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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: TimF who wrote (622760)	8/4/2011 9:44:01 AM
From: Alighieri	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579760

I share your doubt that they paid that much in normal corporate income tax to the US federal government, but it might be accurate, if it includes when they where slammed with a "windfall profits tax" on top of ordinary corporate income taxes, and it includes taxes paid to foreign and state governments. No, he's playing fast and loose with the facts again...he has a history of it. My guess is that the numbers include payroll taxes and likely some of the taxes paid by end consumers...we were however talking about INCOME TAXES... In any case the total amount of taxes paid, including all of those and the taxes on refined oil products, and fees paid to governments, far exceeds the profits of the oil companies. If you include all of those the lions share of the profit goes to governments, the effective tax rate paid is well over 50%. One would have to decompose all that to comment...for instance oil companies have long maintained that royalties paid to foreign governments represent foreign taxes...and the like....my point simply was that the tax code is too complex and filled with special provisions...it needs to be simplified and made fair-er...of course it's impossible to have that debate with someone like inode who strut and managing little more than a pathetic display of insecurity... Al

To: TimF who wrote (622760)	8/4/2011 11:16:29 AM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1579760

I share your doubt that they paid that much in normal corporate income tax to the US federal government, but it might be accurate, if it includes when they where slammed with a "windfall profits tax" on top of ordinary corporate income taxes, and it includes taxes paid to foreign and state governments. The WPT was a huge confiscation of oil company profits, with a 70% rate that sometimes generated 40B/year for the federal government. And it was part of the income tax paid. I don't think they would have paid that much to the US government -- as their overall tax rate runs in the mid-to-high 40s typically. However, as I pointed out in my previous post, there is simply not a sensible way to tax these companies on worldwide income without allowing a credit for foreign taxes paid. If you say, "We'll only tax you on your US income", it opens the door to much more difficult problems. Al's other arguments about "loopholes", are too vague to make sense of. That isn't to say such loopholes don't exist, but the hyperbole over the topic that is prevalent just doesn't allow for a sensible discussion of it. You can't reasonably talk about a complicated subject in vague terms, which is what so many are trying to do. If you examine the congressional committee reports, I think you'll find that most of the so-called loopholes that involve significant amounts of money were put there with pretty good reason.