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Comment by bsaul | Hacker News Reader

Sorry, the project is actually about taxing "revenue", i fixed it, thanks.

Taxing on revenue means a corporation that actually loose money because its expenses (salaries, investmenst, etc) are larger than its sales would still have to pay taxes, making it loose even more money. It doesn't make any kind of sense unless you're targeting a very particular set of companies that you know are making money. In which case you're taxing those companies, but you're also creating a law that makes it almost impossible for new companies to start competing.

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The sad part is everyone would prefer taxing profits, but that just doesn't work with multinational firms. Since, you know, they will restructure their company to on paper generate all profit in a tax haven. For example their algorithms are owned there, even though it was probably developed by you local citizens, is deployed on you local server and the sale to the tax haven happened for a symbolic dollar and for sure not an open market.

It is also almost impossible for new companies to start competing if existing big players can easily avoid paying taxes while you cannot. And no, we cannot simply allow everyone to not pay taxes.

You realize it's possible to adjust the taxes required on revenue so that it doesn't dwarf profit. It doesn't automatically follow that taxing revenue means that the taxes will be insanely, unpayably high. It's a strawman argument.

It does make tons of sense. What doesn't make sense is running a business that doesn't bring profits. Taxing revenue is one idea end accounting shenanigans and unfair practices like price gauging to eliminate competition which is now tax advantages strategy. Iam not a fan of it for other reasons but it does way more sense taxing profits which is just non workable idea.

EDIT: replying to child (not possible to reply directly): your argument about high cost industries is bogus. A system without tax on profits would just make those services more expensive as they should be (they are mostly high cost because they are very environmently unfriendly). It would also make higher margin services cheaper (cause they can afford it and there is less spending power). Once you actually think about it and analyze various scenarios you will realize that taxin profits from the very beginning was based on intellectual laziness and lack of ability to predict outcomes of such policies.

You do realize the whole concept of a startup is about raising money because you know you can’t both grow fast enough to conquer a new market while at the same time making profits ?

Also, some companies like industries have huge revenues but make few profits because of the enormous cost to produce what they sell.

Try thinking about the various cases and you’ll soon realize there’s actually a very good reason why corporates taxes have always been on profits, since the very beginning.

> You do realize the whole concept of a startup is about raising money because you know you can’t both grow fast enough to conquer a new market while at the same time making profits ?

But undoubtedly a start-up during that phase also benefits from public education and roads, from state-subsidized internet and transport, from security provided by the police force etc and hence should also pay its fair share towards those costs?

i suppose you're french, because it's the one argument people keep repeating again and again whenever someone speaks about tax reduction: but what about the roads then ?

The problem (beside the fact that corporate tax on revenues is just one tax corporations are paying among others) is :

1/ every single developed country has roads and hospitals and schools. Look at how much they ask for tax and the service they offer (and no, don't believe what people in france tell you. We don't have the best hospitals by far, and we don't have the best schools).

2/ at which point do you think we should stop adding taxes ? Is there a limit, or will you always be able to say "but then, what about the schools and the roads" ?

> you can’t both grow fast enough to conquer a new market while at the same time making profits

Maybe it would be a good thing if "grow fast...conquer market" were less of a goal for new companies than building one of a number of stable and sustainable businesses serving a market?

Perhaps we'd get markets where a variety of products and services compete on their features and merits, each having an appropriate place within the overall market, instead of an unhealthy winner-takes-all situation where the startup that gets the most money thrown at it can spend its way to world domination.

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