Any Democrats. Meaningful ones putting some weight behind it?

Well, looks like the Treasury, acting as an admin proxy, passed some new rules to try and stop tax inversions. Typical in that instead of tackling the underlying issue, govt just adds more rules. In reality though, this may slow tax inversions, but it will not stop them.

(07-07-2014 08:03 AM)Machiavelli Wrote:  Thanks for the reply, but I'm not sure we can ever beat someone else in this arena. Ireland or the Cayman Islands will never have to support a military. These corporations enjoy all of the fruits of the harvest but don't want to toil with the weeding and upkeep. Let's say we go down to 20%. They will go down to 12.5%. Heck a Caribbean Island could go close to zero. 3% is better than no percent. We can't win an asymmetrical tax battle. Both sides should be able to solve this problem bur I'll be damned if I can find a glimmer of hope anywhere. I have absolutely zero confidence in our politicians in coming up with an equitable solution.

2 Issues... 1, most of Europe uses VAT taxes which are more directly borne by consumers... so while their total rate might be comparable to ours, their businesses get an advantage by only paying the direct portion and then selling in the US.
2) as the worlds largest consumers, this problem is exacerbated, but it also means that our rate doesn't have to EQUAL theirs... because among other things, the shipping costs are lower to sell their items in the US.

(09-24-2014 11:24 AM)VA49er Wrote:  Well, looks like the Treasury, acting as an admin proxy, passed some new rules to try and stop tax inversions. Typical in that instead of tackling the underlying issue, govt just adds more rules. In reality though, this may slow tax inversions, but it will not stop them.

This is so typical... What they realize, but voters don't is that this merely makes inversions more valuable. You push the threshold for a break-even up, but once you pass that threshold, the benefits are far greater. In other words, the righ get richer because they can do what the 'almost' rich cannot.

It is the story of our country, and too many of our voters are too stupid to get it. They think like poor people/workers, not like rich people/owners.

I think we could stop this by increasing the personal exemption/tax credit, and then making EVERYONE, including the most poor among us pay for any new government spending. END this 'deficit neutral' lie that we keep buying... If you want to vote for something and it is worth $100, and you ask a poor person to pay $10 for it, it is STILL a huge benefit for him, right? And the wealthy person will still pay $100 for it but not get it... Until we do that, the government will continue to pit the rich against the poor and essentially tax and regulate the middle and upper middle class into oblivion.

(09-24-2014 11:24 AM)VA49er Wrote:  Well, looks like the Treasury, acting as an admin proxy, passed some new rules to try and stop tax inversions. Typical in that instead of tackling the underlying issue, govt just adds more rules. In reality though, this may slow tax inversions, but it will not stop them.

Just another attempt to punish success.

Just gonna speed the race for the exits. If their goal is to make this Country as business unfriendly as they possibly can, they are doing a fine job.

And these clowns want to argue the virtue of paying some entry level slob another buck an hour or so.

(09-24-2014 05:52 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  Just gonna speed the race for the exits. If their goal is to make this Country as business unfriendly as they possibly can, they are doing a fine job.

And these clowns want to argue the virtue of paying some entry level slob another buck an hour or so.

They don't get it. They are treating the symptoms and not the disease. Maybe one day they'll figure it out. Maybe?

(09-25-2014 09:54 AM)VA49er Wrote:  

(09-24-2014 05:52 PM)JMUDunk Wrote:  Just gonna speed the race for the exits. If their goal is to make this Country as business unfriendly as they possibly can, they are doing a fine job.

And these clowns want to argue the virtue of paying some entry level slob another buck an hour or so.

They don't get it. They are treating the symptoms and not the disease. Maybe one day they'll figure it out. Maybe?

Nope. They will AGAIN blame that the last group of leftist/statists "just didn't do it right last time", but - they will want to do the same thing again with them in charge and "We'll do it right".

I'll ask my question again.

I'm an investor (make me a rich Arab oil sheikh if you want to) with a new product that I want to market worldwide, and I'm looking to spend $100 million on a plant that will employ 3,000 people to manufacture it. Why should I build it in the US?

Follow-on question, if you can't give me a good reason to build it here, how does our economy grow?

(09-25-2014 11:09 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I'll ask my question again.

I'm an investor (make me a rich Arab oil sheikh if you want to) with a new product that I want to market worldwide, and I'm looking to spend $100 million on a plant that will employ 3,000 people to manufacture it. Why should I build it in the US?

Follow-on question, if you can't give me a good reason to build it here, how does our economy grow?

