What's the big secret? If you're proud of what you earn and the taxes that flow from that then show it. If you're not proud, then that should be exposed too.
1) There are many people in my life who would make it much more difficult if they knew how much I make. I've kept it from them for a very good reason and they're definitely the kind of people who would just go and look that kind of stuff about random people they know. This would tell them how much I have in investments and property as well.
2) It would necessarily reveal far too much personally identifying information or not serve the purpose you'd want it to. If I had ran away from an abusive or stalking relationship, they could simply look up the state and municipality I pay taxes in, and what company I worked for, making it almost trivial to find me. This could also mean finding (and targeting) anyone that works for a certain company.
3) It would be far too easy for companies to use this information for any number of purposes. I'm currently getting a huge amount of mail about moving companies and brokers because my landlord publicly put my condo up for sale. It could get much worse than that.
4) If I'm the daughter of an extremely conservative family but I'm working at a strip club, even if I'm "not proud" of what I do that give no good cause to expose it to the world.
These are the situations from off the top of my head and already it would reveal far more information than I'm comfortable with. "If you have nothing to fear than you have nothing to hide" is never an appropriate excuse to curtail anyone's privacy.
Do you think your 4 examples are endemic problems in those countries?
Because what you pay in taxes has been public information in my home country Norway for many decades. None of the problems you mentioned have been an issue.
As hard as it may seem, Norway values BOTH transparency AND privacy more than the US. So there are lots of laws which protect your privacy.
1) It does not state HOW you make your living. Just roughly how much you pay in taxes and how much you earn. The details are left out.
2) There are always systems in place to help protect citizens with special needs for more privacy.
3) Companies in Norway cannot pass around information about you to each other or store information about you it does not strictly need. It is not like the US where companies can en masse huge amounts of data about customers and sell it to each other. Information gathering for commercial purposes is quite restricted.
4) As a rule in Norway, you are informed about people obtaining information about you. E.g. if a company does a credit history check on me, I will get a mail stating exactly what company credit checked me and word by word, what information they where provided. The credit check info leaves out a lot of the details that would be available in the US.
Same goes if somebody checks your taxes and income. You are informed of who makes the check and what info they have been provided.
I hope this gives an idea of how you can in fact embrace greater transparency while at the same time promote stronger privacy laws.
I can remark that Norwegian politicians and CEOs are among the lowest paid in the world despite Norway being among the richest countries in the world. I think our long tradition for transparency is a contributing factor to that. Not so fun to be greedy when it is obvious to everyone.
Most of your examples also seem to impact those that present differently than they really are, I’m not saying that that’s not a valuable ability but it’s interesting. I wonder how much of our current political situation is due to believing or rejecting how others present...
Why would "strip club" be exposed? Only the amount you make should be. Your arguments all seem rather selfish. I realise the proposal might be extremely uncomfortable for some, but consider the overall benefits.
If I ask for you credit history or how much you earn or make in taxes, then you will be informed by the government in letter form, exactly what information I was given about you, as well as my name and address.
That makes it a lot less attractive to snoop around in people's data. Hence in Norway it is mainly news organizations that do these kinds of things in relation to writing articles. Otherwise you make yourself look foolish.
Also it is a bit odd that Americans should be so concerned with privacy as you privacy laws are rather weak to begin with. E.g. unlike Norway you can administer drug tests to any employee in the US or do criminal background checks on all new hires. That would be highly illegal in Norway. Only business which can prove to the government that such checks are vital to the type of the business they do would be allowed to do such checks. E.g. working with children.
Basically the US focus its "privacy" laws on hiding information important to the wealthy, while those at the bottom of the latter have most of their sensitive information easily exposed.
But if salaries were transparent, there would be much less reason to beat about the bush regarding job offers - It would be quite clear what the going rate was, and how that related to executive pay, etc.
The reason I don't want to share my tax return is that it reveals my income. The last time I revealed my income it created a lot of negative relationships.
People ask for a lot of fixes to say, pay inequality between men and women, but I think transparent salaries would go a long way and are a fairly simple mechanism. I have very rarely made the experience that pay inequality, if properly justified, was taken the wrong way.
