Actually, quite the opposite. I told them that they wouldn't have to do shit unless I established traction for the idea first (as I mentioned in the post).
Tough to do a TLDR version for everyone else without reading it yourself.
I’m writing about this because yesterday I was a firm believer that Bitstamp is
a company that is responsible for the power it has as the biggest bitcoin exchange,
and I’d like to set them back on track.
Why exactly did you expect that?
None of these BTC exchanges are obligated/compelled/forced to do anything for any of their clients. Bitcoin is no different from any other payment method in the sense that you still have to go through some middlemen who always have to balance customer service with preventing fraud - real or imagined...
Proof of fraud in the court of law is sufficient to pierce the corporate veil and hold the principals accountable. It is another thing that most of the so-called "corporate crimes" fail to clear even the basic bar of proof under due legal process. Just because someone disagrees with a business decision of a corporate executive does not make that decision a crime.
Unlimited liability would have the effect of stifling entrepreneurship and/or export of capital and jobs into more favorable jurisdictions, including offshore shells.
Torts of all sorts can potentially "pierce the veil"; it's probably safer to think of the liability protection of a corporation as something pertaining exclusively to contracts (though that obviously oversimplifies it).
Also remember that the veil does not protect individuals from being found liable their own part in corporate actions. This is the basic promise of a limited partnership: I give you money to start your business. I am liable only to the point of my investment, but you are responsible for all of your decisions.
I think we should just treat corporate C-level officers as unlimited partners with regard to decisions made under their watch. That would mean effectively that business debts that the corporation could not pay would fall on the officers to guarantee, and that things like product liability would be treated a little differently.
I believe the simplest explanation is that while all you need is a preponderance of evidence to sue in civil court, you need beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal court which is what is required to pierce the veil of the corporation.
Put another way, if I prove in a civil suit that you wronged me, that is not automatically enough proof to go after you criminally (which is likely what most people believe).
The less the sky falls the more imminent the danger. Ask any christian, or other believer in an apocalyptic cult, the end times have never been closer.
From the wiki page on doomsday cults:
"Referring to his study, Festinger and later other researchers have attempted to explain the commitment of members to their associated doomsday cult, even after the prophecies of their leader have turned out to be false. Festinger explained this phenomenon as part of a coping mechanism called dissonance reduction, a form of rationalization. Members often dedicate themselves with renewed vigor to the group's cause after a failed prophecy, and rationalize with explanations such as a belief that their actions forestalled the disaster, or a belief in the leader when the date for disaster is postponed."
I don't know about Al Gore's prediction or the basis of it. He is not an expert but perhaps his prediction was based off of the opinion of experts. The opinion piece you linked to hardly qualifies as a valid counter to alarmism.
The variation of the extent of arctic ice is much less during winter than it is during summer. Since 2007 there have been three years where the minimum ice extent has been below 2 standard deviations of the 1981-2010 mean according to the National Snow and Ice Center. Since the 80s the volume of arctic sea ice has been halved.
Al Gore's predication was wrong. Arctic sea ice continues to decline and the arctic experienced an unusually warm winter. This is according to the National Snow and Ice Center. Here is a quote from their blog,
"While the eastern half of the United States has dealt with a cold and snowy winter, temperatures in the Arctic have been distinctly higher than average."
Everything will be fine for the planet as it is an inanimate object. Not everything will be fine for humans.
Yep, the world really is that simple - abolish government and things will get better. It's a shame so many people don't realize how easy it is to fix all of their problems.
To be fair, this guy did talk about politicians power being limited, not abolishing the government. There are clearly good things we should take out of libertarianism, which is why most people join these fringe movements.
> Please stop being facetious, libertarianism != anarchism.
Please. Anarchists (esp. anarcho-capitalists) have made up a significant portion of libertarians in the US since the Vietnam war. The 1974 Libertarian National Convention intentionally made the Libertarian Party platform ambiguous on the desirability of the state's existence (the Dallas Accord) in order to stave off a full scale war between anarchists and minarchists for goodness sakes.
Plenty of libertarians would be happy to abolish government altogether and truly believe that we'd all be better off for it.
