This is topic A thought on corporate taxation in forum Books, Films, Food and Culture at Hatrack River Forum.


To visit this topic, use this URL:
http://www.hatrack.com/ubb/main/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=018809

---

Posted by qkslvrwolf (Member # 5768) on :
 
Not that this will ever happen, but I've had an idea kicking around in my head for quite some time, and maybe you all can give me reaons why it wouldn't work.

Here it is. Bell curve competitive taxation for corporations (above a certain size).

We have, I think most people will agree, a rather large problem with corporations shunning their tax debt to society...as well as doing lots and lots of things that hurt people just so the upper 1% can make a few more dollars. I have a possible solution to this.

Social benefit competitive taxation. You set up a rating system, based on a myriad of factors, such as Community input, damage caused by operation (i.e. smog), tax shelter presence, median salary, average salary (not including upper management and above), etc. Each corporation is rated, and based on taht rating, their tax rate is calculated. The middle 50% get the going rate. The top 25% get a reduced rate. The bottom 25% get hit with massive penalties.

This would, in a true free market sort of way, encourage better behavior by corporations. I think. So have it. Whats wrong with the plan?
 

---

Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
 
I understand and appreciate what you are trying to achieve, but I don't know if it is the most efficient way to achieve it.

If you have a rating system made up with a myriad of factors, then the importance of a specific factor may be obscured in the corporation's overall cost-benefit analysis.

I favor a tax policy that addresses each issue separately. For example, polluters pay a higher environmental tax and corporations who donate to charities get tax breaks. I guess such a system already exists, but corporate tax shelters are near-impossible to crack.

BTW, shaved scrotum.
 

---

Posted by qkslvrwolf (Member # 5768) on :
 

quote:

---

I favor a tax policy that addresses each issue separately. For example, polluters pay a higher environmental tax and corporations who donate to charities get tax breaks.

---

Hmm...how about competitive taxation on a per issue basis?

One of the problems with the way things work today is that the term "free market" has been hijacked by corporations who are trying to set up monopolies. There is actually far more of the beneficial competition so hyped by these people in an appropriately regulated environment.

Oh. And if companies actually had to pay for the full cost of their activities, we'd have many things, most environmental, in much better shape.

Just imagine if everyone dumping shit into the water had to pay cancer benefits to people who got cancer from it and livlihood benefits to all the fishermen whose fish they'd killed.
 

---

Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
 
I think the current legal system is completely inadequate to deal with the problems you've described.

If Beatrice Foods dumped chemicals into a well that poisoned people, these people can sue Beatrice Foods for money.

However, the problem is that Beatrice Foods will simply factor the cost of the litigation into the price of their goods. So they basically pass on the cost of their mistake to you, the consumer.

Moreover, what if it cost Beatrice Foods only $20 million to settle the lawsuit, while properly disposing the chemicals would've cost $30 million. Three guesses on what choice they will make.
 

---

Posted by qkslvrwolf (Member # 5768) on :
 
Thats what I'm talking about...dreamworld where the government asseses the price of the companies deprevations, and then forces them to pay. And yes, they'd probably jack up their price, but that leaves a lot more room for another company to come along and clean s[tuff] up and have it cost less, so they charge less.

but thats a dream world.

sigh
I'm gonna move to canada.

[Sorry to have to edit this. At the request of another Hatracker, I exchanged one "s-word" for another. KHK]

[ October 03, 2003, 11:45 AM: Message edited by: KathrynHJanitor ]
 

---

Posted by Beren One Hand (Member # 3403) on :
 
There is no escape.


 

---

Posted by qkslvrwolf (Member # 5768) on :
 
Canada was my last hope...because I know Britain has the same sort of troubles. IS THERE NO WHERE ON EARTH FREE FROM THESE BASTARDS??????
 

---

Posted by Morbo (Member # 5309) on :
 

quote:

---

A Statistics Canada report in the early 1980s found the number of workplace deaths attributed to unsafe or illegal working conditions to be equivalent to the number of street homicides. This does not include "lingering deaths" resulting from exposure to "hazardous workplace pollutants".

---