So we hit the debt limit...

[CountDeMoney]

I favor taxation at the individual level, not the corporate level. 

Considering how long and hard corporations fought to become legal persons, they should be taxed accordingly.

lolwut?

Corporate personhood is a pretty old concept at this point.  Like 18th century.

Yes, and I'm sure they tried very hard at the time to get it that way.

[Admiral Yi]

I think a bunch of Dutch guys asked their government, and the government said sure.

[Gups]

1844 in England (before then you had to get an Act of Parliament passed to become a corporation like the East India Company).

I think it was later in US and followed the Sherman Act.

It was the creation of corporation which was the big deal it was allowing them to limit their liabilities. That came a bit later (in England, dunno about the states) and was very controversial, fitting CdM's description.

Ideally corporations would be taxed, but there's no doubt that the big ones are adept at avoiding it.

[grumbler]

Corporate personhood is a pretty old concept at this point.  Like 18th century.

Legal personhood for the purposes of contracting, yes.  Personhood with rights like the right to free speech?  That's more recent, I think.

[Admiral Yi]

Gups: you're saying the limited liability corporation didn't come to England until after 1844?  That sounds awful late.  What was the East India Company?

[grumbler]

Gups: you're saying the limited liability corporation didn't come to England until after 1844?  That sounds awful late.  What was the East India Company?

1855, actually (Limited Liability Act).  The EIC was a joint stock company, with unlimited liability until 1855.

[Gups]

I think the English were the first to allow limited liability, although others weren't far behind.

[Admiral Yi]

MadBadImmortalMan:  heard on NPR that your chain low home CPI is supposed to save 112 billion over 10.  Chump change.

[The Minsky Moment]

I favor taxation at the individual level, not the corporate level. 

Yes, but for this to work, you have to end the preferential treatment for cap gains and dividends.
Or alternatively, you get rid of C corporations and tax all corporate stockholders as if it were an S.  Then you wouldn't need taxes on capital at all.

[KRonn]

That's a big deal too. Bringing corporate tax rates down to almost European levels and no longer taxing repatriated profits. Also, the debate about the Bush tax cuts expiring would be instantly over for obvious reasons.

I have never paid taxes on overseas profits, because the taxes I paid before the money was repatriated was always higher than the tax I would have owed here.

I favor taxation at the individual level, not the corporate level.  Corporations have always found it cheaper to evade US taxes than citizens find it, and it makes sense to want them to store and report profits domestically. If you make it cheaper for them to pay their taxes than offshore them, you get more money.

This does seem to make some good sense. Eliminate some of the tax loop holes while bringing the tax rate down. As it is now many corps pay much less than the highest tax bracket due to taking advantage of tax breaks, and something like 30% or more corps pay no taxes.

[The Minsky Moment]

1844 in England (before then you had to get an Act of Parliament passed to become a corporation like the East India Company).

I think it was later in US and followed the Sherman Act.

Not so - corporations existed in the US as early in the 18th century; one of the most famous Supreme Court decision, Trustees of Dartmouth College v. Woodward, was decided in 1819, and concerned the rights of private corporations.  It is true that in the 18th century and the early 19th in most states, an act of the state legislature was required to get a corporate charter, but by 1811, New York State already had a general incorporation statute.  Massachusetts also had general incorporation in the 19th century, and the principle of limited corporate liability was already being recognized in the Massacusetts courts by 1817.

The key thing to keep in mind is that corporation law in the US is primarily a state and not a federal matter.

[grumbler]

Yes, but for this to work, you have to end the preferential treatment for cap gains and dividends.
Or alternatively, you get rid of C corporations and tax all corporate stockholders as if it were an S.  Then you wouldn't need taxes on capital at all.

The latter.  I wouldn't tax "capital" at all, just treat it all as income, where such is in fact the case.  You'd need some mechanism for taxing foreign investors, but I think such a mechanism is in place already.

[MadImmortalMan]

Eliminate some of the tax loop holes while bringing the tax rate down. As it is now many corps pay much less than the highest tax bracket due to taking advantage of tax breaks, and something like 30% or more corps pay no taxes.

I'll repeat a post I did on the other forum about this. I don't know what the data suggests specifically, but it's a bit interesting.


On the revenue side of things, here is a post on CR about it:




A couple of things stand out, looking at the linked data (except CBO, their site is still down :p ).

First of all, corporate tax receipts dropped over the same period way faster than corporate tax rates dropped. I think that's all the deductions and loopholes growing over the period in question. Almost all of the decline in receipts happened in the period of years before the significant rate reductions took place. These rates bottomed out during the Clinton Administration. There seems to be very little correlation between the actual rates and the receipts during the period, as the top marginal corporate income tax rate stayed between 45 and 55% all the way up to 1987.

Second, personal income tax seems to be primarily driven by economic factors and not by tax rate. The top marginal rate in this category was in the 80 to 94% range until 1963 (Kennedy lowered it), 70% until 1981, and dropped to 50% and then 35% where it is presently. Yet receipts don't match the rate changes here either. I suspect it would be more closely tied to a chart of the unemployment rate, or especially in later years, a chart of the Dow Jones. That suggests that tax receipts are more dependent on job creation than they are tax rates.

The purple line SSA/Medicare receipts seem somewhat more straightforward. The rates for those taxes has steadily increased over the years and so have the receipts. There are very few tax credits or exemptions for them.

[Razgovory]

Corporate personhood is a pretty old concept at this point.  Like 18th century.

Legal personhood for the purposes of contracting, yes.  Personhood with rights like the right to free speech?  That's more recent, I think.

It's a shame they can't be jailed or executed.

[MadImmortalMan]

Something's happening. Boehner came out and made a statement but I don't know what it was. Saw it on tv in a restaurant.