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Income Inequality


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On 12/21/2019 at 11:34 AM, RedDenver said:

 

At best this is very poorly worded. Corporations always pay taxes. At a bare minimum if they have employees they must pay the payroll tax. There is definitely an argument to be had about corporate tax rates, we don't need to twist the facts.

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16 minutes ago, ZRod said:

At best this is very poorly worded. Corporations always pay taxes. At a bare minimum if they have employees they must pay the payroll tax. There is definitely an argument to be had about corporate tax rates, we don't need to twist the facts.

The payroll tax is not a tax on the company but on the workers. The company is just collecting the tax. And the post you responded to was about company profits, which again aren't a factor in the payroll tax.

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2 hours ago, ZRod said:

Who pays the tax and what level of the government receives the money? The main tweet says that those companies paid no Federal tax. That's simply not true. There are specifically payroll taxes for employees and employers.

You're confusing who's collecting the tax versus who's paying the tax.

 

Here's a thought experiment:

Does the payroll tax increase if the company makes more money or if the workers make more money?

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I'm not confusing anything. These companies pay Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Unemployment taxes in addition to what employees themselves must pay for those taxes. Those are Federal taxes, and as far as I can tell it's not factored into these numbers.. I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that 99.9% of the time the employee would still never see that money even if there wasn't a tax.

 

The argument that these companies pay no Federal taxes as stated in the tweet is false. It's bordering on yellow journalism. They may not be paying a corporate income tax for various reasons, but they do infact pay taxes every year. We don't need to distort the truth to have a discussion about corporate tax rates. The numbers speak for themselves without the sensationalist headlines.

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12 hours ago, RedDenver said:

You're confusing who's collecting the tax versus who's paying the tax.

 

Here's a thought experiment:

Does the payroll tax increase if the company makes more money or if the workers make more money?

The company matches the employee. 

 

For example: if I have a $500 FICA tax bill, so does my employer.  The US Govt collects $1000.  (Edit:  this is a gross oversimplification, but made for "easy math")

 

This is one of the reasons many employers are against raising the minimum wage.   It effects more than paid wages...

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8 hours ago, ZRod said:

I'm not confusing anything. These companies pay Social Security, Medicare, and Federal Unemployment taxes in addition to what employees themselves must pay for those taxes. Those are Federal taxes, and as far as I can tell it's not factored into these numbers.. I think it's a pretty safe bet to say that 99.9% of the time the employee would still never see that money even if there wasn't a tax.

 

The argument that these companies pay no Federal taxes as stated in the tweet is false. It's bordering on yellow journalism. They may not be paying a corporate income tax for various reasons, but they do infact pay taxes every year. We don't need to distort the truth to have a discussion about corporate tax rates. The numbers speak for themselves without the sensationalist headlines.

 

59 minutes ago, funhusker said:

The company matches the employee. 

 

For example: if I have a $500 FICA tax bill, so does my employer.  The US Govt collects $1000.  (Edit:  this is a gross oversimplification, but made for "easy math")

 

This is one of the reasons many employers are against raising the minimum wage.   It effects more than paid wages...

What I'm saying is that if the taxes aren't coming out of the company's bottom line, then the company isn't really "paying" even if they are technically handing over the money.

 

This articles explains what I'm trying to say better than I have:

https://taxfoundation.org/what-are-payroll-taxes-and-who-pays-them/

 

Quote

This means that, rather than workers and employers each paying 7.65 percent in payroll taxes, employers send their portion of the tax to the government and then decrease workers’ wages by almost 7.65 percent. Next, workers pay their 7.65 percent share on those wages. In effect, there is hardly such a thing as the “employer-side” payroll tax, because almost the entire burden of the payroll tax is passed on to employees in the form of lower wages.

 

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16 minutes ago, RedDenver said:

 

What I'm saying is that if the taxes aren't coming out of the company's bottom line, then the company isn't really "paying" even if they are technically handing over the money.

 

This articles explains what I'm trying to say better than I have:

https://taxfoundation.org/what-are-payroll-taxes-and-who-pays-them/

 

 

But the company still pays tax on the lower wages.  I agree, i mentioned lower pay in my post.

 

But, it's dishonest to say that employers don't pay payroll taxes.  Even though they try their damdest to keep those payments as small as possible.  I think that is all @ZRod is trying to say...

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3 minutes ago, funhusker said:

But the company still pays tax on the lower wages.  I agree, i mentioned lower pay in my post.

 

But, it's dishonest to say that employers don't pay payroll taxes.  Even though they try their damdest to keep those payments as small as possible.  I think that is all @ZRod is trying to say...

If he's trying to say that, then I'll concede the point to him on technicalities, but it doesn't make the original tweet I posted dishonest which is what he said.

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