tax bills. For more than 50 years, the OECD’s work on international taxation has been focused on ensuring companies are not taxed twice on the same profits hampering trade and limit global growth. But companies have been using such treaties to ensure profits are not taxed anywhere. A Reuters investigation last year found that three quarters of the 50 biggest U.S. technology companies channelled revenues from European sales into low tax jurisdictions like Ireland and Switzerland, rather than reporting them nationally. For example, search giant Google takes advantage of tax treaties to channel more than $8 billion in untaxed profits out of Europe and Asia each year and into a subsidiary that is tax resident in Bermuda, which has no income tax. “We are putting an end to double non-taxation,” says OECD head of tax Pascal Saint-Amans.

For the recommendations to actually become binding countries will have to encode them in their domestic laws or amend their bilateral tax treaties. The OECD says that it plans to hold an international conference on amending the network of existing tax treaties. Sol Picciotto, an emeritus professor at Lancaster University in Britain, says the recommendations are at least five to 10 years from becoming law, and that the jury is still out on whether they will accomplish their stated goals. “These are just tweaks,” says Picciotto. “They’re trying to repair an old motorcar, but what they need is a new engine.”

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @02:43PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 17 2014, @02:43PM (#94563)

    Ill bite :)

    When the bill comes up, we'd have to pay an equal amount in taxes: $9. But that equality is not fair.
    So your idea of 'fair' is I pay more because I can afford it? You have equality backwards to fair.

    If I pay % wise vs my income as someone else that is equality not fair. It means I work harder and earn more but do not get more purchasing power from that work. I have no incentive to do better. You consider that fair. I consider it theft. It means I do more work for less return. It would mean the highest paying job in the world is working a counter at McDonalds. As I can buy a nice care and live in the suburbs because I pay the same amounts as someone who works 70 hours a week and makes 120k a year.

    Yes being poor sucks ass. Been there have the t-shirt. Being poor means you have to make decisions like 'do I eat or do I buy the tools I need for a job'. Being 'rich' means I have the opportunity to do both.

    Look at all equality and economic schemes thru the broken window fallacy. You will see many of them destroy wealth and discourage production. Discouraging production means less jobs. Less jobs means lower wages.

    This book describes it very well. Unfortunately he does not adequately describe the laffer curve (as it was popularized after he wrote the book). Which was a tool meant to ease inflation. But was instead sold as a tool of social injustice. It achieves that by taking money away from 'the rich' and giving it to the government. We know how well they spend their money.
    http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/ [steshaw.org]

    Most social injustice programs work *very* well on the micro level. On the macro level they usually fail and make things worse. There are very few cases where it worked on the macro level. That is because the business owners were so ripping everyone off, that anything was better. They usually managed to do this thru the force of government laws and creating regional monopolies and destroying other peoples wealth.

    you've paid 0.749% toward taxes.
    You are confusing wealth with money. They are not the same thing. Money conveys wealth. Which is why it is easy to confuse them. Wealth allows you to do more things. If you remove wealth you put people who are 'rich' into the same position and making the same decisions as the 'poor'. They will act accordingly. They then need to make either-or decisions instead of 'and' decision. One way creates more work one way stagnates what we do. Work = jobs.

    To use your own example of groceries and combine it with what I mean. I buy groceries. However, I ALSO make payments on a nice car. I ALSO buy toys for my kids. I ALSO make payments on a bigger house and pay proportionately more taxes.

    To put it into perspective. Take the last presidential hopeful in 2011 paid 14%! Holy smokes thats like nearly 20% less than what I paid. HOWEVER, it was 1.94 million dollars. That is more than my entire family has *EVER* paid. He did it in one year. Yet my family get proportionately get more out of the taxes he paid.

    Money that is not moving is not doing anything, it is wealth. Do not confuse wealth with money. You save up for a rainy day and you can take a nice vacation. You accumulate wealth to do something nice. Lets say you saved up 1 million dollars. You would be considered very wealthy. Should you be taxed at a higher rate just because you never spent your money?

    Like most internet theories people trot out what they think is 'fair' however they rarely look at the longer term. I always use these two examples to show it off. Communism works great at first until someone realizes by being lazy they get just as much out of it. At that point it turns totalitarian as you have to force everyone to work to get anything done. Capitalism works until someone figures out you can pay people to force others to do things you want to get you more money. Both are short term gains at the cost of long term gains.