(Non-anarchic) Libertarianism goes beyond asserting that certain individual rights are inalienable. It embraces the idea of limited government, which is really quite an insidious and anti democratic concept when you think about it. What classical libertarians believe is that government must exist for certain limited functions, but that democratic forces shouldn't be able to expand the scope of those functions. In other words, people should be bound by government, but not be able to exercise self determination in shaping that government, but rather must be bound by a government designed by philosopher kings, who divine from sacred scripture which functions of government are legitimate and not. The right to property? Makes the cut. Okay for the government to hire jack boot thugs to enforce property rights. The right to live free of discrimination and economic coercion? Doesn't make the cut. Not a legitimate function of government.
I was with you up to the sensationalist examples. "Sacred scripture"? How about "bound by a constitution created by the best minds of the day".
And how do you suppose rights are to be enforced if not the constituted government? By saying please? Or everybody shooting it out? Hope you're a good shot or your 'rights' go out the window.
Why exactly am I meant to be mollified by the fact that our Constitution was the best thing that a bunch of rich, well-connected, slaveholding elites were able to do with trendiest political philosophies of the 1600s?
And, how do you square an appeal to the framers of the Constitution for limited government with the actual decisions of those framers over the first 30 years of the US Government?
In establishing a process that allows for the orderly application of the input of the governed, of "clearing the channels" for democracy, the Constitution has been an extraordinarily effective instrument. In establishing the fundamental principles and values of that government --- something it barely even tries to do --- it is much less effective. Searching the Constitution for principles and values inevitably involves an element of tea leaf reading; pretty quickly you're out of the text of the Constitution and into the Federalist Papers, and now we're talking about a rule by three dead guys.
If people are bound by a constitution, created by the best minds of the day, which specify a government of limited powers not amenable to democratic expansion, then what is that but rule by philosopher kings?
Note that the U.S. Constitutional scheme is not one of minarchist government. The powers of the federal government are limited to those enumerated, but the scheme presupposes the existence of state governments, whose powers are nearly unlimited.[1] Moreover, the Constitution guarantees that these state governments will have republican form.
[1] More or less, the states were considered to have inherited the sovereign powers of the British Parliament, which were limited only by unwritten British constitution (i.e. the historical rights of Englishmen).
Calling for limits on the powers, scope and size of government is not at all the same as abolishing government.
Correct me if I'm mistaken, but on your view, limiting the government's ability to spy on its own citizens without warrants is tantamount to an anarchist's topsy-turvydom in which people are free to kill and steal from one another with impunity.
> It's a shame so many people don't realize how easy it is to fix all of their problems.
Libertarianism maintains that government is not supposed to solve all your problems. That is the job of the free market: voluntary associations and mutually-beneficial transactions. Government's role is to secure the liberties that underlie the free market.
When politicians offer to "solve" people's problems, they are usually offering to steal for their constituents. "Don't have enough money for healthcare, retirement, food, housing, education, [insert your particular problem here]? Vote for me and I'll take it from your countrymen by force of government and give it to you." Voters for such politicians are thieves by proxy. It's a shame that people resort to thievery to solve their problems. But it's not a mystery as to why abolishing such a system would be unpopular.
Please don't write comments like this. You're not a grand political philosopher and this isn't the School of Athens. This low brow form of ideological dribble can just as easily be said in the opposite direction, that capitalists are exploiting their workers and that the free market is inherently unethical, and nobody is better off. If you think the world is that black and white then you're wrong.
Asserting that the speaker shouldn't make arguments because he's not "a grand political philosopher" and that his comments are a "low brow form of idealogical dribble" does not contribute to a good discussion. It's ironic that this is how you attempt to raise the level of discussion.
My comment was in response to the suggestion that government was popular because it solved people's problems and that therefore libertarianism or anarchism is unworkable. "Yep, the world really is that simple - abolish government and things will get better. It's a shame so many people don't realize how easy it is to fix all of their problems."
My response was that government does solve problems, just in an illegitimate way. Government solves people's problems by giving them benefits that they would not otherwise have, at least not without a lot of work.
The situation is like slavery of pre 1860s in the southern United States. Slavery was obviously wrong, but it survived because it "solved problems" for its constituents.
In both cases eliminating the injustice would result in making the lives of many of the system's beneficiaries worse off. Specifically, in this case, people are willing to accept the rule of evil people like those portrayed in House of Cards because it makes their personal lives more pleasant than it would be otherwise.
If you think the world is that black and white then you're wrong.
