Obama Cracking Down On Tax Havens

[NorthSideSox72]

The idea,as I understood it, is to cut taxes on the rich, allow them to spend more money within their company, which then trickles down to jobs for the lower brackets. Am I miss understanding this?

 

If my understanding is correct, then when you start outsourcing and shipping jobs overseas, you are now longer trickles down jobs to lower brackets int he US. And then the system is broke.

 

Am I making sense.

Well, the "within their company" part is off to me. What you are describing isn't trickle down - its just lower business taxes. And there, you are right, the lower they are, the more jobs will stay at home.

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

Well, the "within their company" part is off to me. What you are describing isn't trickle down - its just lower business taxes. And there, you are right, the lower they are, the more jobs will stay at home.

See, and this is where I say the system is broken. I fear, too often, those tax breaks DONT equal new jobs. They just equal larger exec pay, high company profits (stuck into a bank.. or offshore tax free account), and better stock prices, with little benefit to the "working man".

[NorthSideSox72]

See, and this is where I say the system is broken. I fear, too often, those tax breaks DONT equal new jobs. They just equal larger exec pay, high company profits (stuck into a bank.. or offshore tax free account), and better stock prices, with little benefit to the "working man".

OK. So let's say you are right on that... how does that send jobs overseas?

 

[HuskyCaucasian]

OK. So let's say you are right on that... how does that send jobs overseas?

I suck at making a clear argument. lol

 

Ok, let me try this over.

 

The argument by the right is that tax breaks = more jobs, which then means a stronger economy. However, companies are given tax breaks, then they use that money to outsource overseas... or they are even so bold as to not use the money at all, they pocket it and simply fire their US works in favor of cheap Indian labor (as happened to my wife's uncle at United). So, what's the points of these "trickle-down" tax breaks, if all they do is trickle overseas and do NOTHING hear. I think that is the lefts argument.

 

IMO, companies are more worried about the bottom line (MASSIVE profits) and therefore a soaring stock than hiring American workers. While cheap is better for the bottom line, it ISNT best for the US economy... as we've seen with entire cities crumbling as jobs get moved to India.

Edited May 4, 2009 by Athomeboy_2000

[BearSox]

I'd find a way to put a tariff on imported goods made by companies that leave the US. Find a way to lock them in.

I'm probably in the minority that I believe in "America First". We should be a self sustaining country and not have to rely on goods brought in from over seas. Or at lease as self-sustaining as possible.

What is your position on drilling off shore than?

[HuskyCaucasian]

What is your position on drilling off shore than?

You cant be 100% sustainable simply by drilling off-shore and I believe our long term best interests are alternative fuel sources. So, I am against it.

[Soxbadger]

Kap,

 

Question about Corporations relocating.

 

Business law is not my area of specialization but I was under the impression that in order to do business in most states you need to register or file something with the secretary of state. (Illinois you can register as a Foreign Corp or you can file an Authority to Transact Business).

 

Now here is where my question is, if you are a corporation of Japan and you do business in Illinois, making a profit off that business in Illinois, do you have to pay Illinois/US taxes on the profit made in Illinois?

 

Ive always thought that the Foreign Corp had to pay the Illinois/US taxes, but Im just not sure.

Edited May 4, 2009 by Soxbadger

[Texsox]

We have to figure out how to eliminate all taxes so companies will stay here.

[Texsox]

Kap,

 

Question about Corporations relocating.

 

Business law is not my area of specialization but I was under the impression that in order to do business in most states you need to register or file something with the secretary of state. (Illinois you can register as a Foreign Corp or you can file an Authority to Transact Business).

 

Now here is where my question is, if you are a corporation of Japan and you do business in Illinois, making a profit off that business in Illinois, do you have to pay Illinois/US taxes on the profit made in Illinois?

 

Ive always thought that the Foreign Corp had to pay the Illinois/US taxes, but Im just not sure.

 

If we can use Mexico and Texas as an example, I will give you real world examples.

 

Buy raw materials in the US, do some process at your subsidiary in Mexico, then ship it back to the US for sales world wide.

 

Raw material cost $1

Mexico labor cost $2

Final Cost $3

Sale Price $5

 

Do you show a $2 profit in Mexico? $2 profit in the US? You can mark up the raw material or the labor. Generally, most companies have been showing the profit in the US. And because of NAFTA, the largest collection of Asian manufacturers outside the Pacific rim in along the Mexico border.

[BearSox]

You cant be 100% sustainable simply by drilling off-shore and I believe our long term best interests are alternative fuel sources. So, I am against it.

Still, no one knows when we will find an alternative fuel source, and like you said, wouldn't it be better if we didn't have to rely on other countries for such important resources?

[lostfan]

Still, no one knows when we will find an alternative fuel source, and like you said, wouldn't it be better if we didn't have to rely on other countries for such important resources?

We still are going to no matter what since it's a global market, the question is how much and for how long.

[NorthSideSox72]

Still, no one knows when we will find an alternative fuel source, and like you said, wouldn't it be better if we didn't have to rely on other countries for such important resources?

