Repukes are Ignorantly Rightious and wrong Again

Ever hear the saying, "You can trap a lot more flies using honey?"

Not to quibble with someone who is obviously so intelligent, but unless you owned a business, you never paid a dime in Unemployment insurance. That is paid for by the company you worked for, not by the employee. (Technically it is a tax levied by the state against a business, in order to pay unemployment benefits to those who have been laid off through no fault of their own, but I digress.) But don't let facts get in the way of a good rant.

Signed, A "Righteous" repuke who is not nearly as ignorant as you.

ohhhh Carol, don't forget to thank yourself on this thread as well

If you worked for a company you paid for it like insurance and other things in place of wages given up so the company would pay for it. I gave up plenty of wages to the company I worked for.

The flaw in your thinking is that a company would take savings from the tax and give it back to the employees through increased wages. While in theory that is possible, the reality is that it is unlikely. A company's unemployment tax rate is variable depending on several factors. If what you suggest is accurate in the real world, then whenever a company's rate decreases, employee wages would be increased by the same percentage. And of course, when a company's rate increases, an employee's wages should go down. That does not happen.

Your theory is sound, but in real life it is not practiced. I stand behind my statement that employees do not pay the tax. (Of course, the company does not either, the consumer does. But that is a different argument.)

This isn't really correct either. Unless you're talking about a commodity with almost no profit margin whatsoever, consumers do NOT pay the tax. Taxes can be absorbed by the company by lowering their overall profits, before ever raising prices; they can result in lower executive pay, or lower dividends paid.

Let us for example take Apple. Corporate taxes could more than double, and they would still be profiting many billions per year, and wouldn't have to raise any of their prices in order to remain a very robust and profitable company. How does that square with what you write here?

Cycloptichorn

I understand how you get to your conclusion. But when a company prices its product, it takes into account the small matter of taxes. Every dime my company makes comes from someone paying us for our product. Our customers pay my salary. Our customers pay for the electricity. Our customers most certainly also pay the government for the taxes. If all the taxes we pay disappeared immediately, our prices would indeed fall in order to stay competitive. In fact, even if we were the only entity in our field whose taxes were eliminated, we would likely drop prices in order to gain a larger share of the market.

And yes, in your example Apple would not HAVE to raise their prices. Neither would we. But how much you wanna bet they would? They have a responsibility to their shareholders and I can almost guarantee you that in your scenario they would increase their prices.

"Repukes"? oy gevalt. Edgar knows what's up

Apple doesn't have to worry about competition, thanks in large part to their aggressive patent protection legal strategy. They make an extremely handsome profit simply off of licensing their patented technologies to their own competition!

The fact of the matter is that my conclusion is correct, and your sweeping statement was incorrect - raising taxes on companies does NOT directly correlate with increased prices of goods; therefore, it's inaccurate to say that 'consumers pay corporate taxes.'

In the case of your company, if taxes were to go up, why could your executive pay not be lowered to compensate, maintaining the same level of profitability and price point? Oh, right. That's apparently never a viable option in such calculations. But it's a simple solution that disproves generalities.

Cycloptichorn

Cy, you keep talking about what companies "could" do. I am telling you what companies do in the real world. You can try to dance around it all you wish, but companies do not pay taxes. If the government increases a company's tax rate, you can rest assured it will be passed on to the consumer via higher prices. If the government increases the fuel tax rate, your pump price will go up by that amount. It is that simple. If you purchase my company's goods, you are paying our taxes.


Of course it is a viable option. But in the real world it does not happen. But I tell you what, when you own your own business (I don't know, maybe you d0) please feel free to cut your pay whenever your tax rate goes up. I'm sure the consumers will find that refreshing.

Anyway, you can think your conclusion is correct all you wish. In nearly 35 years in business I have not known it to play out that way, so I'll continue to stand by my conclusion regardless of your insistence that I am wrong.

Mostly not, but this has a lot more to do with our corrupt and inefficient method of corporate governance than it does economics. The government shouldn't make choices about what tax rates to set based upon such things.

If corporate taxes are raised, and prices go up, consumers will either pay the higher prices or stop buying the goods. If they stop buying the goods, price pressure will force leaner profit margins and, yes, lower executive pay. I don't see what the problem is here.



Sorry, it isn't that simple. Price competition between different providers practically guarantees this. There are a wide variety of factors that determine what I'm charged at the pump; there is no linear relationship between taxes and prices at all, which seems to be what you are positing here.

I will say that your mantra is quite, quite popular with those who are looking to justify the continual lowering of corporate tax rates. But your arguments do not follow logically or economically.

Cycloptichorn

They do if you are one of the 1%.