How can you be so sure that the world, properly understood, is all shades of grey? That you are so certain of nothing but that the world is grey - is that not itself a "black and white" perspective?
Well, me. I loved the show (yes, even later seasons[1]) much like I loved "The American President"[2], but would vote against the man in a heartbeat. They do some pretty despicable things while in power[3]. Plus, I notice we end the series in a war.
Re-watch the series and look at what a citizen of this land would get from the White House. It is not a great picture of an administration we would want.
Of course, no TV administration is going to be a good thing. Drama requires conflict and over 7 seasons a lot of rules get broke in a heroic manner. In real life, we call that abuse of executive privilege.
The only thing I can say is President Santos and his education plan is worse for every rural area and budget.
1) Although in later seasons, most of the writers wrote the Republicans as villain of the week instead of honorable adversaries
2) Martin Sheen is amazing in that too
3) not to mention the whole lying about the President's health and never mind the Vice President
The central issue here is one of limiting risk. It's far easier to destroy prosperity than it is to achieve it, similar to a reputation. It's less important for a good politician to be able to achieve good things than it is for a bad politician not to be able to achieve bad things.
For example, one might decide to make massive political reforms which sound good (and populist) without fully considering all their implications, and thereby destroy prosperity
To me it reads like the usual right wing rhetoric, and that any tax collection is some form of evil socialism. Not quite sure how these people expect their flag waving military, for example, to be funded without the big corporation paying their fair share, but there you go.
Never understood why many Americans don't see paying tax as the ultimate act of patriotism, paying for the country they claim to love. They love the country, but resent paying for it. How does that work? Are they the ultimate freetards?
I love my country in spite of what our government has done to it in recent decades. I do not support the majority of dollars the US government spends, but feel powerless to effect change.
I resent paying for foreign wars I don't agree with, for secretive government agencies that unnecessarily pry into our private lives, and for ridiculous departments like the DHS which are largely ineffective and throw money away.
I would love to pay more for public education and a public healthcare system. I would love to pay more for innovative, effective solutions to poverty and homelessness. I'm happy to pay for the maintenance of our roads and for services like police and fire departments and public libraries.
Unfortunately, there's no good way for me to express this preference. All viable political candidates at the national level want to spend money on too many things I do not want for the voting apparatus to be of any help here.
So I sit back and grudgingly pay my taxes, hoping that people of like mind but with more political acumen and drive than I have will be able to make sense of the mess eventually.
I could understand not wanting to contribute to NSA funding, but it does sound like a vocal minority (?) does believe that tax collection should be as low as possible. Possibly due to a mistaken belief in trickle-down economics (if something yellow-coloured trickles down from the top, it doesn't mean it's gold...), or maybe caused by a belief that increasing disparities between social classes is a desirable goal.
To me it reads like the usual right wing rhetoric, and that any tax collection is some form of evil socialism. Not quite sure how these people expect their flag waving military, for example, to be funded without the big corporation paying their fair share, but there you go.
Bunk. Being anti-tax has nothing to do with being "right wing" at all. In fact, the entire term "right wing" is 100% meaningless in modern terms.
Plenty of us who oppose taxation ALSO oppose our empire building overseas military operations, and aggressive foreign policy, and want the military rolled back to only what is required for defense of the USA. I for one want the US out of the "world police" role.
Just cutting a huge chunk out of the military budget would be a great start on reducing government spending and decreasing the tax burden.
Never understood why many Americans don't see paying tax as the ultimate act of patriotism, paying for the country they claim to love.
Our country and our government are not the same thing. And Americans have a long history of having issues with excessive taxation by the government.
What sort of value do you think the typical American taxpayer gets out of their taxes as contrasted with somebody in one of the wealthier European countries?
I'm confused by your statement - a right-leaning Government is attempting to collect more taxes from multinationals who have huge sales in a country and pay little tax and yet you're claiming that they also consider tax collection some form of evil socialism?
The Conservatives are right leaning from a European perspective and compared to most of the UK governments since the war.
From an American perspective they are more akin to the Democrats: they support gay marriage, support legal abortion, don't support reintroducing the death penalty, support public health care (to some extent), generally support public education, do at least claim to accept that environmental issues are a concern (although we do have an environment secretary who denies climate changes science…). They support giving benefits to at least certain groups in society (pensioners, land owners) and accept the need to provide some level of support for the disabled, unemployed, single parents and so on. They made commitments to maintaining the level of foreign aid. For all their talk of pulling out of the European Convention on Human Rights they have not actually done so. So they have a lot of policies that your typical Republican would be fairly disgusted by.