The sun, the tides, the wind, geothermal forces and rivers all say "hi".

 

[StrangeSox]

Don't forget newquelar

[Balta1701]

Don't forget newquelar

Nuclear is not a sustainable/renewable fuel source.

[NorthSideSox72]

Nuclear is not a sustainable/renewable fuel source.

I think its sustainable, though not renewable. I also think, because of the environmental impact of the leftovers, it should never be allowed to make up any large chunk of our energy needs. But I think it could do well as a small part, especially in the next quarter century, while we get moving on the good stuff.

 

[StrangeSox]

We can pull uranium out of the oceans. I'm not sure how renewable it is, but its an enormous source of fuel. Expensive, though.

 

The Japanese and French have been reprocessing nuclear fuel for a while now, so that cuts down on wastes. Balta, what are your thoughts on Yucca? I might have asked in another thread, but don't remember seeing a reply.

[jasonxctf]

ive been to the cayman islands a few times... there's this one building, maybe 3 stories high in downtown jamestown where supposedly 5,000+ us companies list themselves as having their corporate hq's located there. Inside supposedly there are 2 floors full of "mailboxes".

[kapkomet]

Kap,

 

Question about Corporations relocating.

 

Business law is not my area of specialization but I was under the impression that in order to do business in most states you need to register or file something with the secretary of state. (Illinois you can register as a Foreign Corp or you can file an Authority to Transact Business).

 

Now here is where my question is, if you are a corporation of Japan and you do business in Illinois, making a profit off that business in Illinois, do you have to pay Illinois/US taxes on the profit made in Illinois?

 

Ive always thought that the Foreign Corp had to pay the Illinois/US taxes, but Im just not sure.

It depends on how it's structured, of course. For retail sales, there's nexus tax law that binds things together. For goods or services, most of the time there is a transfer payment back to the parent in it's home country.

 

Foreign profits in each state again depends - there is usually some exclusions that exempt the corps from paying. There you get into passive income rules as well.

 

In short, there's not a simple answer because it really depends on the legal structures of said company.

 

 

 

[Balta1701]

We can pull uranium out of the oceans. I'm not sure how renewable it is, but its an enormous source of fuel. Expensive, though.

 

The Japanese and French have been reprocessing nuclear fuel for a while now, so that cuts down on wastes. Balta, what are your thoughts on Yucca? I might have asked in another thread, but don't remember seeing a reply.

You can pull gold out of the oceans too. You just have to expend an enormous amount of energy to do it. More energy than you get by grabbing the uranium or more money than you'd get by selling the gold.

 

Uranium is like a fossil fuel in that sense...it's available because there are actions that the earth has done in the past that have concentrated it enough to make it economically viable. You'd get a hell of a lot of gold and uranium and lots of other heavy metals if you could extract every little bit of them from the Sierra Nevadas, for example. The problem is it takes an enormous amount of energy to do that. We're lucky in that processes the earth has done has made it possible to use them. If you can come up with a semi-infinite energy source, then you can get the uranium out of the oceans...but then what do you need the uranium for?

 

The Yucca Mountain case is a fascinating one. What most people don't know about the nuclear industry is that decades ago the U.S. government promised it would find a way to dispose of the waste from running these power plants. So far, it hasn't done so, and the power plants have done the storage...but they have billed the government to the tune of tens of billions of dollars for that storage. The weird reality is...without that giant subsidy relating to the waste, nuclear power simply isn't profitable. Nuclear power wouldn't exist in this country without the government subsidizing the waste. Always found that weird.

 

Yucca mountain is an absolute mess. It reminds me an awful lot in spirit of things the government has done like the Levee system around New Orleans. We don't know everything about the materials the U.S. wants to use in constructing the long-term storage things they have there (classified)...but it really does strike me as a boondoggle of the highest order. Here's the basic story...the government needed to find some place to put this stuff. They happened to have a mountain sitting on the side of their already contaminated Nevada Test site, where they'd blown up bombs for decades, so they grabbed it as a convenient spot. Currently it has some advantages...it has very low population, very low rainfall.

 

The mess is when you get in to the details...because this stuff is nuclear waste, it's going to be hazardous for on the order of hundreds of thousands of years. Less than 20,000 years ago, there were large lakes in this area and the water table was much higher...high enough that it would have soaked the canisters they want to use To actually have this thing work, you need to be able to seal the stuff off for longer than the lifespan of the radioactivity. But since things like climate cycles and tectonics change on timescales that are less than the radioactivity, you're asking us to do a predictive problem that is just impossible.

 

If you sort of ignore those things, you can ram through the waste depository, build it, ship stuff there (that's a whole different can of worms), and hope for the best, and it's entirely possible that you wind up ok, and you never have, for example, a category 3 hurricane hitting those levees that you never bothered to do the correct work on. Really, it's an impossible problem. There's no where on earth that you can guarantee a stable climatic and tectonic environment for the lifespan of the stuff. If you're going to put it somewhere, Yucca is probably safer than the way it currently is stored all around the country haphazardly...but I don't want to be in Las Vegas after it turns out that we underestimated something in the climate or tectonic system.

