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Strategies & Market Trends : ahhaha's ahs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mark Adams who wrote (3143)	10/17/2001 9:47:03 PM
From: ahhaha	Respond to of 24758

There are strategies to minimize the dual taxation. If there weren't there would be few C Corps or LLCs electing to be taxed as corporations. More complexity only to achieve an end which doesn't add to anyone's income. What's the point? Some idealist's misbegotten attempt to pontificate fairness. I don't see how you can make such a broad claim. I don't see how you can deny that corporations create the wealth. It's in their interest to promote the general welfare. It's in their profitable outcome to benefit others. How is that deniable unless you have an attitude problem an elect to cast them in an arbitrary negative way that serves a hidden agenda: the war on wealth. Ultimately the tax dollars have to come from someones pocket. Corporations are used to shift this burden to someone else in many cases. But why engage in subterfuge? Why tax the means of production? Why reduce the potential wealth from which all benefit even if it "trickles down"? The reason is only that it's better that most get less as long a few get punished. That's a moral issue, not an economic one, and it's very poor on moral grounds. I disagree. You disagree that when cororations have less capital that they are just as efficient as they are with more? Then how can progress occur? Corporations must continually invest in improved capabilities. How can you disagree? Corporations have learned to structure themselves given the current environment. But the environment is always changing so they must spend to improve their circumstances. Strip out the ability of a corporation to shelter retained earnings at a lower effective tax rate and you will see a dislocation and perhaps reduced capital formation short term. Sheltering retained earnings? That's ridiculous. What company does that? I've been analyzing companies for 35 years and I have yet to come across one who does that. What is it? The tax code says that you are liable when you report. It may occur in the CHKs of the world, because the tax laws have been written to provide relief for debt engines. The write-offs for those entities are still real costs. Retained earnings are not sheltered. The tax liability is still there. It's been pushed forward for the the debt Dies Irae. For some reason you believe that the shell game of creative finance gets away with something. It never does. Basic pension theory? Have you not heard the plebes are expected to fend for themselves? Defined contribution plans are out, self managed 401ks are in. And I believe that the publicaly traded corporations are far outnumbered by privately held. You suggest that the middle income class owns the bulk of these companies, and I disagree. I think the bulk of the middle income class doesn't have the financial sophistication or scale to leverage these structures to their benefit. Sure, some may own a drycleaner inside a corporate shell. The mass public owns say 80% through all the various funds. Wealthy controlling individuals own very little, say 2%. They're mostly wrapped up in the real estate swindle, because they can legally evade taxes using laws coming out of the intent of Congress to stimulate family formation. I meant what I said. Those with the financial sophistication to leverage corporate structures to minimize their tax liabilities are doing so on voluntary basis, and that reducing the corporate tax rates will reward these individuals and further incent this behaviour. My rich clients don't agree with you in the slightest. The worst thing you can do is set up a corporation to evade taxes. All you need to do is talk to a tax accountant who does that kind of thing to verify what I say. My clients are exclusively in real estate when it comes to accomplishing the above. Again you have this attitude where you consider it bad that corporations retain what they earn. Please tell me who can use the money that is taxed aweay better than they can? They serve the public interest unavoidably, because that interest is their interest. The only conceivable motivation behind such an attitude is the need to pull down, so this view tries to pull down everyone since greedy corporations have to work in the public interest if they seek to sewrve their greed. I made no judgement about the right or wrong of using corporations in this manner, only objected to the sale of a proposal to eliminate corporate taxes under the guise that corporate taxes are ultimately just a tax on end goods and services anyway, without any mention of the reality of how corporations are used to retain wealth and control resources. But this assertion explicitly contradicts itself. In whos einterest do corporations "retain wealth" and "control resources"? Let's not say in the public at large's interest. Let's say in the owner's interest. The owners are the stockholders and in 99% of the corporations this is a broad cross section of the public. Therefore, corporations retain wealth and control resources for the interest of a broad cross section of the public. If you claim that to say that isn't desirable, then you are explicitly making an arbitrary moral judgement.