What does a BIDEN Presidency look like?

[Valmy]

Well why would the Feds need Delaware to change anything? The Feds can tax those companies all they want without giving a shit about what Delaware does. If there is some minimum tax level the corporations need to pay then the Feds can do it themselves. It is not like being in Delaware exempts you from anything.

[Sheilbh]

Well why would the Feds need Delaware to change anything? The Feds can tax those companies all they want without giving a shit about what Delaware does. If there is some minimum tax level the corporations need to pay then the Feds can do it themselves. It is not like being in Delaware exempts you from anything.

Maybe. I think there is something more to it with Delaware - but I'm not a tax expert - because I know it's popular with very aggressive tax avoidance structuring where you have an absolute tonne of entities in different jurisdictions for tax reasons.

But you're right the main issue there is actually around AML and transparency.

[grumbler]

Well why would the Feds need Delaware to change anything? The Feds can tax those companies all they want without giving a shit about what Delaware does. If there is some minimum tax level the corporations need to pay then the Feds can do it themselves. It is not like being in Delaware exempts you from anything.

Indeed.  Delaware is attractive (my own LLC considered incorporating there before settling on Pennsylvania for other reasons) because Delaware makes it easy and cheap to incorporate, and has a great business conflict resolution (Chancery) system.  Some companies may value the privacy elements of Delaware incorporation.  Taxes are not much of a consideration (state taxes on corporations are pretty miniscule).

[alfred russel]

Fifty-five of the nation's largest corporations paid no federal income tax on more than $40 billion in profits last year, according to an analysis by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a progressive think tank.

In fact, they received a combined federal rebate of more than $3 billion, for an effective tax rate of about negative 9 percent.

That is a dishonest analysis. I think it is disgraceful for the Washington Post to run that without clarification (I assume the "analysis" section isn't akin to "opinion" - if it is, this is less bad)

Book income for a large number of reasons is different than tax income. They are taking the book income for the consolidated operations of public companies and comparing it to federal taxes paid, which has problems. Some of the bigger ones:

-book income includes foreign profits, which if taxed overseas, likely won't be in the US -- this is a complicated area, but if you earn $100 in Japan, you pay $30.40 in taxes there, and then nothing in the US. According to this analysis, they would say, "hey, this corporation earned $100 and paid no federal tax." While true, that is misleading to the point of being deceitful.

-There are significant timing differences in expense recognition between book and tax. For instance, the depreciation schedules are completely different. So a $100 asset may be fully depreciated in year 1 for tax but over 2 years for book. The effect is that in year 1, for book you get $50 of extra income that you don't get in year 1 for tax, but in year 2 you have $50 of extra expense. These timing differences are often massive, but over the long run balance. So yeah you can pick 55 companies that pay less in a given year due to timing, but you can also pick some that pay more.

[Admiral Yi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81LoIGJIS-o

Matt Gaetz asked for a blanket pardon in the last days of the Trump administration.

I haven't watched the whole thing.

[The Minsky Moment]

Well why would the Feds need Delaware to change anything?

To have a national standard concerning the obligations and duties of corporate directors and officers, for one.  Delaware is the de facto national standard but it could be argued that having such significant policy decided by a tiny state legislature and a handful of chancery court judges in Wilmington is not optimal.

[OttoVonBismarck]

This seems like the random collection of political shit thread now so I saw two articles in the Washington Post today about the increasing rupture between corporate America and the GOP:

More than 100 corporate executives hold call to discuss halting donations and investments to fight controversial voting bills

By
Todd C. Frankel
April 11, 2021 at 4:26 p.m. EDT

More than 100 chief executives and corporate leaders gathered online Saturday to discuss taking new action to combat the controversial state voting bills being considered across the country, including the one recently signed into law in Georgia.

Executives from major airlines, retailers and manufacturers — plus at least one NFL owner — talked about potential ways to show they opposed the legislation, including by halting donations to politicians who support the bills and even delaying investments in states that pass the restrictive measures, according to four people who were on the call, including one of the organizers, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor.

While no final steps were agreed upon, the meeting represents an aggressive dialing up of corporate America's stand against controversial voting measures nationwide, a sign that their opposition to the laws didn't end with the fight against the Georgia legislation passed in March.

It also came just days after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned that firms should "stay out of politics" — echoing a view shared by many conservative politicians and setting up the potential for additional conflict between Republican leaders and the heads of some of America's largest firms. This month, former president Donald Trump called for conservatives to boycott Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines, Citigroup, ViacomCBS, UPS and other companies after they opposed the law in Georgia that critics say will make it more difficult for poorer voters and voters of color to cast ballots. Baseball officials decided to move the All-Star Game this summer from Georgia to Colorado because of the voting bill.

The online call between corporate executives on Saturday "shows they are not intimidated by the flak. They are not going to be cowed," Sonnenfeld said. "They felt very strongly that these voting restrictions are based on a flawed premise and are dangerous."

Leaders from dozens of companies such as Delta, American, United, Starbucks, Target, LinkedIn, Levi Strauss and Boston Consulting Group, along with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, were included on the Zoom call, according to people who listened in.