 

Putting it there is asking for trouble. Not putting it there is asking for trouble. Really have no idea what to say other than that.

[BearSox]

The sun, the tides, the wind, geothermal forces and rivers all say "hi".

 

I was more so referring to an alternative to gas for cars and such.

[Rex Kickass]

I was more so referring to an alternative to gas for cars and such.

Sugar Cane says hi.

[BearSox]

Sugar Cane says hi.

From what I've read, that only covers about 15% of Brazil's oil needs. Sure, it's a start, but how practical is it?

[southsider2k5]

You can pull gold out of the oceans too. You just have to expend an enormous amount of energy to do it. More energy than you get by grabbing the uranium or more money than you'd get by selling the gold.

 

Uranium is like a fossil fuel in that sense...it's available because there are actions that the earth has done in the past that have concentrated it enough to make it economically viable. You'd get a hell of a lot of gold and uranium and lots of other heavy metals if you could extract every little bit of them from the Sierra Nevadas, for example. The problem is it takes an enormous amount of energy to do that. We're lucky in that processes the earth has done has made it possible to use them. If you can come up with a semi-infinite energy source, then you can get the uranium out of the oceans...but then what do you need the uranium for?

 

The Yucca Mountain case is a fascinating one. What most people don't know about the nuclear industry is that decades ago the U.S. government promised it would find a way to dispose of the waste from running these power plants. So far, it hasn't done so, and the power plants have done the storage...but they have billed the government to the tune of tens of billions of dollars for that storage. The weird reality is...without that giant subsidy relating to the waste, nuclear power simply isn't profitable. Nuclear power wouldn't exist in this country without the government subsidizing the waste. Always found that weird.

 

Yucca mountain is an absolute mess. It reminds me an awful lot in spirit of things the government has done like the Levee system around New Orleans. We don't know everything about the materials the U.S. wants to use in constructing the long-term storage things they have there (classified)...but it really does strike me as a boondoggle of the highest order. Here's the basic story...the government needed to find some place to put this stuff. They happened to have a mountain sitting on the side of their already contaminated Nevada Test site, where they'd blown up bombs for decades, so they grabbed it as a convenient spot. Currently it has some advantages...it has very low population, very low rainfall.

 

The mess is when you get in to the details...because this stuff is nuclear waste, it's going to be hazardous for on the order of hundreds of thousands of years. Less than 20,000 years ago, there were large lakes in this area and the water table was much higher...high enough that it would have soaked the canisters they want to use To actually have this thing work, you need to be able to seal the stuff off for longer than the lifespan of the radioactivity. But since things like climate cycles and tectonics change on timescales that are less than the radioactivity, you're asking us to do a predictive problem that is just impossible.

 

If you sort of ignore those things, you can ram through the waste depository, build it, ship stuff there (that's a whole different can of worms), and hope for the best, and it's entirely possible that you wind up ok, and you never have, for example, a category 3 hurricane hitting those levees that you never bothered to do the correct work on. Really, it's an impossible problem. There's no where on earth that you can guarantee a stable climatic and tectonic environment for the lifespan of the stuff. If you're going to put it somewhere, Yucca is probably safer than the way it currently is stored all around the country haphazardly...but I don't want to be in Las Vegas after it turns out that we underestimated something in the climate or tectonic system.

 

Putting it there is asking for trouble. Not putting it there is asking for trouble. Really have no idea what to say other than that.

 

Boy that sounds familiar...

 

[Balta1701]

Boy that sounds familiar...

Reminds me a lot of corn-based ethanol...except this one's been going on longer.

[Balta1701]

From what I've read, that only covers about 15% of Brazil's oil needs. Sure, it's a start, but how practical is it?

It's not...currently. The only thing that is going to be a practical fuel is something that can be produced in massive quantities across large amounts of territory with a very high rate of recovery of energy.

 

Corn is produced in massive quantities across large amounts of territory, but the energy recovery is ridiculously poor, because all you get is 1-2 ears of corn per stalk, 95% of the stored energy in the plant is lost.

 

Sugar cane produces a much higher rate of energy recovery, but you can't grow it across large areas.

 

What you need to do is take something like a corn plant and turn the plant itself in to ethanol if you want that to be your fuel. This is why people keep talking about switchgrass...basically you go out to the deserts, mow them, and you've got cellusoic material that regrows quickly that you could convert in to your fuel. We just can't do it yet.

 

The other alternative is biology...if you can adapt some bugs, like algae, to grow under the right conditions, you might be able to get around that by just giving the algae carbon and sunlight and some other nutrients and let them cook.

 

The one other way to do it is to take the energy from a different renewable source...i.e. the sun or the wind...and store it, either in a battery, a capacitor, or yes, even as hydrogen if you can generate enough of it, and thus you get around that problem that we can't yet convert cellulose to ethanol. That's why I'm such a big fan of the Chevy Volt...I think that battery storage is the quickest and cheapest way to eliminate a huge fraction of our oil importation for transportation purposes.