Why? With coworkers who were jealous?
I'd rather not have the in-laws knowing exactly how much I make or have my next employer know exactly how much more they're offering than the last one thank you very much. While I understand that in some countries tax returns are public, those countries are very different than the US in a multitude of ways (which are beyond the scope of this comment, I'm not going write a wall of text, those invite nit picking).
But on the flip side, you'll know exactly how much your colleagues make.
> If you're not proud, then that should be exposed too.
What if I'm not proud because I earn only half of what my neighbor earns?
Really, so much is wasted to display wealth superiority.
That alone is reason enough not to do it.
upper middle class people are juicy targets, rich enough to get some profit, not enough to have proper security. what could go wrong exposing them all in a nice list, indexed and sortable, right?
How is public financial exposure different from living in an affluent area, having an expensive car, etc, etc?
What benefit are we trying to achieve and how does applying that to most corporations get that? Saying we should have it for publicly traded companies makes a lot more sense than every private company let alone every person.
It can be made to work in societies that are already pretty open and equal, but in a highly unequal society like America?
people should be protesting congress, not Amazon, this constant red herring is ridiculous, Amazon, like every other business is trying to compete and will pay as little taxes as possible. Tell congress to change the rules and all businesses will play by better rules.
any other conversation about the meaning of Amazon paying the tax they have to I believe is a waste of time, both parties are guilty and the citizens are guilty for not protesting congress.
They're not, it's a common misconception: https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/academics/clarke_business_...
"Third, corporate directors are not required to maximize shareholder value. As the U.S. Supreme Court recently stated, "modern corporate law does not require for-profit corporations to pursue profit at the expense of everything else, and many do not do so." (BURWELL v. HOBBY LOBBY STORES, INC.) [1] In nearly all legal jurisdictions, disinterested and informed directors have the discretion to act in what they believe to be the interest of the business corporate entity, even if this differs from maximizing profits for present shareholders. Usually maximizing shareholder value is not a legal obligation, but the product of the pressure that activist shareholders, stock-based compensation schemes and financial markets impose on corporate directors."
While I understand your point in misconception 3 and it is salient, I suspect if Amazon acted in a way where no one could understand their strategy to be profitable it would have serious challenges in execution, implementation and most important 'trust'. I use scare quotes here because trust is very hard to build and if the business as a whole appeared to act in an 'irrational' (read not in a way to maximize profits) I would expect investors money to leave as well.
while the law changes over time I expect a business, organization, organism, etc to act in its own self-interest to survive in the best means possible. If Amazon is following the current tax law (I assume the answer is yes here) then every business is doing the same and will protect its profits in the name of competition. I feel the only solution here (if Amazon not paying taxes is a problem) is to go to the people who design these laws. In my opinion if we were playing a board game and Amazon was a player, they are playing by the rules and our issue is truly with the people who made the laws/rules and not with the player itself, if a board game had loop holes they would be abused (and often are) and the solution is not to point and blame the player, it is to communicate with the game creator and advise on why their rules/laws are not fair to begin with. I am pointing at Amazon because this article is about Amazon, however every business(player) is guilty in acting in their own best interest, guilty of trying to survive and win.
I find this really infuriating to see some of the comments below that appear to deliberately put words in my mouth or opinions and miss the point of my argument and I hope more people will review Paul Grahams Hierarchy of Disagreement. essay. While it is not perfect I do believe it is a step in the right direction.
I find myself babbling and may have had far too much wine but I find this response really enlightening but also infuriating at the same time. Surprisingly I find myself thinking of an XKCD comic [0] that I interpret as defending yourself by saying the law allows is the worst defense available. [1]. I admit I pointed out (incorrectly) that they are legally obligated to obtain the biggest profit possible however I think as I said above (meta quote) I expect a business, organization, organism, etc to act in its own self-interest to survive in the best means possible to gain an advantage over preditors, competitors and other external threats (i.e. climate or other non-direct threats)
[1] quote: > (mouse over) I can't remember where I heard this, but someone once said that defending a position by citing free speech is sort of the ultimate concession; you're saying that the most compelling thing you can say for your position is that it's not literally illegal to express.
all of the above said, I find myself wanted to by you a few coffees/scotchs/wines and continue this discussion for an entire weekend.
