This idea has been kicking around in my head for a while, and I’m hoping some Lemmy geniuses can poke holes/ flesh it out with me.
Every person I’ve ever heard of works for and gets paid by some form of company. So instead of the company paying the workers and then those workers getting taxed, why not just tax it all to the corporations to begin with? Instead of hundreds of millions of individuals to think about, the IRS (in US) could just focus on a few million companies.
We the people democratically decide what we think is needed for a functioning society, and charge it to the corporations.
I’d say each company should be responsible for paying the same percentage of the bill as percentage of total “profits” they made. Like, if Apple makes 10% of all the combined profits of all the companies this quarter, they are responsible for paying 10% of the bill. Highest paid employee can make 10x what the lowest paid employee (including contracted and foreign workers) makes; more than that gets included in the calculation as part of the company’s “profits”. (So that CEO can still get paid absurd amounts of money, but the company will still pay taxes on most of it)
What if we created some sort of secure opinion/voting app where people go to cast their vote on whatever people think needs to be voted on. Should there be UBI? Should it be a token, living, or thriving wage? (Personally, I’d go with thriving and tie it to inflation) Single payer healthcare? All education paid for? Stop funding genocide? No more polluting the planet, or at least force companies to pay to clean up their own messes? When and where are companies allowed to market to us? Where should the threshold of agreement be to enact changes, 40% 50%+1 60%? Etc etc
Then we elect people who agree to simply enact what the people democratically agree on… And if the people don’t agree, they’ll stay away from it or leave it to the states. And hopefully someday we could build it out so that state and local governments work this way too.
I think we get bogged down on the 2 or 3 things we disagree on and allow that to mean we never get the things we DO agree on. Let’s get the things we agree on first, and then continue debating the things we disagree on.
Also I think this would be a long term plan. 12 years would give us 2 full election cycles here in the US and would give zoomers time to grow up, settle, and start to really vote (hopefully with this new system).
Anyway, like I said, let’s poke holes and figure out solutions. Thanks
In reality if you’ll just eliminate all the tax loopholes and “tax planning” you’ll already have a jump in tax income. Corporations are willing to pay to politicians, lobbiests and lawyers even more than the tax they quid have paid, just to prevent taxing. Also Billionaires
I guess my thought is; FIRST we pay for the society we democratically agree on, THEN they get to take their profits from what’s left… How would we go about closing the loopholes?
The short answer is: create a Federal task force, increase funding to the IRS and change it’s focus. The long answer is that you need to create a social movement and a political movement to counter all the PACs and lobbying and “donations” and media that are invested to keep the tax system as crippled as it is. Sorry, it wont be easy. But if you’re talking theoretically than yeah, I support you and even raise you: any company that are built upon public investment should belong to the public as a proportion of the investment they relay on. (Even if the investment is in the form of technology like GPS or the internet)