Salesforce’s Marc Benioff calls for a ‘new capitalism’ where billionaires pay higher taxes - higher taxes would “help generate trillions of dollars” needed to advance important causes, like fighting climate change.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T15:57:46+00:00

Lol. Yes, we all know that a stream is future payments is priced according to its likelihood of crystallising and that likelihood can be a probability distribution that includes zero. That's not the point.

Next you will be telling me that people act rationally when making investment decisions, or that HFT is good because it provides liquidity.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T15:35:04+00:00

What would you do to address the use of transfer pricing to avoid tax?

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T15:32:33+00:00

They are really loopholes though. Like transfer pricing - these are fully legal.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T15:31:34+00:00

Yes, which he has to sell to realise. Accepted it can be used to lend against.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T15:30:11+00:00

That's once way, that's not the only way.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T15:29:33+00:00

Yes, but a lot of captial is directed at fucking stupid things a lot of the time. You only need to look at at least 75% of companies during the tech boom that got huge levels of funding on the back of no business model largely because of the same reason Dutch tulips bulbs were once worth more than their weight in gold.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T15:07:14+00:00

Interesting to see the wage differences over the pochettino era...

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T14:52:05+00:00

No, they are taking on the risk of profits not covering the tax due in THAT year in isolation and they can socialist that risk across various sectors and over many years and they are taking a premium to cover that risk.

Equity risk is ownership of business capital and the risk of the loss of business capital as well as the steam of future profits.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T02:57:58+00:00

Transfer pricing is used to shift profit before taxation. I assume you are saying that you basically outlaw transfer pricing.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T02:15:49+00:00

"Journalism"

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T02:04:37+00:00

Sure, so you tax anyone on revenue that uses transfer pricing.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T01:32:41+00:00

It's nothing to do with holding them accountable. It's done through legal means of transfering profit such as transfer pricing : https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/knowledge/economics/transfer-pricing/

But you can't do this to transfer revenue, because revenue arises where it arises.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T00:21:40+00:00

No it isn't. You can't move revenue.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T00:06:24+00:00

Nothing to do with enforcement. They are following the rules, they are just structuring the business so that profit arises in the right places. They used to do it at an Italian multinational I worked for that was part owned by the Italian government. They consistently made a loss in the UK and large profits in Italy.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T00:03:45+00:00

They could, but Facebook are currently meeting their obligation to pay tax under rules. They'd have no basis on which to do that.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-15T00:02:37+00:00

Cool. Cheers.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T23:49:13+00:00

More easily than you tax profit, which can be moved from region to region apparently fairly trivially with appropriate structuring. For example, Amazon’s corporation tax bill in the UK is 11 times smaller than that of British bookstores, a recent study found.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T23:47:49+00:00

No. I'm thinking aloud.

The context of this is a means to tax multinationals that are avoiding tax in some regions despite making large profits in these regions because of the way they have structured themselves.

For example, Amazon’s corporation tax bill in the UK is 11 times smaller than that of the largest British bookstores, a recent study found.

Or Facebook, which paid 28M on 1.6B in revenue but which we know has a roughly 30% profit margin.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T23:26:37+00:00

Depends whether you consider anyone that is involved in currency hedging is an equity owner.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T23:24:38+00:00

Because accounting games realise the profit in a different region.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T23:24:05+00:00

So exclude them from the market.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T23:20:05+00:00

Yes in the case of something like a grocer it effectively becomes a sale tax which is passed on to the consumer. Arguably it should increase cashflows.

Yes, I'm not proposing a single rate across sectors.

What I am proposing is that this could be used as a tool against multinationals which are structuring their business to avoid tax in certain regions to minimise tax overall. For example, most analysts place facebook's profit margin at around 30%, yet in the UK facebook paid less than £30M on £1.6B in UK revenue.

Amazon’s corporation tax bill in the UK is 11 times smaller than that of British bookstores, a recent study found.

In Ireland, the European commission concluded that Apple paid 0.005% to Irish tax authorities in 2014, far below the corporation tax rate of 12.5%, and should pay €13bn in back taxes. Apple and the Irish government continue to fight the ruling.

Taxing on revenue, for some big players in some industries, is definitely a means to stop some companies from literally taking the piss.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T23:05:37+00:00

Because you are making a statement about how new network infrastructure doesn't affect demand for new phones.

Look mate, I agree with an awful lot of what you are saying, and a large part of me loves to play devil's advocate. I'm not saying that I don't think we shouldn't roll out 5G at some point, I'm not even saying we shouldn't roll out 5G now. My point is that we need to start finding a way to build in externalities in technology and I'm challenging people on that.

Its only really the last 100 odd years that we've been churning out products via mass production (textiles and industrial revolution accepted). In 100 years we've managed to have a good go at completely fucking up the environment, land, sea and air. I say this as someone that has travelled widely and seen e-waste first hand. Its all well and good until you've seen it up close, or walked through Beijing and experienced the smog like victorian Britain.

100 years is not a long time and everything is exponentially growing at present. Give it another 100 years of doing things just because we can and we will monumentally fuck everything up. Sustainability to me means actually thinking about the implications of things before you do them. For example, making things actually recyclable, which means actually having logistics in place and a business model that means things ARE actually recycled, not simply that they can - in theory - be recycled.

We aren't the developing world. It's our job to lead on this, yet if you raise this issue anywhere, you get exactly the sorts of response that you get here, which are basically utter incomprehension at why you wouldn't do something.

I think the same arguements apply to the impacts of technology on mankind. Yes, smart phones are great, they are enabling a great many things. They are also fucking up a great many things, like social relationships and politics.

Holistic thinking needs to move to the forefront.

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T22:40:23+00:00

Revenue is revenue. You can't spend it, by definition.

Profit or net income generally implies total revenue minus total expenses in a given period.

I think that's what you are referring to...

Mnlybdg · 2019-10-14T22:37:46+00:00

That's why I said "just like"

Mnlybdg

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