this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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Profits are often made up numbers. They can be increased to show growth to potential investors and then lowered just as quickly to avoid taxes. Creative bookkeeping happens all of the time. Trump still does it. Taxing corporations makes everyone feel all warm and fuzzy, but at the end of the day we can't get corps to pay the taxes the owe now, what makes anyone think a 300% increase is going to get paid?
Edit: You all are mistaking the idea of taxing the rich with the reality. The idea is all cotton candy and unicorns and every kid gets free school lunch. The reality is exactly what we are living in right now. It's not like the rich have been paying their taxes this whole time and it just isn't enough. They aren't paying the taxes they already owe. You can increase the numbers all you want, but it will only lead to a higher cost of consumer goods and more creative bookkeeping. You have to start differently. You don't start wit the tax. You start with the regulations. You have to have oversight, and you have to have strong leadership. We have neither of those. If you tell your cat not to eat the open can of tuna on the counter and then walk away, the cat is going to eat the tuna. You can't just leave them to their own devices and hope the rules you put in place are followed. When you walk back in and see that the tuna can is empty, its easy to blame the cat, but it doesn't matter because the tuna is already gone. When the taxes aren't getting paid, and there is no one watching the corporations, you can blame the rich all you like, but it doesn't matter because that money isn't getting paid if no one is watching them. Oversight. Regulations. That is how you bring the rich back down to earth. You don't start at the end and hope the rest just fills itself in. But, please, keep downvoting.
The objectice isn't to get them to pay the taxes.
The objective is to get them to lower their taxable income, either by decreasing revenue, or by increasing expenses.
The objective is to reduce the amount of profit they rake out of the business and turn into financial securities.
The goal is achieved when they try to figure out how to claim a yacht as a business expense (thus paying a shipbuilder their wages) rather than buying stock in a shipbuilding company (taking productivity from that shipbuilder).
The goal is achieved when they are forced to avoid the punitively-high tax, because those avoidance strategies are going to keep them from hoarding wealth-producing assets.
They are already avoiding their taxes. Increasing them won't change that. Decreasing them won't change it either. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here and trying to explain the three card monte to a kindergarten class. The money just moves around. No matter what card you flip, it's the wrong one, because they've put the queen in an offshore account. We have to regulate and oversee. We have to put leadership in place to ensure that the laws are followed, otherwise it won't matter if the yacht was paid for or expensed out, because it will be in international waters where all we can do is watch them wave from it.
You need the remeber your audience - lemmy isn't exactly filled with people that understand economics, they just think "higher taxes are better!"