To the extent that this is even true it appears to be caused by three things: stock option compensation accounting, R&D deductions and bonus depreciation.
Stock option compensation rules have been a boon because Meta stock has risen 6x in three years. It's unlikely to do that again. My understanding is that this is symmetrical so if the stock trends down we will see an inflated effective tax rate for Meta.
Recent R&D rule changes allowing software engineering salaries for R&D to be written off seem reasonable and were quite popular on Hacker News. Previously these expenses were amortized over five years so this just pulls it forward. Subsequents years will see depressed expenses.
Bonus depreciation is once again just pulling forward legitimate expenses earlier than before. At worst they are just delaying giving the government its taxes and the corporations gain a few points of interest in between.
All of the tax rules used here are open to debate but none seem obviously wrong or nefarious. This is why people like Reich choose to keep things vague. Corporations brazenly stealing from your pocket is much more interesting than the mundane reality.
Most small businesses are pass through entities in the United States and pay no corporate taxes at all so it's certainly not the case that "The game is heavily rigged to favor large companies."
21% has been the highest possible corporate tax rate since 2017. It's not really fair to compare what Meta pays now to what you paid under an entirely different tax regime. You would also pay less in taxes running your business today than you did previously.
There has been extensive debate around that topic since that paper came out. Some points to discuss:
1. Even the article you shared mentions that starting in 2003, earnings has stopped tracking productivity. "Total compensation remains close until 2003, but does not follow 2003’s uptick in productivity growth (behavior which remains a topic for future research)."
2. They use average earnings and not median earnings. Average earnings include people like CEOs. This by consequence shows that inequality among workers has also increased. Check out chart 4 here to see how much smaller median wages are compared to average: (https://www.csls.ca/ipm/23/IPM-23-Mishel-Gee.pdf)
3. Apart from the average vs median difference, the biggest point of contention between that study and more recent ones is the measure of inflation used. The 2007 study you cite uses a measure of inflation that also includes things paid by employers like medical insurance. It turns out that using that one leads to significantly lower inflation. If you use consumer price index, what workers actually pay out of pocket, the difference again becomes larger. Citing page 37 of the study above: "In other words, that the prices of consumer items has risen faster than a broader index of prices that includes net exports, government goods and services, and investment goods. Therefore, for a given increase in income, the purchasing power of the consumer has fallen faster than that of business for investment goods and foreigners for U.S. exports."
The article I shared before plus this other one describe all the discrepancies (https://www.epi.org/productivity-pay-gap/). Specially see chart 10 in the PDF study. That shows all possible variations of how you measure productivity and income. No matter how you look at it, the most substantiated conclusion is that income has NOT matched productivity.
First, taxes still get paid when the individual dies as estate tax. Second, increased shareholder value typically means more corporate profit which is also taxed. Third, dividends are taxed. So your claim that the shareholder value never makes its way into the tax system is plainly false.
This is all aside from the fact that increased shareholder value means a more abundance society regardless of the increase in taxes. We could quibble over the exact distribution of who gains from the enlarged pie but it's certainly not the case the 100% of it goes to capitalists so consumers and employees also benefit.
> taxes still get paid when the individual dies as estate tax
Almost no one in the US pays the estate tax. It only applies to estates over $14MM and most large estates get reorganized into trusts with estate tax avoidance as a primary motive.
Yes this entire conversation is about the ultra wealthy not paying their "fair share". A $14MM exemption is practically irrelevant here.
> most large estates get reorganized into trusts with estate tax avoidance
This isn't so simple. Transfers to a irrevocable trust count against your lifetime 14mm estate and gift tax exemption and a trust in excess of the 14M exemption is subject to gift tax.
Also, this discussion was about "Buy Borrow Die" strategy. Irrevocable trusts don't make much sense in this context because trusts aren't subject to stepped up basis.
It's implicit. Amazon has billions of dollars because customers freely handed over the money. We know they found the service valuable because they wouldn't have done so otherwise.
The poster is suggesting there is some _true_ value separate from what these customers who know their own situations best think. That they are secretly being fleeced and a central planner will somehow better allocate the resources.
"The ultra-wealthy should have less power" != "We should implement a five-year plan for our command economy as thought up by glorious and correct Party."
Twitter pays more for US impressions so slop accounts often target a US audience and the payments are relatively more attractive to people in less developed countries. Aside from the fact that Americans are only 4% of the world population. What about this is surprising?
There is no evidence presented that there is any state sponsored conspiracy going on. Nor would you need one to explain what we're seeing.
The author also presents no evidence that Pro-Trump accounts are disproportionately represented among accounts lying about their country of residence.
Ultimately, this is just evidence-free gesturing at some grand conspiracy. Cherrypicking the bits that are red meat to her (and apparently HN's) audience.
The scandal is he most likely knew the election is being manipulated via his platform, but didn’t say anything, because it was in “his” candidate’s favor.
If it's impossible to measure art's value then there can't be any cutoff point at which we stop funding ever more art. Anyone who attempts to put a number on its value is treated as an overly rational boor but we obviously can't just devote the entirety of society's resources to creating more of it.
Stock option compensation rules have been a boon because Meta stock has risen 6x in three years. It's unlikely to do that again. My understanding is that this is symmetrical so if the stock trends down we will see an inflated effective tax rate for Meta.
Recent R&D rule changes allowing software engineering salaries for R&D to be written off seem reasonable and were quite popular on Hacker News. Previously these expenses were amortized over five years so this just pulls it forward. Subsequents years will see depressed expenses.
Bonus depreciation is once again just pulling forward legitimate expenses earlier than before. At worst they are just delaying giving the government its taxes and the corporations gain a few points of interest in between.
All of the tax rules used here are open to debate but none seem obviously wrong or nefarious. This is why people like Reich choose to keep things vague. Corporations brazenly stealing from your pocket is much more interesting than the mundane reality.
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