A sufficiently idiotic tax scheme such as Section 174 can destroy far more income tax revenue than it collects, by destroying jobs and small businesses, and knocking high earners down a tax bracket or three. Section 174 isn’t doing much to tax FANG companies. Apple has all their profits in their Double Irish Dutch Sandwich racket. Amazon cooks the books to appear unprofitable on paper, in a manner that would make Hollywood accountants blush.
This really only hurts the competition, who is completely unprofitable in every sense of the word. And all for what? Left-shifting the collection of a 21% income tax by a couple years? I think many of us would’ve done terrible things in 2021 to only have an effective tax rate of 21%. The government mugged Peter the payroll tax man to pay Paul the corpo tax man, but they disemboweled Peter in the process, and most of the money had to be disposed of as a biohazard.
I don’t believe Section 174 was an honest attempt to manage the deficit. I think Zuck, the PayPal Mafia, and the blood-boy cabal bribed some Congresscritters to kill off what remained of their competition.
> I think Zuck, the PayPal Mafia, and the blood-boy cabal bribed some Congresscritters to kill off what remained of their competition.
What's with the craze for finding conspirational incentives?
There's a repeatable pattern where commenters hallucinate an unreasonable incentive for everything.
Motivations are difficult to discern (see courtrooms), and it is a modern vice to try and analyse incentives, but too often the cause-and-effect imaginations are not even reasonable guesses, but are just pure fiction.
My best guess (based off word choices made) is that we all love to create new stories/narratives, that fit into our personal tribal stories.
My best guess is that legalizing corruption has made everyone a bit more deranged. Some more than others.
I don’t think it’s such a huge leap that a policy with such unanimous opposition was put in place by the select few special interests who benefit from it. It helps (or doesn’t help?) when they all got together for that photo op at the inauguration.
Believing in corruption doesn't have to be in the same league as believing the moon landings were faked. I don't particularly think this tax thing is something other than short-sightedness, but there is a tendency among some to dismiss even blatant cases of corruption.
Believing in fake moon landings requires believing in a level of competence I don't think exists in large organizations, but the same applies to believing there is no corruption or backroom deals, which are exposed all the time and seemingly rarely punished.
It’s much simpler than that. People have figured out that if you follow the money (ask who profits financially or in terms of market power), then even confusing political actions make sense.
Uh have you worked in policy in faang? I have that would be the least insane tactic I saw used.
I can’t believe you’re trying to claim the high ground in rationalism here and have no clue how bad it is.
No, but clearly you also have zero idea.
People in policy are not dealing with bribery and corruption (which is the framing of the comment I replied to).
If bribery is occurring, then I would expect it to be used to get higher value personally directed outcomes (not a few percent on the bottom line). The suggested incentives sound completely wrong to me (which is the point of my comment). Obviously my own ignorant opinion given that I have zero experience "bribing Congresscritters".
I can believe there is corruption, but I also believe smart people will hide their goals better than the internet peanut gallery assume.
Several heads of policy directly attend trumps fundraisers currently. Are You kidding me it’s not even covered up anymore.
What I’m saying is you in your not doing this mentality think this is fine all cloak and dagger.
It isn’t. It’s legal and it’s done very directly.