Obama will propose mandatory tax on US companies' earnings held overseas

[Sava]

There are some corporations that deserve pity ...

"Hi, I'm Aeson's LLC".
"What do you do for a living?"
"I'm a disregarded entity"
"So, um ... what do you do?"
"I make my owner lots of money and he takes it all away and I don't get anything at all!"

If corporations are people ... I'm a slave owner

[Colon™]

Why would anyone care about what happens to a corporation in other countries? You aren't helping yourself here.

It's mind boggling that people have more empathy for a corporation than their fellow human beings.

If corporations in America paid taxes like everyone else, this wouldn't be an issue.

Everyone else is making most of their income within the US and the situation with expat's income is equally abnormal. If America would levy taxes like most other countries, this wouldn't be an issue either.

It would make for more sense to eliminate tax breaks if you want to hit business.

[Sava]

Everyone else is making most of their income within the US and the situation with expat's income is equally abnormal. If America would levy taxes like most other countries, this wouldn't be an issue either.

It would make for more sense to eliminate tax breaks if you want to hit business.

You'll get no argument from me on this. Do you know why America's tax code is so ridiculously complicated and includes so many tax breaks?

CORPORATIONS

There's no possible argument to be made that changes the appropriate reaction or response to the whining about how unfair corporations have it.. which is... FUCK THEM

[Colon™]

You'll get no argument from me...

That's because I make far more sense than you do.

[Sava]

That's because I make far more sense than you do.

Perhaps. Though, I've yet to see any evidence of this.

[pchang]

Are you really unaware of the whole Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich thing?

[Sava]

Are you really unaware of the whole Double Irish with a Dutch Sandwich thing?

I can't recall ever hearing that phrase/those terms.

[pchang]

Google it

[Sava]

Ah. Yes, I knew of the concept, just not the term.

[Dr Strangelove]

I thought the US tax code made an accommodation for taxes paid to certain countries? IIRC you can deduct the tax already paid to those countries from the tax owed to the IRS, so if you paid 20,000 dollars to the UK and your calculated US tax was 22,000 you only pay 2000 to the US. If your calculated US tax was 18,000 you paid nothing to the US.

[pchang]

Actually, the whole thing is too complicated. I remember that when an opportunity came up for me to work in Singapore, I would have been double taxed on a decent percentage of my income.

[Jon Miller]

The taxation for expats is really complicated for the US.

Additionally, it gets more complicated if you travel to the US for business. I don't see any way out of the double taxation there. How I understand it is if you are paid YY and you spend XX days in the US, they will fully tax you on ZZ=YY*XX/365. Maybe you can subtract the amount you pay on taxes off the US tax for that ZZ (I never had to do that before because ZZ was below my personal deduction). Probably for last year (where I spent some time in the US) I need an accountant.

JM

[Aeson]

I will third the "overly complicated". I looked into it very briefly as a potential alternative to how I have things set up ... just long enough to know I'd never want to deal with it even if there was money to be saved that way (I don't think there is).