Just like everything else, you'd build it where you get the best deal. Now, taxes are just a part of said deal, but it's a big part.

(09-25-2014 11:09 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I'll ask my question again.

I'm an investor (make me a rich Arab oil sheikh if you want to) with a new product that I want to market worldwide, and I'm looking to spend $100 million on a plant that will employ 3,000 people to manufacture it. Why should I build it in the US?

Follow-on question, if you can't give me a good reason to build it here, how does our economy grow?

You'd build it in the US if the combination of factors that go into that production favor building it in the US.

Among those costs...
Materials... Where are they and how much do they cost to get to your manufacturing location to produce one widget?
Labor... How much does it cost (factoring in skills and quality) to produce one widget in a variety of places?
Facilities... Building costs, utilities, taxes allocated to each widget
Sales... How much does it cost to market and deliver one widget to where your customers are?

What has changed recently? The internet.
1) Global Marketing is now very cheap per unit relative to the past.
2) price comparisons are very easy now.
3) communication across the globe is now cheap and easy.
4) international banking is instantaneous 24/7.

None of these are complete lists, merely back of napkin stuff... People should be able to follow the thoughts.

The problem is that many on the left don't understand how investors think. They don't think... 'I want to make hats'.... They think 'I want to make $1.' Now they MIGHT say, 'I'm a hatmaker and I want to make $1'... but they don't say, 'I want to make hats.' What resources do I have at my disposal and what do I have to do with them to make $1?

In every country, there is a trade-off. The more we tax, the more we pay people, the more expensive our products are going to be... and the harder it is going to be for an investor to make $1. The government wants people to live better, but there is an inverse relationship here. This is why we keep losing factory jobs and retaining only delivery, construction and repair jobs... those jobs that physically MUST be done here... and the internet makes this list smaller every day. Everything else can be shipped in, and the combination of lower labor costs, lower regulatory costs and lower tax rates all contribute to that exit.

The SIMPLEST move we could make is to stop pretending that corporations pay taxes. They don't. Their consumers do.... so let's end MOST corporate taxation and go to a VAT like most of the rest of the world and a prefund to maintain the standard of living for the poor and middle class. It would immediately put us in a more competitive place vis a vis the rest of the world. I realize that by ending the 'tax the evil corporations' pitch, many politicians would be out of jobs... but I'm okay with that.


VA49er... The most significant part about taxes is that they are the most easily predicted and controlled portion of that equation.... so changes in tax rates have a quantifiable result for most decisions. Changes in 'standard of living' are far more nebulous. As the worlds largest consumer, we have a distinct advantage in building things... especially large and/or heavy things... HERE.

(09-25-2014 12:11 PM)VA49er Wrote:  

(09-25-2014 11:09 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I'll ask my question again.
I'm an investor (make me a rich Arab oil sheikh if you want to) with a new product that I want to market worldwide, and I'm looking to spend $100 million on a plant that will employ 3,000 people to manufacture it. Why should I build it in the US?
Follow-on question, if you can't give me a good reason to build it here, how does our economy grow?

Just like everything else, you'd build it where you get the best deal. Now, taxes are just a part of said deal, but it's a big part.

And we are going to lose some of the other areas--labor costs, environmental restrictions--by our choice (and correctly so, I'm not disagreeing there, except that our regulatory process could be cleaned up quite a bit). So we need to get a win somewhere.

Productivity? That means improved education and infrastructure, and I support efforts to improve both--not just efforts to spend more money on either, but efforts actually to improve both.

Proximity to market? This gets us pretty much tied with western Europe and wins against pretty much everywhere else.

Taxes? We can win here if we choose to.

What else?

(09-25-2014 12:14 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  

(09-25-2014 11:09 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I'll ask my question again.

I'm an investor (make me a rich Arab oil sheikh if you want to) with a new product that I want to market worldwide, and I'm looking to spend $100 million on a plant that will employ 3,000 people to manufacture it. Why should I build it in the US?
Follow-on question, if you can't give me a good reason to build it here, how does our economy grow?

