Should we adopt a "formulary apportionment system" of taxation?

In short it would mean companies would get taxed according to where their goods or services are sold, essentially where they do business, instead of being able to use off shore tax shelters to get out of paying most of the honest taxes due. On the dowbside it would be a lot nore complicated but on the upside tax shelters would become a thing of the past or at least greatly reduced in influence. What does WF say?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Formulary_apportionment

We should lower the corporate tax rate.

I think the basic idea is sound, but the crux is in the details. Long term -- and I realise this is difficult -- the way to go IMO is to move away from considering corporations at all and tax humans instead, while also devolving other legal and political matters down to the humans involved.

We already have a complicated tax system, we don't need to muck it up any more.

You can't say corporations aren't people in other instances, then turn around and say they are when it comes to taxes.

"tax shelters" are strictly a game of whack-a-mole.

When billions of dollars are involved, corporations will find a way. Just like Steve Forbes when he ran for president in 1996 pointed out that rich people like him (about 700 million dollars at that time) would (his own words) "never pay taxes" because absent something extremely simple like a Flat Tax (which Forbes was running in favor of) extremely wealthy people would always be able to employ lawyers and accountants to keep them from paying their taxes.

Exactly. They never are. For the time being, we afford corporations advantages that we wouldn't afford the people that comprise them. We shouldn't be doing that. While we still do, corporate taxation is probably unavoidable. But the way forward is to limit the fiction of corporations as far as we possibly can.

Dayton, with this proposed system it would no longer be a game of wackamole. Tax is due where ever the good or service is sold not where the company declares where its HQ's P.O. Box to officially be.

I'd be in favor of a flat tax as long as we get rid of income tax.

The Flat Tax IS an income tax Federal Farmer.

Yep, and a very stupid and unfair one too.

I mean you can't have both a flat tax, plus all of the other taxes. You'd have to have one or the other.

I wouldn't say that.

I am in favor of reducing taxes as long as it doesnt have an effect on the military budget. Or NASA. But if the cuts to taxes require cuts to science and education spending then too bad.

A flat tax is about as fair as it gets.

Dude, the military wastes millions of dollars each year, we don't need the give the military any more money. They need to figure out how to stop wasting money and gut stupid projects.

God damnit, I got not Daytoned. That's funny because I predicted Dayton saying something like that.

The way I see it our military need to be able to fight one large war and two small wars at the same time. I am all for being efficient but they are hamstrung right now in achieving that.

Which is probably why Iran and North Korea have been allowed to get nuclear weapons and why we have not fought back in Ukraine.

Not a second time, bud.

Actually Faceman is correct in this case.

No.

Perhaps @Dinner can explain why a flat tax is unfair?

I have many times before. Every other tax is regressive, meaning they hit the poor harder than the rich and the only progressive tax we have is the income tax. Thus why wealthy special interests always want to target it. The biggest problem with our current income tax rates is they are not progressive enough, like they used to be, to balance out effective tax rates.

Actually more like billions or tens of billions per year.

With an annual budget of 600 billion plus, even if the military budget was 90% efficient (which would be remarkably good for a federal government program) that would still mean at least 60 billion dollars wasted.

EVERYTHING hits the poor harder than the rich.

Taxes, unemployment, regulations, hot weather, cold weather,

So have a cut off, if you make less than X amount or less, you're exempt.

Everything but a progressive income tax. That is why it is needed. To balance out effective total tax rates. That is also why igboring the reality of all the dozens and dozens of other taxes and only looking at the income tax in isolation is both immoral, unfair, and deliberately deceptive.

Igboring?

You see that already you are making it a little bit fairer by making it a little bit more progressive.