Just stop buying stuff from Amazon.
3 Likes
millions of Americans will not get their customary tax rebate this year, and many Americans will owe additional tax.
MAGA:
- Make Americans Grovel Again
- Make America Gilded Again
3 Likes
I don’t think that is likely to solve the problem. And in many ways I like Amazon (I know you weren’t directing this at me personally, I’m just using myself as a pretty typical Amazon shopper as an example).
The problem is as others have said, systemic. And it can actually be solved VERY simply. All we have to do is vote for politicians who actually represent the average people, instead of the extremely wealthy and related interests.
I said simple… not easy!
I buy stuff from Amazon all the time. In work I have to get prices and buy the best value (or sometimes quickest to arrive) and that’s often amazon. It would be wrong for me not to. And it’s not reasonable to expect hard pressed workers, families etc. to buy things at higher prices than they need to. People can’t always afford to do that. Instead we need to look at the regulatory systems whereby debt and venture capital are used to gut whole industries and create massive vertically integrated monopolies. The three most common online booksites I buy from are Amazon, Book Suppository, and ABE: all owned by amazon.
5 Likes
Pass a minimum tax bill for those above a certain income.
1 Like
10 Likes
Ask Eddie Lampert. (Maybe he did!)
1 Like
hey. the law was given to us by jesus. he shined his light on the founders and handed him the tablets. the law is the law. don’t question these things.
okay, okay, so rich people get to change the law in their favor. but don’t forget that they’re only rich because they are so good at what they do. they are exceptional, like america is exceptional, and if you prey… oops… i meant pray… hard enough - someday you might be too.
10 Likes
Same here. We’re trying to spread our $$ to sites like chewy(.)com for pet supplies and CVS(.)com for health related stuff. Somehow I lost a vegetable peeler from Sweden that had remained sharp for over a decade, so went to amazon to buy a new one. They had it (supposedly), but reviews complained of lousy, cheap counterfeits from China. We went back to vermontcountrystore(.)com to replace the darn thing.
Basically I’ve lost trust in Amazon, due to the counterfeiting and fake reviews problem.
4 Likes
Nice!
So tell me…really…
How are the withdrawals?
Hang in there!
1 Like
No withdrawal whatsoever. Bezos can go f___ himself.
1 Like
Excellent!
I definitely need a bit of
your resolve…
1 Like
NOL carryforwards make all the sense in the world. The fact that they expire at all seems unfair to the business/ taxpayer.
Say a company has net profits as follows for 4 years:
($10M)
$10M
($10M)
$10M
If they are taxed on their good years and don’t get credit for their bad years, then they are going to be out of business very quickly. Over this 4 year period, they made no money at all. Then how are they going to pay the tax?
It would be like making a seasonal business like a golf course pay taxes for just their summer month windfall and then not letting them deduct their expenses for the rest of the year. NOL carryforwards are just an extension of that logical concept beyond the arbitrary fiscal year.
3 Likes
That doesn’t make any sense to me. If a company’s earnings are like your example, they probably need to refine their business model.
Or maybe we should scrap taxes on corporations altogether (and Citizens United while we’re at it), and tax the living shit out of wealthy humans?
Whatever we do, it’s very obvious that there are laws that make sense in some situations, but are exceptionally abused by the rich and powerful. I say: FUCK the rich and powerful!
EAT THE RICH!
1 Like
No, they will be incentivised to do better!
That’s even more bootstraps for them to pull themselves up by.
8 Likes
The NOL is a way of making taxes less arbitrary. It smooths out income so the taxes you pay are related to your actual income rather than how good your tax planner is at massaging your income to fit the fiscal year.
1 Like
A breakeven business isn’t necessarily bad if it employs a lot of people. Every profitable business in America could be breakeven if it wanted to just by increasing salaries.
Plenty of businesses lose money because of things outside of their control- like recessions, natural disasters, sudden jumps in commodity prices (like oil/ fuel for an airline), and dozens of other common factors. It’s very common for these hardships to be temporary. If a company is truly on a downward spiral, then they won’t get to utilize their carryforwards anyway.
But I agree that taxing a company is really just taxing people indirectly. If you eliminated the corporate tax and increased personal taxes in kind, it could simplify the hell out of the tax code. Will never happen because taxes are a one way street of ever increasing complexity, but I’d vote for it.
1 Like
Are companies really “break even” when below the line shows zero, and above the line shows massive pay for the very top echelons of the corporate hierarchy? It strikes me that paying CEOs many millions of dollars for running “break even” companies, or even companies that lose tons of money, is really just a way of siphoning the profits the corporation is actually making, into the bank accounts of the top handful of people running them.
This is not always the case, but it’s often the case, that’s for sure. It really is just a massive game of corruption.
I am not against markets, when it comes to many things. But our current definition of a “free market economy” is a sham, a bad joke, a cynical death spiral. It’s time for a big, big change.
4 Likes
im guessing amazon the company pays Bezos the man a salary… if the company is paying zero tax, could it be possible that Bezos is still paying tax? (although probably less after republican tax reform)? I really dont know. im actually curious because people seem to talk about the company and the man as one in the same…
1 Like
another serious question… I have been assuming that the huge problems with inequality in wealth has to do with the wealthy hoarding cash. if a person or company can deduct something from taxes by spending part of that money on people, services, infrastructure etc, isn’t that a good thing? the tax code having deductions encourages natural redistribution?
i feel like some things considered “loopholes” are good in that way… that the real problem is tax rates on net income? right?
1 Like
