Chris
07-09-2014, 07:11 PM
Politicians have little but emotional economic patriotism to drum up against a problem they create: inversion.
'Inversion' and Economic Patriotism as the Last Refuge of Stupid Pundits and Lazy Politicians (http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/08/inversion-and-economic-patriotism-as-the)
Unpatriotic American corporations are fleeing the United States for foreign climes in a suddenly headline-grabbing practice called "inversion." It's desertion, damnit. Or as Fortune's Allan Sloan puts it in breathlessly stupid form, "Bigtime companies are moving their 'headquarters' overseas to dodge billions in taxes … that means the rest of us pay their share."
...Yeah. I was feeling bad about leaving my former fellow New Yorkers holding the bag for that state's mugging-worthy tax take when I split for Arizona. Not. I got out of that abusive relationship, thank you.
I'm not exactly sure what "pay their share" of taxes means, though I hear that particular whine a lot when people and their businesses flee from the U.S. to Singapore, California to Texas, or from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Everybody left behind supposedly has to pick up the remainder of some fixed tab.
But except for extortions of fixed weights of gold and gems imposed by conquerors of antiquity on their prostrate subjects, taxes are rarely set as sums to be divvied among the suffering masses, but rather as percentages of economic activity. If the local powers that be make their digs so unattractive—say, with a corporate tax rate of 35 percent while the competition asks 12.5 percent—there's going to be less economic activity to get a share of.
Not that there would be anything wrong with fleeing a fixed sum.
We see the same phenomenon within the United States, with people migrating from state to state. The migrations appear to be heavily driven by both taxes and respect for personal freedom (politicians can fuck things up in lots of ways, and not all of them involve tax rates)....
'Inversion' and Economic Patriotism as the Last Refuge of Stupid Pundits and Lazy Politicians (http://reason.com/blog/2014/07/08/inversion-and-economic-patriotism-as-the)
Unpatriotic American corporations are fleeing the United States for foreign climes in a suddenly headline-grabbing practice called "inversion." It's desertion, damnit. Or as Fortune's Allan Sloan puts it in breathlessly stupid form, "Bigtime companies are moving their 'headquarters' overseas to dodge billions in taxes … that means the rest of us pay their share."
...Yeah. I was feeling bad about leaving my former fellow New Yorkers holding the bag for that state's mugging-worthy tax take when I split for Arizona. Not. I got out of that abusive relationship, thank you.
I'm not exactly sure what "pay their share" of taxes means, though I hear that particular whine a lot when people and their businesses flee from the U.S. to Singapore, California to Texas, or from Maryland to Pennsylvania. Everybody left behind supposedly has to pick up the remainder of some fixed tab.
But except for extortions of fixed weights of gold and gems imposed by conquerors of antiquity on their prostrate subjects, taxes are rarely set as sums to be divvied among the suffering masses, but rather as percentages of economic activity. If the local powers that be make their digs so unattractive—say, with a corporate tax rate of 35 percent while the competition asks 12.5 percent—there's going to be less economic activity to get a share of.
Not that there would be anything wrong with fleeing a fixed sum.
We see the same phenomenon within the United States, with people migrating from state to state. The migrations appear to be heavily driven by both taxes and respect for personal freedom (politicians can fuck things up in lots of ways, and not all of them involve tax rates)....