The discussion — scheduled to last one hour but going 10 minutes longer — was led at times by Kenneth Chenault, the former chief executive of American Express, and Kenneth Frazier, the chief executive of Merck, who told the executives that it was important to keep fighting what they viewed as discriminatory laws on voting. Chenault and Frazier coordinated a letter signed last month by 72 Black business executives that made a similar point — a letter that first drew attention to the voting bills in executive suites across the country.

The call's goal was to unify companies that had been issuing their own statements and signing on to drafted statements from different organizations after the action in Georgia, Sonnenfeld said. The leaders called in from around the country — some chimed in from Augusta, Ga., where they were attending the Masters golf tournament.

"There was a defiance of the threats that businesses should stay out of politics," Sonnenfeld said. "They were obviously rejecting that even with their presence (on the call). But they were there out of concern about voting restrictions not being in the public interest."

One Georgia-based executive talked about how the final version of Georgia's legislation — which Gov. Brian Kemp (R) has said actually expands voting access, a claim that many have challenged — was much worse than expected, and how that should serve as a warning to other chief executives as more states consider adopting their own voting bills, according to people on the call.

Access to the polls has emerged as a major national issue. Republican state lawmakers are trying to pass legislation they say is designed to combat voting fraud — which Trump has baselessly and frequently claimed is a problem. GOP-backed bills in various statehouses aim to ban ballot drop boxes, limit voting periods, restrict absentee voting or stiffen requirements for voter identification. Five bills with new voter restrictions have been passed nationwide so far, with 55 restrictive bills in 24 states being considered by legislatures, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan law and policy institute.

Companies have jumped into hot-button political debates before, such as the corporate backlash to a 2016 North Carolina bill banning transgender people from using the public restroom that corresponds with their gender identities. After the Capitol riot in January, many companies pledged to stop donating to politicians who spurred doubts about the outcome of the presidential election.

Now, it is voting rights. Many of the corporate leaders who joined the call seemed to view the voting restrictions as attacks on democracy, rather than as a partisan issue, according to people who listened in.

Mike Ward, cofounder of the Civic Alliance, a nonpartisan group of businesses focused on voter engagement, said he felt there was a broad consensus at the end of the call that company leaders plan to continue working against voting bills they think are restrictive — "to lean into this, not lean away from this."

And an Opinion piece:

Opinion: Why corporate America is declaring independence from the GOP

Opinion by
Michele L. Norris
Columnist

If you want a sense of the endgame in the ongoing showdown between aggrieved Republicans and corporate leaders willing to criticize the party's efforts to roll back voting rights, just flip on your TV and watch the ads.

The outcome in easy to see in the stream of multicultural and often mixed-raced families buying cars, taking vacations, planning their retirements, doing laundry and laughing at the dinner table.

You don't watch television? Just pay attention to the pop-up ads when you surf the Web. See the smiling faces — the sea of Black, Brown, tan and golden faces — that make it clear that corporate America knows that scenes of White families are no longer the only aspirational groupings that make customers want to open their wallets.

The GOP and corporate America have been engaged in two very interesting but very different branding exercises over the past decade. For years, these two campaigns allowed both sides to maintain their mutually beneficial arrangement. In recent days, however, the two branding campaigns have collided over the most basic question in our democracy: Who gets to vote and how? Which brand will emerge from this collision in better shape is already a foregone conclusion. But the reason may have less to do with right and wrong than profit and loss.

Under the old arrangement, corporate America would reliably deliver huge sums of money to GOP campaigns and causes, and Republicans would deliver lower taxes on income and capital gains in return. If big companies did not endorse everything the party stood for, they remained mostly silent in service of their bottom line.

But after a brief period of experimenting with big-tent politics during the first and second Bush presidencies, the Republican Party has lurched dramatically rightward since the election of Barack Obama. The GOP narrowed its goals to serve a largely White, largely evangelical and largely nonurban base that is hostile to immigration, science, foreign engagement and anything associated with the Black Lives Matter movement.

At the same time, many big corporate firms have come to see themselves as allies of immigration, science and foreign engagement and have worked to signal their virtues through ads and statements of solidarity following the protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd.

After Georgia lawmakers passed a law that disproportionately limits ballot access for people of color based on false claims of voter fraud, Delta Air Lines and Coca-Cola at first tried to skirt the issue and then finally cried foul. Major League Baseball moved the summer All-Star Game out of Georgia in protest. And almost 200 companies — including HP, Salesforce and Under Armour — signed a statement that denounced similar efforts underway to limit ballot access in other states.

These steps hit the GOP where it must have caused some pain. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned corporate America to stay out of politics but quickly backtracked to clarify that he was "not talking about political contributions." That was a reminder that Republicans who accuse corporations of trying to stay on the right side of the woke police fail to understand that there are much larger forces at work.

Part of what is going on here is that corporations are protecting their bottom lines as America steams toward the majority-minority tipping point sometime around 2047. The Census Bureau projects that the U.S. population will increase by about 24 percent by 2060; adults and their children who are not White will likely account for most of that growth. That multiculti future has already arrived for America's youngest citizens; White children are now a minority of Americans under the age of 17.

