aquascoot wrote on Dec 11
th, 2017 at 9:56am:
if big companies dont pay tax, this is a good thing.
they will invest the money and create jobs or return it to YOU as a shareholder.
thus, the money is used wisely.
if they are foolish enough to pay tax, it will be spent on plebosites, public servants who stand around the water bubbler gossiping or french submarines.
thus, it is a moral imperative for all businesses to pay zero tax.
this should help people wean themselves off the government teat.
as the government milk supply dries up, people will be aided to cease being toddlers and actually take some responsibility for their own lives. they might even find this "rewarding"
No you're wrong here scoot.
Certainly much tax money is wasted and we could all identify areas we consider wasteful, but the fact that we would all identify different areas that we regard as wasteful is a story in itself.
But the reason you are wrong is twofold (grammatically incorrect but too lazy to change it):
1) companies are, like individuals, taxable entities according to the law and how it applies and like everybody else must be held to account for unlawful avoidance of tax;
2) more importantly, our society's wellbeing depends on the wealth created by private enterprise for profit AND the wealth created by the public sector for community enjoyment and sustenance. Yes, the govt does create wealth by the acts of organisation and administration that it performs, acts which brings us things from healthcare to transport infrastructure to national parks. We can argue about the degree and efficiency of these, but I submit it's beyond argument that we have learned over centuries now that the creation of public goods is as essential to our lives just as much as the production of the iPhone or the Big Mac.
If company profits are not taxed to the extent determined from time to time by the elected governments, if they are avoided on a grand scale, as they are, the availability of those necessary public goods is that much diminished.