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Comment by tn13 | Hacker News Reader

Why do you think paying taxes is a virtue ? Why does US government need 40% of our hard earned money ?

May be American politicians should stop the war on drugs, wars in far off countries and medicare and reduce tax levels to 20%.

Facebook, Google, Apple and push the frontiers of human knowledge at rapid rate if they can spend that money themselves. In case of government it will be used to by some junk airforce planes that dont fly.

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> Facebook Google and apple shouldnt be taxed BC theyre r and d

Lol. Most real frontier level r and d is funded by the gov with tax money, especially the not for profit r and d focused on energy and health sectors. The only r and d the tech cos you named do is targeted to make profit for themselves which is why they pay taxes. I agree that a lot of tax money is wasted but some of it is used for critical research.

When facebook starts a non profit division researching better nuclear storage containers and cancer treatments then, maybe that division shouldnt be taxed. I mean these are essentially advertising based businesses, so that's not really pushing the frontiers of human knowledge in a uniformly positive direction.

Government barely spends and money on research and most of it is on subjects that have 0 impact on anything for example giving heroine to monkeys.

Paying taxes isn't a virtue, it's fair trade for services and security, which all of these companies benefit from within the U.S., and without which they would likely have never come to be.

Your taxes would be a lot lower if the biggest corporations were paying their fair share.

There is not such thing as "fair share" of what someone else has earned.

Sure there is. It's what we vote on and agree to as members of a democratic society.

No one earns anything in a vacuum. Money doesn't exist without society. Taxes reflect that.

Because unless you never use government built infrastructure, contributing back to society is kind of your duty.

I live in France, my employer pays my raw salary in taxes, and approximately 30% of this raw salary that I get is paid in taxes too. And I am happy to pay those because it contributes to a system that gives me and everyone free healthcare, unemployment benefits if needed as well as many other things. If you're unhappy with the 40% you pay to your government, ask to fix inefficiencies, not to stop paying them.

Serious question: who pays an effective rate of 40 percent? Many of these huge corporate entities are in the single or negative digits.

That's because they are deferring the taxes on the ex-US money.

It's a 401k in the US. It's a tax deferment, not a tax break. If your effective rate went from 35% to 25% due to your 401k contribution, you still end up paying 35%, just not right now.

No, you don't end up paying 35%. Part of the advantages of a 401k come from distributing dollars being taxed at a high marginal rate to another year when they are taxed at a lower marginal rate.

It all depends. Sure, if you put almost nothing in a 401k, then when you pull it out, you'd be in a lower margin tax bracket (and living on very little money).

But if you put a lot in, the fact you HAVE to start taking money out at a certain again AND it all gets taxed before you die means you pretty much end up paying the taxes anyways (or more if rates have gone up).

It's slightly different here, but effectively the same. Individuals get sold on the idea of "tax-back" from the taxation authority at the end of the year... They get bombarded by financial consultants that tell them they have to put up to 30% of their post-tax earnings into 401k-type accounts because they are "maximizing" their "tax-benefits".

A lot of them even have no idea that they will be taxed anyways when they withdraw.

Which, not coincidentally, is also what the companies stashing profits overseas hope to accomplish through future changes in the tax law.

They hire very expensive lawyers and accountants to pay less or simply bribe politicians (read speech money) to keep loopholes that will benefit them. As a result a lot of money is wasted to totally unproductive efforts while increasing corruption and lowering respect of the tax system.

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