You'd build it in the US if the combination of factors that go into that production favor building it in the US.
Among those costs...
Materials... Where are they and how much do they cost to get to your manufacturing location to produce one widget?
Labor... How much does it cost (factoring in skills and quality) to produce one widget in a variety of places?
Facilities... Building costs, utilities, taxes allocated to each widget
Sales... How much does it cost to market and deliver one widget to where your customers are?
What has changed recently? The internet.
1) Global Marketing is now very cheap per unit relative to the past.
2) price comparisons are very easy now.
3) communication across the globe is now cheap and easy.
4) international banking is instantaneous 24/7.
None of these are complete lists, merely back of napkin stuff... People should be able to follow the thoughts.
The problem is that many on the left don't understand how investors think. They don't think... 'I want to make hats'.... They think 'I want to make $1.' Now they MIGHT say, 'I'm a hatmaker and I want to make $1'... but they don't say, 'I want to make hats.' What resources do I have at my disposal and what do I have to do with them to make $1?
In every country, there is a trade-off. The more we tax, the more we pay people, the more expensive our products are going to be... and the harder it is going to be for an investor to make $1. The government wants people to live better, but there is an inverse relationship here. This is why we keep losing factory jobs and retaining only delivery, construction and repair jobs... those jobs that physically MUST be done here... and the internet makes this list smaller every day. Everything else can be shipped in, and the combination of lower labor costs, lower regulatory costs and lower tax rates all contribute to that exit.
The SIMPLEST move we could make is to stop pretending that corporations pay taxes. They don't. Their consumers do.... so let's end MOST corporate taxation and go to a VAT like most of the rest of the world and a prefund to maintain the standard of living for the poor and middle class. It would immediately put us in a more competitive place vis a vis the rest of the world. I realize that by ending the 'tax the evil corporations' pitch, many politicians would be out of jobs... but I'm okay with that.
VA49er... The most significant part about taxes is that they are the most easily predicted and controlled portion of that equation.... so changes in tax rates have a quantifiable result for most decisions. Changes in 'standard of living' are far more nebulous. As the worlds largest consumer, we have a distinct advantage in building things... especially large and/or heavy things... HERE.

WTF is the reason why no politician--R or D--seems to be able to explain this?

Ross Perot did--and it resonated fairly well with a lot of people. Why can't D's or R's?

(09-25-2014 12:19 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  

(09-25-2014 12:14 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  

(09-25-2014 11:09 AM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  I'll ask my question again.

I'm an investor (make me a rich Arab oil sheikh if you want to) with a new product that I want to market worldwide, and I'm looking to spend $100 million on a plant that will employ 3,000 people to manufacture it. Why should I build it in the US?
Follow-on question, if you can't give me a good reason to build it here, how does our economy grow?

You'd build it in the US if the combination of factors that go into that production favor building it in the US.
Among those costs...
Materials... Where are they and how much do they cost to get to your manufacturing location to produce one widget?
Labor... How much does it cost (factoring in skills and quality) to produce one widget in a variety of places?
Facilities... Building costs, utilities, taxes allocated to each widget
Sales... How much does it cost to market and deliver one widget to where your customers are?
What has changed recently? The internet.
1) Global Marketing is now very cheap per unit relative to the past.
2) price comparisons are very easy now.
3) communication across the globe is now cheap and easy.
4) international banking is instantaneous 24/7.
None of these are complete lists, merely back of napkin stuff... People should be able to follow the thoughts.
The problem is that many on the left don't understand how investors think. They don't think... 'I want to make hats'.... They think 'I want to make $1.' Now they MIGHT say, 'I'm a hatmaker and I want to make $1'... but they don't say, 'I want to make hats.' What resources do I have at my disposal and what do I have to do with them to make $1?
In every country, there is a trade-off. The more we tax, the more we pay people, the more expensive our products are going to be... and the harder it is going to be for an investor to make $1. The government wants people to live better, but there is an inverse relationship here. This is why we keep losing factory jobs and retaining only delivery, construction and repair jobs... those jobs that physically MUST be done here... and the internet makes this list smaller every day. Everything else can be shipped in, and the combination of lower labor costs, lower regulatory costs and lower tax rates all contribute to that exit.
The SIMPLEST move we could make is to stop pretending that corporations pay taxes. They don't. Their consumers do.... so let's end MOST corporate taxation and go to a VAT like most of the rest of the world and a prefund to maintain the standard of living for the poor and middle class. It would immediately put us in a more competitive place vis a vis the rest of the world. I realize that by ending the 'tax the evil corporations' pitch, many politicians would be out of jobs... but I'm okay with that.
VA49er... The most significant part about taxes is that they are the most easily predicted and controlled portion of that equation.... so changes in tax rates have a quantifiable result for most decisions. Changes in 'standard of living' are far more nebulous. As the worlds largest consumer, we have a distinct advantage in building things... especially large and/or heavy things... HERE.

WTF is the reason why no politician--R or D--seems to be able to explain this?

