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Comment by saosebastiao | Hacker News Reader

Are you kidding me? Loopholes like that don't exist. The tax code starts from the assumption that you owe them money, but for very specific reasons allows you to deduct or credit from that amount owed. They simply do not naively put in deductions that shouldn't be there. The idea that "loopholes" are unintentional vulnerabilities is completely disconnected from reality.

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The legislators intended that via a complex web of shell companies obscuring ultimate ownership no taxes would be owed? I call shenanigans.

If they didn't they've certainly had a very long time to correct it.

You seem to forget who got those legislators elected. Of course they intended it.

The real problem is that the corporate tax shouldn't exist. It's too easy to fuck with and manipulate a profit tax by being creative with what counts as revenue and what counts as expense. And tax incidence studies have repeatedly shown that the burden of corporate taxes fall disproportionately on labor, not capital. The better idea would be to eliminate the corporate tax entirely, taking the world's entire corporate tax avoidance scheme with it, and instead tax personal income, dividends, and capital gains at higher rates. It would actually be more progressive and far less avoidable, and mountains less complex.

You're trying to make it sound like an overly complicated and not that likely situation. It's quite simple: money is free speech and legislators are listening. It's absolutely, 100% the case that tax laws are written to favor large businesses.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/11/7/16618038/h...

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