The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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Philosophy Explorer
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bobevenson wrote:
henry quirk wrote:Bob, what you're talkin' about, I'd call 'fair market value' rather than 'intrinsic'.
No, Henry, there's a world of difference between fair market value and intrinsic market value. Stocks and bonds have a fair market value, the last price shown on the stock exchange, but they have zero intrinsic market value since they only represent actual things that in fact do have intrinsic market value.
Stocks and bonds have "fair market value" throughout the trading day and isn't necessarily the last price shown on the stock exchange (which technically speaking doesn't exist since no one knows what the last trading day for the stock exchange will be).

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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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Dear Lord, please save me from the nitpickers. I should have said the fair market price of stocks and bonds is the price at any point in time agreed to by buyer and seller.
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FlashDangerpants
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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They also have Intrinsic Value, which is a very different thing...
The intrinsic value is the actual value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of its true value including all aspects of the business, in terms of both tangible and intangible factors. This value may or may not be the same as the current market value. Value investors use a variety of analytical techniques in order to estimate the intrinsic value of securities in hopes of finding investments where the true value of the investment exceeds its current market value.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrinsicvalue.asp
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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bobevenson wrote:Dear Lord, please save me from the nitpickers. I should have said the fair market price of stocks and bonds is the price at any point in time agreed to by buyer and seller.
Looks like He failed to provide you with divine guidance in this area.

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Last edited by Philosophy Explorer on Mon Apr 18, 2016 7:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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bobevenson wrote:Dear Lord, please save me from the nitpickers. I should have said the fair market price of stocks and bonds is the price at any point in time agreed to by buyer and seller.
But that is the same as the Intrinsic Market Value thing you made up. You made that point yourself.
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

Post by bobevenson »

FlashDangerpants wrote:
The intrinsic value is the actual value of a company or an asset based on an underlying perception of its true value including all aspects of the business, in terms of both tangible and intangible factors. This value may or may not be the same as the current market value. Value investors use a variety of analytical techniques in order to estimate the intrinsic value of securities in hopes of finding investments where the true value of the investment exceeds its current market value.
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/i/intrinsicvalue.asp
The intrinsic taxable value of a company is the value of its factories, equipment and inventory. On the other hand, the legal right to sell a soft drink called Coca-Cola has considerable market value, but not a single cent of taxable intrinsic value. And who are you going to believe, Investopedia or a prophet of all things economic?
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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So if Coca Cola shuts its plants in the USA, moves all that stuff to Mexico and Canada, and then delivers everything from there, they pay very little tax. But the guys who got laid off, and who have half paid mortgages on their houses, but no job right now, those guys are, well, completely screwed?
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

Post by uwot »

bobevenson wrote:Dear Lord, please save me from the nitpickers.
Reverend Bob, I know you're a prophet and that, but don't you think that if it was the dear lord's wish to save you from the nitpickers he would have inspired you a bit more divinely?
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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FlashDangerpants wrote:So if Coca Cola shuts its plants in the USA, moves all that stuff to Mexico and Canada, and then delivers everything from there, they pay very little tax. But the guys who got laid off, and who have half paid mortgages on their houses, but no job right now, those guys are, well, completely screwed?
First of all, Coca-Cola or any other company doesn't owe anybody a job, but as far as taxes, there are no corporate income taxes or any other kind of taxes, so if Coca-Cola doubles its profits, it won't pay any additional tax.
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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uwot wrote:
bobevenson wrote:Dear Lord, please save me from the nitpickers.
Reverend Bob, I know you're a prophet and that, but don't you think that if it was the dear lord's wish to save you from the nitpickers he would have inspired you a bit more divinely?
You can't be inspired a bit more divinely, you're either divinely inspired or you're not.
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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bobevenson wrote:
FlashDangerpants wrote:So if Coca Cola shuts its plants in the USA, moves all that stuff to Mexico and Canada, and then delivers everything from there, they pay very little tax. But the guys who got laid off, and who have half paid mortgages on their houses, but no job right now, those guys are, well, completely screwed?
First of all, Coca-Cola or any other company doesn't owe anybody a job, but as far as taxes, there are no corporate income taxes or any other kind of taxes, so if Coca-Cola doubles its profits, it won't pay any additional tax.
But they will have a huge incentive to double their profits by shutting down their plants and laying off all their workers. So they will do that.

Meanwhile, those workers don't get any tax cut do they? They still own stuff and have to pay the same tax as if they had a job.
So now they have to sell all their stuff, immediately, before next month's tax bill is due. So they are motivated to take any price they can get.

So Coke has sold all its stuff, and the unemployed have sold all their stuff. But nobody really wants to buy stuff because under your rules, all stuff is now rented from the state for a monthly fee.

So the value of stuff must fall to levels the market is willing to pay. Which means your tax income is about to fall.

But you promised to get as much money from the new taxes as from the old ones.
So now you have to raise your tax rates to compensate for the decline in the value of everything that your taxes caused at the lower rate.
Which further depresses market values, and results in even lower tax takes.

Well done, you've Made America Poor Again.
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

Post by bobevenson »

Jobs are always available, maybe not the job you want, or the location you want, or the pay you want, or the benefits you want. But on what basis do you believe a company owes you a job? That's just as ridiculous as a company saying it's wrong for you to find another job elsewhere. Get real, my friend, get real!
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

Post by FlashDangerpants »

Taxes influence behaviour and investment, if you don't take that into account you screw up quite badly.

It isn't good tax practice to incentivise all the employers to stop employing people. If you tax based on property, you clearly give everyone who can a very good reason to move operations to other tax jurisdictions which do not, and that leaves everyone else to pick up the tab.

People need incomes to pay those taxes you are levying. If you force all their incomes to fall, they can't pay as much tax. That's why it's not a clever idea to link taxes to property instead of incomes.
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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Under the AEP tax system, the total amount of taxes does not change, only the way it is assessed, and since everything is taxed, the tax rate goes down, people will pay less tax since there is no income tax or sales tax, successful companies will pay less tax since profits are not taxed, and nonprofit organizations will pick up their fair share of taxes which they do not pay now.
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Re: The Most Despotic Taxes Known to Mankind

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bobevenson wrote:Under the AEP tax system, the total amount of taxes does not change, only the way it is assessed, and since everything is taxed, the tax rate goes down, people will pay less tax since there is no income tax or sales tax, successful companies will pay less tax since profits are not taxed, and nonprofit organizations will pick up their fair share of taxes which they do not pay now.
It's not just successful companies that will pay less tax.
Rich people who save more of their money than the poor will save a lot more now, and they will be more likely to buy expensive property abroad rather than in the USA. Which means that the market value of high end housing will collapse. THat's sort of good ebcause now poor folks can afford Beverly Hills mansions. But it means the tax haul from those properties will fall a lot.

Poor people already don't pay much tax.

So the guys in the middle will foot most of the bill. This will happen to them because they own houses, but their houses have to be near their jobs. So they have to sell their house and rent another as quick as possible... but that makes their market value fall, so your tax haul goes down again.

Unsuccessful companies - which under present rules are able to offset losses against future taxes while they restructure their operations- will no longer be able to do that, so they will go bust....
But now their creditors own the factories, warehouses, shops etc. That means that they become liable for your taxes, which the original inhabitants cannot pay. So now those factories and warehouses and shops have to be sold off cheap to unload them, because every day they sit idle they are a liability not an asset...

Which means their market value falls. Which means they result in less tax income than you promised. Which means you have to put the overall rate up.

Your tax will collapse the values of residential, commercial and industrial property.

That in turn means that debts relative to income will soar, and incomes will therefore fall. And you will have made America poor.
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