Tag Archives: taxes

Tough To Do Inside the EU, Though

Posted on by
Reply

Here’s an area where it really would be good to look like Europe, or at least the UK part of it.

UK Treasury chief George Osborne unveiled a major shake-up of corporate taxes in Britain on Wednesday, saying he intends to lower the main rate companies pay to less than half the rate levied on firms in the US.

Of course, such tax rate competition is hard to do in the EU, what with the European Commission’s utter dislike for it.

It may be that the British really will need to leave the European Union, if they want to compete in the global economy.

Tax Dollars

Posted on by
Reply

Yours, and mine, at work. The paper from which the following excerpt was taken (h/t The Wall Street Journal) was funded by the National Science Foundation.

Ice is not just ice. The dominant way Western societies understand it through the science of glaciology is not a neutral representation of nature. The feminist glaciology framework draws attention to those who dominate and frame the production of glaciological knowledge, the gendered discourses of science and knowledge, and the ways in which colonial, military, and geopolitical domination co-constitute glaciological knowledge. Even in a globalized age where the place of women and indigenous people has improved markedly in some parts of the world, masculinist discourses continue to dominate, in subtle and determinative ways. Feminist glaciology advocates for a shift of preoccupations in research, policy, and public perceptions from the physical and seemingly natural, to a broader consideration of “cryoscapes,” the human, and the insights and potentials of alternative ice narratives and folk glaciologies.

The critique and framework outlined here illuminate experiences and narratives that emerged historically but remain potent today. Public discourse on the cryosphere continues to privilege, quite explicitly, manly endeavours and adventures in the field, and those who conduct their science in the manner of masculinist glaciologists and other field scientists of decades and centuries past….

The call for a feminist glaciology is not limited to ice and glaciers, but is a larger intervention into global environmental change (and especially climate change) research and policy.

Those were your tax dollars, and mine. Yeesh.

The Left’s Iron Curtain

Posted on by
Reply

…is getting a bit taller. I wrote earlier about the Democratic-Progressive Party’s wish to erect an Iron Curtain to keep American companies from leaving for more economically (read: tax) sound environments. Now, Democratic-Progressive Party Presidential candidate and proud Progressive Hillary Clinton is enlarging her Iron curtain. Clinton now is proposing this:

Companies that move jobs and production out of the US would lose previous years’ tax breaks under a proposal Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton released Friday during a speech in Detroit.

The US would seek to “claw back” previous tax incentives for research and development and for domestic manufacturing associated with facilities or jobs that move abroad.

On top of that,

The Clinton campaign didn’t have an estimate of how much money its tax plan would generate for the government.

Of course not. The purpose isn’t to recover monies foregone as incentives to do this or that, it’s strictly to imprison private enterprises within the US, Soviet-style—because private enterprises aren’t jobs factories, rather they are, according to this candidate, jobs welfare programs.

Remember this in the fall.

Can’t Have That

Posted on by
Reply

The European Commission, the bloc’s antitrust watchdog, in January ordered Belgium to recoup about €700 million ($765 million) from some 35 companies after concluding that a Belgian tax-discount plan for multinationals was distorting competition within the EU’s single market.

Distorting, sure. Because competition existed in a manner that didn’t suit the Know Betters who are the Commission. The “scheme” in question, alleged to be an excess profits scheme, was marketed by Belgium as Only in Belgium. This was another terrible affront to the Commission, which doesn’t like market differentiation that it hasn’t approved. Worse, it

allowed certain corporations to reduce their tax base by between 50% and 90%, the EU said.

Because leaving money in the hands of those who earned it means Know Betters can’t control the money’s disposition according to their own august whims.

Competition is bad. It puts customers—individuals—rather than Know Betters in charge of their affairs.

Democrat Extortion, State Level

Posted on by
Reply

Louisiana Democratic Gov John Bel Edwards is suggesting the legendary Louisiana State University football team’s 2016 season might be canceled—and other doomsday consequences—unless the GOP-legislature swiftly passes a package of tax increases to help close a looming $940 million budget shortfall.

The budget deficit is projected to reach $2 billion by the start of the next fiscal year. The Republicans should call him out on his naked extortion threats. And then pass a budget with $2.5 billion in spending cuts and $500 million in tax cuts. Does Edwards want to balance the budget, or is his precious spending and taxing all he cares about?

After all, the state’s economy runs over $250 billion as of 2015. Surely, they can find $2.5 billion just by shaking the state government’s couch cushions.