Corporate taxes are too LOW!

Wal-Mart Stores CEO gets $18.7M 2010 pay package

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_17879489

So I guess the tools here are happy subsidizing Wal Mart's executives bonuses and ginormous pay packages with their taxes.

Something the Dog Said wrote: Wal-Mart Stores CEO gets $18.7M 2010 pay package

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_17879489

So I guess the tools here are happy subsidizing Wal Mart's executives bonuses and ginormous pay packages with their taxes.

What people don't get is this....raising corporate taxes won't change any of the executive pay packages. If the board is unjustly giving bonuses or salary for an inept CEO, they will still do this. It will just raise prices. Taxes to a corporation are just a cost of doing business. They are no different than raw materials, labor, insurance, etc. A corporation must take all of it's costs of doing business, add a percentage of profit, and that is what they charge. If you increase taxes to a corp, they just pass it on to their customers.

RenegadeCJ wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote: Wal-Mart Stores CEO gets $18.7M 2010 pay package

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_17879489

So I guess the tools here are happy subsidizing Wal Mart's executives bonuses and ginormous pay packages with their taxes.

What people don't get is this....raising corporate taxes won't change any of the executive pay packages. If the board is unjustly giving bonuses or salary for an inept CEO, they will still do this. It will just raise prices. Taxes to a corporation are just a cost of doing business. They are no different than raw materials, labor, insurance, etc. A corporation must take all of it's costs of doing business, add a percentage of profit, and that is what they charge. If you increase taxes to a corp, they just pass it on to their customers.

That is not wholly truthful. The market sets the price in a competitive environment. If the corporations simply pass the taxes onto the customers, then they will likely lose sales to a competitor who does not pay their CEO $20 million a year. Are you ok with the taxpayers subsidizing corporate welfare, or should the real cost of the products and services reflect the government services that the corporation utilize? Why should a taxpayer pay for the goods and services that they may never purchase?

I'm of the opinion corporate taxes should be substantially lowered across the board. This would help us internationally competing for businesses to be based here. I don't like individual subsidies, but for you "corporate welfare" is anytime a corporation gets a tax deduction. Regarding your statement that a corp not paying their CEO $20 mil per year? Wouldn't affect much at all. Walmart for example made what, about $25 billion in profit last year? That is .08% of their net income.

On the flip side, I have no issue with a CEO making 20 mil....as long as the company did great and their shareholders also made a lot of money proportionally. Where I have an issue is failing companies, who pay their CEO's and Boards huge sums, while the shareholders lost $$. Of course, that is the shareholders roll to fix, not the govt.

Wicked wrote: Oh, our poor corporations...whatever!

http://www.alternet.org/economy/150509/ ... age=entire
The shift of all these taxes from corporations to individuals and families has been pushed with the help of a Big Lie – growing from a small kernel of truth – told by corporate America, its lackeys in Congress and the media it dominates just about every day: that American companies face some of the highest taxes in the world.

The kernel of truth is that, at 35 percent, we do have one of the highest statutory corporate rates in the world – that is, the rate that's written down in the tax code. But what's written in the tax code is inconsequential compared to the number written on checks sent to the IRS.

What US companies actually pay in taxes is among the lowest figures in the developed world. The effective tax rate is what companies actually fork over. As the non-partisan Center for Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) explained, the 35 percent rate the corporate mouthpieces on CNBC are always whining about “does not take into account the generous depreciation rules, exemptions, deductions, and credits (some of which are sometimes termed 'loopholes') that corporations may be eligible for.”

The upshot of all this is that while the American economy has many problems, overtaxing corporations is not one of them.

Do you reckon that there is a reason that the U.S. has the most robust, strongest, vibrant, and powerful economy in the history of the world? Could it be that corporations are allowed to use their monies to reinvest instead of giving it away to the leeches of government?

Something the Dog Said wrote: It is amazing that conservatives are such tools for the corporatists. Why should the individual middle class taxpayer subsidize corporate welfare? Corporations receive the benefit of massive government services, from the federal level in the form of military protection, custom services, interstate highways, railroads, air traffic control, and on , and on, and on, to the local level for fire and police, roads, etc. Why should they not pay their fair share, instead of subsidizing them for their record profits? Does GE not use interstate highways, air and railroad traffic systems, the benefit of our military, and the national infrastructure?

Even more amazing is the fools that the progressives are for the government.

Corporations are tax collectors Dog, not taxpayers. You, and I, and everyone else who purchases the goods and services that the corporations produce are the actual taxpayers. If GE sends $10 million, or even $1 Billion, to the government in "income taxes", that money is nothing more than an extra $10 million or $1 Billion tax levy against the individual citizens - a hidden tax that we are all paying in addition to the 6.5% benefit of being employed tax we already pay on our earned wages, the tax upon each gallon of fuel we consume, the tax that is levied on your cell phone to provide cell phones to the poor, your personal income tax, the excise tax for each of the tires on your vehicle and all of the other taxes, some hidden, some not, that you are currently paying each and every year.

Why do you want to tax yourself more for the military protection, interstate highways, air traffic control, social welfare programs and all the rest of the bloated federal budget? The price of GE goods and services won't stay the same if they collect that tax from you and then pass it along to the federal government, they will go up to collect that tax from you before they pass it along to the federal government. You don't think GE pays the matching 6.5% benefit of having employees tax to the federal government, do you? You're intelligent enough to understand that you are the one paying that tax when you purchase goods and services from GE, in addition to the 6.5% you are paying on your own earned wages, right? GE may write the check for you, but you are the one contributing the money.