This is because the US Democratic party could be considered center-right by European standards, with the Republicans heading into extreme-right.
If a party in the UK hinted at dismantling public health care (the NHS) out loud, they'd be lynched (either in the polls or the streets, whichever was more convenient).
Small companies(S corps and LLCs) don't pay corporate taxes. C corps pay a wide variety of taxes depending on where they earn their profits, how aggressively they working to minimize tax burden, and how hard their industry lobbyists work.
Certainly some companies pay far more and far less than their fair share. I'd wager the tech companies who generally have little in the way of physical presence where they earn revenue, and have towns and cities competing for the chance to host their offices and data centers, probably pay very little relatively.
Obviously providing jobs for tax payers isn't unique to companies. I can pay for a nanny, chauffeur, and private cook even if I don't have a company. Since your logic is "X provides jobs so X shouldn't be taxed" then I shouldn't have to be taxed if I have any household staff, no?
That logic makes no sense. (If it makes sense to you, please elaborate. How many employees and how many FTEs does one need before this special exemption kicks in, and why that level?)
Now, by "company" I assume you mean "corporation." Corporations form for various reasons, the biggest being liability. Without it, shareholders could be sued individually.
This protection is worth something to the shareholders. I think it's perfectly reasonable that the state, which is the authority that grants companies the right to exist, should be able to extract something from the company - taxes and fees, for example - in order that the company may continue.
Do you think that corporations should exist without paying any fees to the state? If so, why should they get liability protection for free?
If the tax rate is too high, then people could switch from the corporate form of company to a sole proprietorship. A sole proprietor can have employees, and thus "provide jobs for tax payers", even though the business itself is not taxed separately from the proprietor's income.
Now, obviously there's a large set of trade-offs, and the example I gave - a switch to sole proprietorship - is too blunt. My point is that the idea that "provide jobs" necessarily implies "should not be taxed" is so simplistic that it more indicates a lack of understanding of why there are companies in the first place.
A corporation doesn't get liability protection for free, the corporation itself remains liable for whatever it does while the shareholders (but not board members) are protected.
In a global economy, where corporations can exist anywhere they like, taxing corporate profits is almost a guarantee that we'll see the same thing that happened to manufacturing jobs happen to corporate headquarters. The corporations will move to countries with lower tax rates because they can and because it will save them billions. I'd move my HQ to keep a billion in the bank instead of giving to the clowns trying to run the country.
I think you're adding in a nuance which I wasn't trying to clarify. Corporations provide a legal protection that doesn't exist for sole proprietorships, partnerships, or some other forms. (For example, like Lloyd's of London over most of its history, where 'Names' backed policies with personal wealth and had unlimited liability.)
You are correct in that it's not "for free", and the corporation is liable. My point is that corporate existence only occurs through state involvement, and there's no obvious reason why the state cannot make money from that.
You follow up with a market reason. Your statement is correct. Companies (and people, and employers) can use tax differences in the world to their advantage. You are free to move your HQ should you wish.
And that leads us to the topic mentioned by the linked-to article. Quoting from the OECD's "About BEPS" page:
> In an increasingly interconnected world, national tax laws have not kept pace with global corporations, fluid capital, and the digital economy, leaving gaps that can be exploited by companies who avoid taxation in their home countries by pushing activities abroad to low or no tax jurisdictions. This undermines the fairness and integrity of tax systems. The project, quickly known as BEPS (Base Erosion and Profit Shifting) is looking at whether the current rules allow for the allocation of taxable profits to locations different from those where the actual business activity takes place and if not, what could be done to change this.
I can view them as lots of ways. For that matter, I've owned two companies myself, one where the business income was part of my income and one where they were separate.
But I'm not answering your question as you've not answered the ones I posed to you. As it stands, it appears that you don't know much about corporations nor corporate taxation. It seems rather a waste of my time to continue this exchange if I don't think you're making a reasonable effort at it, or tire of weak attacks on my character.
Q: Since your logic is "X provides jobs so X shouldn't be taxed" then I shouldn't have to be taxed if I have any household staff, no?
A: Nope, that wasn't my logic.