I really appreciate your response.
This isn't Amazon's fault. This is the government's fault. This is the citizenry's fault for not holding their government accountable to holding Amazon accountable. Amazon, the government, and "citizens" are guilty.
I'm with you until you get to the point where it's somehow my fault that over the decades those with the most money and influence stacked the deck to create favorable tax statuses for those with the most money. FOH with that.
Also the IRS is part of the executive branch and had it's funding and therefor ability to enforce the tax code gutted year after year. That's now 2 of the 3 branches we have to "protest".
You're right, it's our problem.
Your argument is morally reprehensible.
The fact is the tax laws exist and Amazon doesn’t break them. There are a lot of loopholes and financial maneuvering to get away from some taxes, and Amazon isn’t the only culprit here — but quite possibly is the biggest — and getting out of paying taxes is something companies and millions of Americans try to do every April.
The number one way to fix this is to vote for representatives and politicians who believe in sane, regular tax plans and who are naturally suspicious of large tech companies like Amazon (and Google, Microsoft, Apple, Netflix, Facebook, etc.) and it’s important for customers to vote economically, “with their wallets”, if they don’t like a companies business practices.
In general though, I believe every publicly traded company should be forced by the government to make their tax returns public and accessible. In fact, I actually believe every tax return ever filed by anyone should be public... but that’s an ideal.
Comparing them to individual behavior is simply not relevant at this stage of discourse. Holding companies to the same standards we hold human beings to might not be a bad idea in some hypothetical future society, but we are absolutely nowhere near there right now and there are a whole lot of more important battles to fight before we can even think about starting to have that conversation.
They just get a rebate on R&D hours invested just like every other company that does software/hardware engineering. People bitching about this should look into their own company's finances because I can almost guarantee their company is filing for that credit.
Fair enough, those people depended on Barclays for their livelihood but not quite what people have in mind when they think about the amount of tax a company pays
Anyway, you can just imagine how companies would use that figure rather than corporate taxes
Good idea though
Well, that's true. If we could count on well reasoned analysis from all concerned, that might be one thing. But I think we all know that likely won't happen. It rarely does with anything actually. And policies based on sound bite scapegoating are rarely a good idea either. Witness, the drug war.
Probably best for congress to just do their jobs, look at every tax return in corporate America, and recommend and make regulatory changes where appropriate. No real need for grandstanding, it wouldn't be helpful. The grandstanding might actually hurt in this case?
It may do other good things, but only after a period of substantial demagoguery and incomprehension.
Free Markets, Liberal Democracy means freedom of exchange of information. We're not talking about National Security Interests here.
If they haven’t, this sounds like pandering. But hey, so’s “let’s axe student debt” instead of the obvious “let’s 20x Pell grants”, so...
But legislatures play this game plenty too.
(And that's not even mentioning the cases where they created the problem in the first place.)
We should funnel many more students into vocational schools where they’d contribute more to society (by not having to revert to waitressing as fall back). They could be nurses, welders, HVAC, etc earning good money. But no, we have many many people regretting their majors and many disillusioned with the job prospects of their peripheral majors.
My pet peeve is the attention elite private schools get. They represent a very small fraction of all students. We should instead ensure state schools remain affordable but also ensure that grades mean something and not everyone “deserves” acceptance. We should push people who don’t fit in academically into vocations rather than string them along and have them fail in a career.
Does "every penny we owe" mean what a layperson would think, or does it mean their lawyers used every weird loophole they could find to make sure they "owe" nothing at all?
The second part of the quote is irrelevant. It's nice that they're creating jobs, but they're only mentioning that to essentially bribe us into accepting being swindled out of money they owe. Just pay your taxes!