PrintSmith wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote: It is amazing that conservatives are such tools for the corporatists. Why should the individual middle class taxpayer subsidize corporate welfare? Corporations receive the benefit of massive government services, from the federal level in the form of military protection, custom services, interstate highways, railroads, air traffic control, and on , and on, and on, to the local level for fire and police, roads, etc. Why should they not pay their fair share, instead of subsidizing them for their record profits? Does GE not use interstate highways, air and railroad traffic systems, the benefit of our military, and the national infrastructure?

Even more amazing is the fools that the progressives are for the government.

Corporations are tax collectors Dog, not taxpayers. You, and I, and everyone else who purchases the goods and services that the corporations produce are the actual taxpayers. If GE sends $10 million, or even $1 Billion, to the government in "income taxes", that money is nothing more than an extra $10 million or $1 Billion tax levy against the individual citizens - a hidden tax that we are all paying in addition to the 6.5% benefit of being employed tax we already pay on our earned wages, the tax upon each gallon of fuel we consume, the tax that is levied on your cell phone to provide cell phones to the poor, your personal income tax, the excise tax for each of the tires on your vehicle and all of the other taxes, some hidden, some not, that you are currently paying each and every year.

Why do you want to tax yourself more for the military protection, interstate highways, air traffic control, social welfare programs and all the rest of the bloated federal budget? The price of GE goods and services won't stay the same if they collect that tax from you and then pass it along to the federal government, they will go up to collect that tax from you before they pass it along to the federal government. You don't think GE pays the matching 6.5% benefit of having employees tax to the federal government, do you? You're intelligent enough to understand that you are the one paying that tax when you purchase goods and services from GE, in addition to the 6.5% you are paying on your own earned wages, right? GE may write the check for you, but you are the one contributing the money.

Absolutely NOT! The tax is on the sale, not the purchase. The tax is upon the seller, whether or not it is included in the purchase transaction.

Science Chic wrote: Renegade, the point of the original article was that companies don't pay what the published tax rate is - they pay substantially less, and have been for quite some time and they're still shipping jobs overseas!

Lowering tax rates won't help - they will continue to ship jobs overseas because they don't seem to care about providing Americans jobs, or helping our economy, they are merely looking out for their bottom line and being paid obscene bonuses that don't often have nothing to do with how well the company is performing and could pay several people's worth of salaries.

I'm not a fan of a flat tax rate, but whatever it takes to close the loopholes and end the abuse of the system. I agree with OmniScience that it's the tax code that needs to be repaired. And Chickaree has a good point too - yes, our government has been overspending, but that has also been coupled with lowering what they take in in taxes, it's a double-whammy. Both issues need to be addressed. We don't necessarily need smaller government, what we need is more efficient government that is held more accountable.

Of course they are shipping jobs overseas. They can't afford to produce product here and export that product elsewhere and compete against those that produce elsewhere. Why, if you are Levi Strauss, would you manufacture 501's here and be able to sell them only as a luxury item in every other market when you can manufacture there and sell your 501's in every market as an everyday clothing item? People in poorer nations can't afford to pay $65 for a pair of jeans manufactured here to sell for $45 a pair, but they can pay the $25 a pair that jeans made there would cost and the cost to Levi's for the jeans sold here remains the same - $45 a pair - once the cost of shipping the $25 per pair jeans here is paid. What rational, reasoned and even remotely intelligent business manager would counsel Levi Strauss to manufacture here in such a scenario?

What is going to happen to the cost of Levi 501's when you eliminate the tax loophole or raise the corporate income tax? You think that the $0.35 of every dollar of profit that the government wants to confiscate is going to be absorbed by Levi Strauss? Not even close. They will raise the cost of the jeans to $46 or $50 a pair. If they lose sales here, no biggie - they are selling lots of jeans now in other markets where they used to sell none. If they sell fewer jeans, they have less profits to tax, and the revenue increase that the government hoped to realize by the change in the tax code will fail to appear. Lower sales will mean the need for fewer people employed here to sell the jeans. The higher cost of the jeans will move consumers to purchase less expensive alternatives, likely foreign owned, who pay no US corporate tax because they are not a US corporation.

It is better to give GE a tax credit for providing scholarships, sponsoring cancer research through the Susan B Komen, giving grants to local food banks, giving grants to local health clinics, and all the rest of their private charitable activities than it is for them to collect more in taxes from you and I and pass them along to the federal government to provide the same thing. You and I are not only paying the per gallon fuel tax for our own vehicles, we are paying the per gallon fuel tax on every food item we but from the grocery store, the clothing stores, the electronic stores, for the plumber who comes to unstop the sink, the electrician who runs the new wires to finish the basement and every other good or service we purchase. What is it that you reject about this truth SC? What part of it doesn't make sense to your scientifically trained, critically thinking, logical mind?

major bean wrote: Absolutely NOT! The tax is on the sale, not the purchase. The tax is upon the seller, whether or not it is included in the purchase transaction.

Where does the seller get the funds to pay the tax MB? From the purchaser of their goods or services. The end user pays all taxes of that which they purchase. They pay the entire cost of the raw materials, the labor, the overhead, the taxes and the profit. That is why corporations are not tax payers, they are tax collectors.