Q: Do you think that corporations should exist without paying any fees to the state? If so, why should they get liability protection for free?
A: Government is for the people, so they pay the tax. Liability protection for shareholders would be covered by dividend tax.
Your phrase was "Is there any point in taxing companies at all - they provide jobs for tax payers."
How is that not "X provides jobs therefore X should not be taxed?" Note too my followup: How many employees and how many FTEs does one need before this special exemption kicks in, and why that level?)
You propose an alternative, which is that liability protection is covered by dividend tax.
That's not practical. Google has never paid a dividend, and Berkshire Hathaway has only paid a dividend once since Warren Buffett took over. There are many other companies which don't, or which only rarely, pay dividends.
Why should their shareholders get liability protection when they've never (or almost never) paid said tax?
I see you omitted capital gains tax from your list of two possible tax sources. That of course only applies to companies which make a profit, so shareholders who don't make a profit from their investment (or who never realize their gains over their life) are still getting liability protection for free.
You seem to argue that only the people should pay taxes. That's a perfectly reasonable argument. But as soon as you allow for an entity which is able to control money independent of any person - ie, a corporation - then by definition "any contribution imposed by government [...] whether under the name of toll, tribute, tallage, gabel, impost, duty, custom, excise, subsidy, aid, supply, or other name" is a tax on that entity.
There's no reason for the government to allow a special entity without getting at least something in return. You don't like income tax on corporations. But you haven't explained why you don't like corporate registration fees or the Maryland law which imposes fees based on the number of issued and outstanding shares. For that matter, if a company isn't taxable because it isn't a person, then who pays property tax, payroll tax, customs duties, sales tax, etc?
That is, why is income somehow special from all of the other taxes that a corporation pays?
Taxed at a much lower rate than ordinary people's income though. (And more to the point the kind of person who gets money from dividends is less likely to spend it on tax-generating economic activity like buying food)
Yes, the logic is that the corporation paid tax on their profits before dividends. Perhaps there's a case for corporation tax abolition and increased dividend taxation?
I actually wouldn't be averse to that, but it'd be hard to internationally coordinate such a change (and it would have to be internationally coordinated, or corporations would move to the places that had the lowest corporation tax while their owners would move to the places that had the lowest dividend tax). And there's still the problem of keeping your wealth in a corporation and avoiding paying tax on it until you use it (which creates the wrong incentive - we want to encourage rich investors to spend the money and put it back into the system, or at least invest in new ventures, rather than leaving it in their company's bank account accumulating compound interest).
I guess time will tell, but I think this is a pretty slam dunk trademark infringement case (like it or not). Also it isn't a function of them taking the bait or not, trademarks have to be actively defended if the owner wishes to retain them.
Without venture capital RapGenius "growth hacking" tactics would never attract as much scrutiny.
If RapGenius were not a company going out of the way to promote their "VC pedigree" (even if this is what happened indirectly, because that's what the people / press / bloggers wanted to talk about), they would be a lot more likely to fly under the radar.
Even if someone were to write the same kind of post about their "growth hacking" that started the whole "scandal", it would be less likely to make the top of HN and attract a close look from Matt Cutts...
They were trying to have it both ways - generate huge publicity and do something that does not go well with increased scrutiny. Live by PR, die by PR.
What would you expect? If you live in a state like California and are in the highest tax bracket, your total tax rate (federal + state + local + various surtaxes) would be close to 60%. It is ludicrous to expect most people to just fork over such an outrageous percentage of their earnings without complain.
It is bad, but not quite that bad. If you just look at taxes on wages for someone making $250k per year, you will pay about 40% in obvious taxes in California. There are sales and other taxes on top of this and some additional regulatory taxes as well.
Since I have operated companies with substantial payrolls in California and therefore been privy to the cost details, I can say that the total outlay to various government authorities when a paycheck is cut can exceed the total value of the paycheck in California but not much beyond that; maybe 52% to government, 48% to the employee.
In summary, you will only approach 60% if you include all possible taxes on the income including the spending of said income, which does not happen often in practice. Even in California, the worst case is closer to 50% if you manage your income reasonably well.
This still adds up to a lot of money if you compare it to a state like Washington with similar software engineering wages and no income tax, since that adds up to tens of thousands of extra income.