You say “just pay your taxes”. What is the amount at which you would believe they are doing just that? What is the standard for which someone who we think isn’t paying their taxes should have their tax returns publicized? (I say punlicized because the IRS already has a mandate to audit, and Congress has statutory authority to request them, so presumably what’s left is publicizing them? I appreciate that’s not what you said though :-))
For corporations investors need to be able o be informed about their business operations - it is what separates it from a scam and prevents the investment system from collapsing as it would if there was nothing stopping anyone from just taking the money and running off with it. Earning and tax information wouldn't make sense as private.
That doesn't mean that employees and customers have no right to privacy because of a corporation. Just like how states don't have rights but the people making them up do.
After the financial crisis, bankers were unpopular, so politicians in the U.K. curried favour with the public by bringing in a banker bonus tax.
Tech companies were once the pride of the nation in the U.S. and the notion of creating tax incentives for tech investment in the U.S. was highly popular. Nowadays, they are no longer popular, so there is now a public outcry for taxing them more.
Tax can't be like that, because investments don't go to where there is a lot of uncertainty.
I do agree that Amazon not paying any tax is an indicator of a broken system that needs fixing. But politicians coming out and saying "I'm going to tax Amazon" is not right either. They should say what the system should be, bring it in, and then stick with it, making sure there is proper enforcement.
They can't just come out during each electoral cycle and say "This year, we like Tesla, so whatever system doesn't have Tesla paying any taxes, that's the right system. And this year, we dislike Amazon, so whatever system levies a lot of taxes on Amazon, that's the system we're going to have. Not sure if the same will still be true next year, but we'll cross that bidge once we get to it."
The issues of that tax code are systemic but that level of abstraction is seldom understood.
So, really, what it was was plainly and simply: "Here are a bunch of people who are disliked by the majority of the electorate. Therefore, let's have them give us some money."
EDIT: This was the story I was talking about: https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/business/global/10pound.h...
We should get rid of the corporate tax rate and tax money when it comes out of corporations to real people (dividends, buybacks, etc) at a revenue neutral rate. Would make things a lot cleaner
This is also possible to do today and when it happens the SEC investigates whether a $100M painting for the CEO's office was an appropriate expenditure of other shareholders money. The tax policy doesn't have a bearing on this type of fraud
But in the recent debates we also discussed if candidates would prosecute Trump after he’s no longer a sitting President, apparently conveniently forgetting that it’s the DoJ, not the President, who decides who to prosecute.
You’re mostly right on tax policy, though a lot of tax policy is set by guidance on and interpretation of the statutes, which the President can influence since Treasury is part of the Executive.
On the other hand, if we set aside the politics of prosecuting an ex-President for a moment (that debate could go on and on), the DOJ is part of the Executive Branch, and the Attorney General is appointed by the President. It would be in those candidates’ power to set that prosecutorial agenda for the DOJ if elected.
(Finally, I’m guessing we also agree that we’re not an statute interpretation or a regulation away from Amazon paying, let’s say, 10% of their SEC-reported profits in taxes.)
It's tempting to take a "tax the bastards" viewpoint and argue that the tax-avoiding companies are the problem, that they're freeloading, scamming the government. That's the message you get from the presidential candidates. But that argument wilfully ignores the most important fact: tax incentives are the way the government pays people and companies to change their behavior.
The incentive says the government will pay you $X if you do some specific thing. Install solar panels, cut carbon emissions, employ members of a vulnerable population. There are thousands of options. They use the tax process to distribute the rewards because it's simpler and cheaper that way.
Low-tax companies are just the ones who operate in spaces with a lot of these incentives. Identifying the companies isn't relevant, the companies aren't the problem. You want to instead identify the incentives that are eating up your revenue. How much does your solar panel incentive cost? That kind of thing.
And before you ask: Yes, offshore income arrangement are another tax incentive. They're more complicated beause they involve several countries competing on tax rates, but it's just another version of the same problem.
People don't understand, so they ask for more information. That's about as honest as it gets.
> tax incentives are the way the government pays people and companies to change their behavior.
Which has nothing to do with motivation. That's a large part of the ask.
Not sure how wise it is for politicians to employ a populist strategy against companies that outstrip them in favorability among the average citizen.