Ross Perot did--and it resonated fairly well with a lot of people. Why can't D's or R's?

C'mon Owl, we all know that the R's and D's don't really want to go where a smart tax system would go. They make too much bank manipulating the current tax system for the "winners" that give them money. It's what keeps them in power & screw what's best for the country as a whole...........

Agree with CREB

Too much money in the argument, not the solution.

Too many 'uninformed' voters who buy into the argument.

(09-25-2014 02:47 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  Agree with CREB
Too much money in the argument, not the solution.
Too many 'uninformed' voters who buy into the argument.

I am afraid you are probably spot on.

In the land of unintended consequencies. Good job by the govt of screwing up something else.......

Tax inversion curb turns tables on US

snippet:

Quote:
A crackdown by the Obama administration on “tax inversion” deals, which allowed US companies to slash their tax bills, has had the perverse effect of prompting a sharp increase in foreign takeovers of American groups.

In September the US Treasury all but stamped out tax inversions, which enabled a US company to pay less tax by acquiring a rival from a jurisdiction with a lower corporate tax rate, such as Ireland or the UK, and moving the combined group’s domicile to that country.

The move was designed to staunch an exodus of US companies and an erosion in tax revenues, but it has left many US groups vulnerable to foreign takeovers. Once a cross-border deal is complete, the combined company can generate big savings by adopting the overseas acquirer’s lower tax rate.

Since the crackdown, there have been $156bn of inbound cross-border US deals announced, compared with $106bn in the same period last year and $81bn a year earlier, according to data from Thomson Reuters.

By far the biggest acquirers have come from countries with lower tax rates such as Canada and Ireland, which have announced $26bn and $22bn of deals respectively, highlighting the competitive advantage that their companies have when it comes to mergers and acquisitions. Before the crackdown, groups from Germany and Japan were the biggest buyers of US companies.

So far this year, foreign buyers have announced $61bn worth of US acquisitions, an increase of 31 per cent on last year and the strongest start to a year for inbound cross-border deals since 2007, according to the data.

When the Obama administration changed the rules governing tax inversions, many bankers and politicians warned it would not stop the exodus of companies from the US unless it was accompanied by a reduction in the headline rate of US corporation tax, which stands at 35 per cent. However, gridlock in Washington has made it very difficult to achieve a comprehensive overhaul of the tax code

That should have been entirely predictable.

(03-16-2015 12:42 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  That should have been entirely predictable.

Instead of dealing with the sickness the govt tried to cure a symptom That never works long term. IMO, the govt had no idea it's new tax policy would futher put US companies at at disadvantage and eventually lead to job losses.

(03-16-2015 01:09 PM)VA49er Wrote:  

(03-16-2015 12:42 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  That should have been entirely predictable.

Instead of dealing with the sickness the govt tried to cure a symptom That never works long term. IMO, the govt had no idea it's new tax policy would futher put US companies at at disadvantage and eventually lead to job losses.

I don't doubt that they didn't have any idea... but that is the problem. I'm confident that had they asked 'the advisers to wealthy' what they would suggest in response to such a move they would have said, move the ownership of the company to another nation.

Look at Fiat/Chrysler/Jeep. Ownership has moved overseas and as you suggest, so now has production of even more of their vehicles. People talk about them bringing (as an example) a fiat assembly plant to the US, but the issue is that 30+% of that vehicle is still 'made' overseas as is now 100% of the design and testing and research.... so it is STILL a net loss despite the headline. Same thing happens with Kia... we note that 40% of their assembly is in the US, but that is still down from the 60+% of the Chevy that was assembled in the US that the Kia replaces.

I'm not saying you can stop all this. What I'm saying is that far too often, politicians, and especially democratic politicians don't 'think' like wealthy people do. .. and in fact, they intentionally dismiss the wealthy as evil or bad in some way...

They do this because despite the fact that many/most in leadership in the dem party are quite wealthy themselves, many of them became very wealthy through this sort of populist argument.

Warren Buffet made a large portion of his wealth rolling up small family owned businesses into his corporation primarily to avoid the 'estate tax on the wealthy' and other tax advantages. OF COURSE he supports high estate taxes... because that is how he makes money.

(03-16-2015 01:09 PM)VA49er Wrote:  IMO, the govt had no idea it's new tax policy would futher put US companies at at disadvantage and eventually lead to job losses.

I think they knew and didn't care. Obama has made it pretty clear that if it's part of the mantra, he doesn't care what the impacts are. He's said that about energy, about capital gains taxes, and other subjects as well.