Say your income is $406,750 (highest federal tax bracket for an individual). Federal income tax is $118,188.75. California income tax is $37,941.45. Effective tax rate is 38%. San Francisco could add 1.5% so now we're at around 40%.
(Tax advisor here.) You don't get a 60% rate in the US. Anyone who claims otherwise doesn't understand the basic principles of U.S. taxation or is lying to try and make a political point.
State taxes are deductible for federal income tax purposes (meaning that they reduce your taxable income as determined for federal purposes). Also, Medicare and Medicaid taxes are part of payroll taxes (or FICA, for the self-employed), so you don't pay them both.
As every tax advisor in the CNBC article pointed out, Michelson knows diddly squat about taxes. He was taking every single tax rate and adding them together, but he should have been averaging them out. For example, the 20% rate on his capital gains and dividends replaces the 39.6% rate; he's double-counting some of the FICA taxes, and worst of all, he thinks his marginal rate (the highest rate he pays) applies to all of his income.
Thank you. I am so tired of seeing this 'federal + state income taxes are cumulative' lie. Not only is it dishonest, it's an insult to the intelligence since anyone who who has ever done their own taxes knows they're deductible just by filling out the 1040.
>>So the maximum Mickelson could pay in state and income taxes, payroll and other income-related taxes would be around 60 percent. But that rate is only if he did absolutely no tax planning or basic deductions.
So it's absolute worse case scenario then. Reading the rest of the article, it sounds like he can get it to below 50% with some moderate effort. Since rich people can afford professional accountants, I conclude he actually could get it to below 50% if he wanted or his accountants could suggest some tax loophole in another state to get it below 50%.
A further improvement could be to move from California to say Nevada and pay no state tax at all. The next step would be reorganizing the business structure to keep most income / assets in the offshore jurisdictions. So on, so on, so on...
See, you are starting to justify cutting the tax rate from 60% to 50%, but why stop there?
The problem is created by the government/public asking for 60% to begin with and creating the sticker shock.
1) Yes, but if you legally reside in California [edit] or continue to do business in California, you still owe California taxes. Indeed, California will treat you as having not actually left California--and the federal courts would agree with them. (These jurisdictional principles have basic tax law worldwide for more than a century.) If you don't pay your income taxes to the jurisdiction(s) in which it is owed, you've committed a felony, and you'll end up paying all of the taxes owed, plus penalties and penalty-rate interest. There's also the potential for jail time.
2) There are many tax-regimes that are specifically targeted to prevent the movement of business assets offshore. In the US, running afoul of these rules is a minimum of $10,000 per violation (depending on the circumstances, potentially meaning per asset), plus the possibility of criminal sanctions. Moreover, locating assets offshore doesn't eliminate tax jurisdiction--you still owe income taxes in the jurisdiction in which you earn the income. (Basic international tax law.) All you really accomplish is to make yourself subject to additional income taxes in another jurisdiction, and worse--you may have rendered yourself out of eligibility for tax treaties that would have eliminated the double taxation.
3) Stop spreading FUD. The government isn't asking for 60%. And that's besides the point. Before the Reagan "Revolution", the marginal rate was greater than 60%. Right now, taxes are at near-historical lows. If you would prefer not to pay taxes, you could always move to a zero-tax haven like Somalia. I hear it's a lovely place this time of year.
Dubai is a lovely place as long as you love empty desert visas, sandstorms, and you don't mind not having many of the freedoms or safeties that you would enjoy in the US, Europe, or even most of Asia.
For example, public kissing is a felony in Dubai. A woman walking around in public "indecently clothed" is a felony (though exceptions are provided for hotel guests and beach visitors). Drinking is a felony, though hotels and other tourist spots are excepted. There is no free speech in the UAE. If you badmouth the royal family, you've committed a felony. If you badmouth Islam, you could be put to death (but most likely would be killed by religious zealots long before trial). Worse, for expatriates--if you aren't a UAE citizen and you commit a violation of your employment agreement, you've committed a felony and your visa is subject to destruction, effectively barring you from leaving the country without the assistance of your embassy.
Oh...and by the way...if you're a foreign corporation, you end up paying a 50+% income tax. While there technically is no income tax in Dubai, all companies doing business in any UAE member state must be at least 50% owned by a local company, and by law, all eligible local companies are owned by the state or a member of the royal family.
