Self-interested bureaucrats concocting ways of getting bigger salaries and pensions paid for by John Q. Public. Economist Dan Mitchell of Cato explains exactly who the OECD are and how they promote anti-competitive policies, all while on the US's dime: [video=youtube;oVr8R41nZJU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oVr8R41nZJU[/video]
All countries should adopt the same tax rates, especially the Euro countries. The same is true for all States here.
It will take steps like these to get corporations to pay ANYTHING more than the token amounts they pay now. Corporations have played global shell games to the max to avoid taxation to an extent never before seen. That is how we see the absurd examples of the top oild companies claiming to make trivial profit margins here in the USA, but that is the driblets of money left after being filtered through a hundred corporate shells in a hundred countries.
I enjoyed reading something about Greece, when the Greeks were in danger of defaulting out of the Euro. What Athens (in the story) decided to do was actually collect the taxes on private swimming pools. About 300 people in Athens were paying those taxes, and satellite photos showed over 17,000 private pools in the city. Within a week, people had put big green tarps over their pools so the satellites couldn't see them! One industrious tax collector went out and tried to get these people to pay the tax anyway. This caused friction, so the government fired him! (A situation not lost on the Germans, who were asked to bail out the Greeks, because Germans DO pay their taxes). Maybe they think tax-deadbeat corporations will be easier targets than tax-deadbeat individual citizens? Not likely, if they fire anyone who tries to collect.
Corporate governance by multinational corporations has been a big iissue within OECD sine the late 1990's. It has zero to do with corporate tax rates, but a fairer way to tax corporations. Among these initiatives is to get rid of the corporate tax havens where only a PO Box identifies the residency for that corporation, and hence the how much a government can tax on the income. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/feb/12/oecd-crackdown-tax-avoidance-multinationals
In other words, they want to destroy tax competition because it hurts their anti-competitive socialist countries. The OECD is a parasitic bureaucracy that conspires to undermine economic freedom, all while on our tax dollar. If you think the OECD is so swell, then pay for it yourself. Blah-blah-blah. Translation: Socialist parasites want more tax money to finance their bureaucracies, salaries, and pensions and will concoct ways to stifle tax competition between sovereign and independent nations.
Dead-beat corporations? Generalize much? Hey, I got an idea, since those corporations are just "dead-beats", stop purchasing their products like the principled leftist you are.
The "Progressive Solution" never surrounds removing constraints on our inherent industriousness, and allowing natural rights and liberty to create, compete and flourish....warts, and all... it always tends towards the application of yet another layer of stifling, authoritarian control and confisction... and always in the interest of open ended and arbitrary myths; "fairness", "equality" and "social justice", of course.
These losers are just looking to line their pockets with more tax dollars. It's all about greed and lust for power.
These bureaucrats are always scheming. A 'day-in-the-life' would probably go something like this... 1. Arrive at work around nine or ten. 2. Brainstorm for two to three hours about stifling tax competition. 3. Lunch in Paris. 4. Draft report about stifling tax competition. 5. Return to fine Paris residence. We are paying these losers lots of money to do that. Meanwhile, a school in an American inner-city somewhere is missing a computer or a textbook...
No, it would create more competition amongst the various countries, not less. The more tax avoidance schemse that are out there actually creates less competitive among the MNC as well as the smaller firms. Keep swallowing that look-aide The OECD is an international NGO, not a governmental bureaucracy. It was designed, originally, to aid with the Marshal Plan in 1948. Today, the organization helps facilitate discussion amongst the various tax and economic development governmental agencies within each of its member nations. For example, about half of the income tax treaties that the ;U.S. is a signatory on comes from the OECD The model.
Boy, you really have a wild imagination and a huge jealously problem. and your post goes along with the my of thsoe imfamous banker hours where one works from 10 am to 4pm with a two hour lunch and one hour breaks for the tellers, loan officers, bank managers, and VP's. Right?
How positively Orwellian. Not only do you deny that the OECD is undermining tax competition, but you even try to claim it will HELP competition!? The OECD wants to keep countries like Germany from setting their corporate tax rates lower than countries like Belgium because it leaves Belgium at a competitive disadvantage, even though it benefits EVERYONE else to have lower average global corporate tax rates. This is nothing short of an attempt to kill competition and here you are saying it will help it!? What it does is take US tax dollars and send them to a socialist bureaucracy in Paris. If you think they're so spectacular, then PAY FOR IT YOURSELF.
It doesn't take a "wild imagination" to envision OECD bureaucrats lunching in Paris. And jealously? Yes, perhaps I am slightly jealous that foreign bureaucrats are making six figure salaries to fart around in Parisian luxury while Americans all over the country are on hard times economically. Can you blame me? Times are hard and we can't afford to pay these bozo's salaries and pensions. If they want to draft competition-hating proposals, let them do it on their own dime, or YOURS. You want me to get started on the bankers, too?
Uh, if the citizens and corporations in Greece paid all of the taxes that Greek law requires, Greece would not be having the problems they have. But simple counts show that both businesses and citizens in Greece don't pay more than a small fraction of what their laws require -- and that this situation has become institutionalized.
Amazing, you know what would happen in an alternate reality. Probably because there are lots of productive people who are sick of subsidizing a bloated public sector. It's called "human nature" not to want to get swindled by greedy mobs and politicians.
Indeed. If you had more money, then you would have more money! I'm psychic like that. And you are familiar with the Greek public sector? Or are you simply reciting memorized catechisms? Assuming the latter (since you give no indications to the contrary), you might be interested to know that the Greek government was far more than bloated. Nepotism was rampant, sinecures were the norm, corruption was how business was done. More than half the citizens of Greece were government employees. Salaries alone for the national railroad were seven times larger than gross railroad revenues -- though few of those people actually did any work, of course... Now, simple agressive tax collection by itself wouldn't begin to put a dent in the larger problem. The Greeks were hiring and paying themselves to do nothing productive. It wasn't at all a matter of productive people subsidizing a bloated public sector. It was a matter of the public BEING the bloated public sector, and paying themselves to be nonproductive. And getting the money to pay themselves from the European Union - which means the Germans. Austerity was a bitter pill for the Greeks because it meant that vast numbers of idle government employees would have to be laid off, into an economy with no capacity to put them to work, even if they had skills. And problems like this don't get cured overnight. It takes YEARS to grow a crop of competitive businesses, populated with suitably skilled employees it takes years to train. And while this is far from impossible, it's a slow process the Greeks weren't about to start unless they had no other choice. It would mean a whole national change in lifestyle. And "having no other choice" means an immediate emergency -- exactly the sort of emergency starting earlier could have avoided. Except of course they didn't NEED to start earlier, etc. But this only scratches the surface of an entire culture understandable only with some in-depth knowledge of economics and government. Slogans are so much easier.
You speculated about their problems never materializing. You have know way to know that, especially when a great deal of their problems do not necessarily stem from a lack of tax revenues. Of course. They're overcompensated and bloated: So the Greeks (who you admit have a bloated public sector) were being subsidized by the Germans (who are rated as very productive). People living in denial often pretend their problems are more difficult or complex than they actually are because it gives them an excuse to remain in denial. Greece's problems, when viewed through an objective, unemotional lens, are quite easy to diagnose and treat. They just have to take the medicine!