Any company interested in cultivating the multihued, multiethnic, cross-marrying, immigrant consumer of the future would have to think hard about continuing to move in lockstep with a Republican Party that is determined to time-travel back to the 1950s, when white supremacy was thought to be permanent.

America's real future is more colorful, more vibrant, more diverse than the continuing tableau of overwhelmingly White GOP conventions, fundraisers and leadership summits. But let us also admit that the recent spate of corporate activism does not signal a deeper commitment to liberal causes. Some of the CEOs who have spoken out against repressive voting schemes must do a better job of diversifying their own leadership teams and workforces.

This much is clear: The demographic reshuffling already underway will alter our culture, our politics and who has the reins of power. Much of the Republican agenda is fueled by a fear of this future. Corporations that want to embrace that future — and the wave of consumers it will bring — cannot continue to partner with a party that is only interested in representing the part of America it finds acceptable.

[Iormlund]

Diversity is not even about domestic politics. Most of those companies have employees and customers all over the world.

[crazy canuck]

Diversity is not even about domestic politics. Most of those companies have employees and customers all over the world.

Yeah, the article would have been better if "Any company interested in cultivating the multihued, multiethnic, cross-marrying, immigrant consumer of the future..." had read "Any company interested in cultivating consumers beyond the narrow GOP bubble in the future..."

[Sheilbh]

Diversity is not even about domestic politics. Most of those companies have employees and customers all over the world.

Yeah. Minoritarian power is built into US politics and the GOP can have a lot of sway by winning the Senate and occasionally the Presidency while never winning the popular vote again. One way to do that would be to keep a minority base very agitated and motivated. But that isn't generally a winning strategy if you are trying to sell things to people you want as many people as possible.

[Admiral Yi]

Diversity is not even about domestic politics. Most of those companies have employees and customers all over the world.

If you're suggesting that mixed marriages generate the same warm and fuzzy feelings in the rest of the world as it does in Europe and parts of the US, I'm not sure I agree.

[Jacob]

If you're suggesting that mixed marriages generate the same warm and fuzzy feelings in the rest of the world as it does in Europe and parts of the US, I'm not sure I agree.

Definitely not in Korea. But even in Korea (and other places where mixed marriages may not be as sexy, as per your suggesion), they'll be sensitive to "this flavour of white people are better than you". I think that in practice, running an explicitly pro-diversity multinational megacorporation is going to be easier than trying to manage N parallel national focused ones.

[Admiral Yi]

Definitely not in Korea. But even in Korea (and other places where mixed marriages may not be as sexy, as per your suggesion), they'll be sensitive to "this flavour of white people are better than you". I think that in practice, running an explicitly pro-diversity multinational megacorporation is going to be easier than trying to manage N parallel national focused ones.

Of course.  I'm trying to draw a distinction between ads that show someone from Sierra Leone building a car or giving a sales pitch and ads that show interracial couples enjoying delicious breakfast cereal together.

[Jacob]

Of course.  I'm trying to draw a distinction between ads that show someone from Sierra Leone building a car or giving a sales pitch and ads that show interracial couples enjoying delicious breakfast cereal together.

Fair enough.

Personally, I don't think the point of the article is as much about showing interracial couples or LGTBQ+ folks in advertising, as it is about the core values of the corporation itself. The car company is probably not going to try to sell cars with ads showing interacial couples in places where that's highly controversial (or maybe they'll use fewer such adds) and they probably won't be pushing LGTBQ+ stuff in places that are super homophobic. But they aren't going to run any ads that say "stick to your own" or "gay people are yucky" even where that might play well with local audiences, and inside the company they'll do their best to be tolerant and diverse to attract and maintain talent.

[alfred russel]

Fair enough.

Personally, I don't think the point of the article is as much about showing interracial couples or LGTBQ+ folks in advertising, as it is about the core values of the corporation itself. The car company is probably not going to try to sell cars with ads showing interacial couples in places where that's highly controversial (or maybe they'll use fewer such adds) and they probably won't be pushing LGTBQ+ stuff in places that are super homophobic. But they aren't going to run any ads that say "stick to your own" or "gay people are yucky" even where that might play well with local audiences, and inside the company they'll do their best to be tolerant and diverse to attract and maintain talent.

I don't think you need to talk about attracting and retaining talent to explain anything.

Megacorp isn't going to run ads in the Middle East advocating stoning gay people even if that has local commercial appeal because those ads will make it back to the west and interfere with their business in what are far more lucrative markets.

Positve LGTBQ+ ads run in western markets absolutely interfere with business in the Middle East - in a broad sense there is local concern about western values being imported and a backlash against western companies in general. But in a sense this negative association is unavoidable: a megacorp company based in London (for example) simply isn't going to embody local values in a very different market. But there is also an offsetting tailwind these companies have in (mostly) developing countries: their is an appeal they have as upmarket and high quality products from perceived better places.