I have quite a few clients that operate in Dubai. Without exception, they limit their time in Dubai to strictly what is necessary for their business, because it's a decidedly unpleasant place to be once you've experienced the very limited touristy options.
Free economic zones like the Dubai Internet City exist, where 100% foreign ownership is permitted. I agree that there are many other issues though. Could I have your input on this please (if you have the time): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6904888 .. I'd love to hear your opinion since you have a lot of knowledge in this field.
Unfortunately, due to your admission that you ran the whole thing illegally, and in the EU, I can't make any suggestions (even in general terms) without running afoul of legal restrictions (I'm not an EU lawyer) or my firm's tax practice restrictions (due to the potential illegality of your prior structure/activities). I'm not even allowed to refer you to one of my firm's local offices.
I would suggest that you hire a local (to you) lawyer. Since it appears that you also have accounting needs, you should look for a firm which provides both legal and accounting services.
As for the Dubai Internet City: it's intended for specific business activities within the Free Zone. It's not a panacea that gives you access to the rest of Dubai or the UAE (for that you still need a 50% local owner.) That's great if you want to do business in the Free Zone, but if you're not a local to that region then there are far superior jurisdictions to be located if you plan on having international business operations.
Also, the royal family has a tendency to radically change laws every time a new generation comes into power, so the current business-favorable laws may change for the worse in a few years. If that happens, it could be very difficult to get out.
Oh please. Your CA income taxes are deductible, IIRC there's a line on the 1040 specifically for you to fill in your state income taxes. And I say that as someone who has filed self-employed for several years and so pay double the payroll taxes (ie picking up the employer's part as well as the employees).
I was trying to figure out where this was myself, digging thru last year's tax forms. Looks like you need to itemize and complete a Schedule A to use it.
You're talking about at least 2 different taxpayers: the corporation, and it's owner(s).
Also, dividends to shareholders are not subject to a 39.6% rate. By definition, any dividend from a U.S. corporation is a "qualified dividend" subject to the 0-20% rates (plus potentially up to 4.3% in Medicare and Medicaid investment taxes).
Indeed tax rates are out of control for those who work hard, smart and strive for a better life.
When your making say 50k the amount of taxes they take from you is no sweat. Though when your hard work pays off and you start making six figures you wonder huh I'm not making six figures and wont see six figures in my pocket until I start making north of 160K a year.
If you want to "collectively decide" how to "better use" MY money, I can just move it to a different jurisdiction and you'll get what you deserve - nothing. If the value of what your "collective decision" gives me for "60% tax bill" is not there, the money will rightfully leave.
I'm sure public infrastructure, public schooling, police and fire departments, national defense, etc etc had absolutely nothing to do with your success, and society as a whole does not deserve a single cent back.
Yup, definitely couldn't have gotten to where we are without that well-used defense budget in going to war with Iraq and having the NSA monitoring all our communications.
Excluding sales tax since that's consumption based and not income based, how much money would a person have to earn, and under what conditions, to hit a 60% marginal rate?
It's not possible to pay a 60% marginal rate in the US unless you're paying tax penalties for previous underpayments of taxes. CA and NY have the highest tax burdens, and the highest marginal rate you could theoretically get is only 55%.
39.6% federal rate plus the 13.3% CA state rate + 0.9% high-income Medicare tax = 53.8% rate on non-investment income. Since we're talking about marginal rates, you wouldn't include the FICA or payroll taxes, as these are capped at lower thresholds than the marginal rates. (The exception is the 0.9% high-income Medicare tax, which only applies to the highest bracket.) But since federal taxable income excludes state taxes, you can't actually combine the state and federal marginal rates; you get a meaningless number.
Investment income is subject to lower rates. The federal rates vary from 0-28% depending on the type of investment and the tax bracket of the taxpayer. For example, lowest-bracket taxpayers have a 0% rate on investment income; highest-bracket taxpayers have a 20% rate on dividends and capital gains and pay 28% for income on collectibles.
Don't worry, you are not the problem...the problem is all these morally, self righteous people doing their best to abide by the intent of the tax code even when they think the system isn't fair (or well managed)....even though you have more control in what is 'collectively decided' then they do...
logically speaking, for "Controversy drives page views" = P and "Just ignoring them is the best revenge" = Q, in this case P implies not Q. if controversy drives page views then by definition they're hard to ignore (as long as they're controversial).
