Requiring companies to pay taxes in stock, tentatively called “taxation as stock” because I don’t know of a concise term

GPT-4.icon - Advantages: - Greater distribution of wealth: more people can benefit from corporate growth, leading to a reduction in income inequality - Promote long-term thinking: Knowing that stock prices have a direct impact on tax liability may make companies more inclined to make decisions that serve long-term growth and stability. - Aligning incentives: through the equity tax, a portion of corporate value is effectively owned by the public, so that corporate interests are more aligned with the public interest. - Encourage investment in public works: Tax revenues from equities can be used to fund public programs such as universal basic income, improving social safety nets, and reducing poverty. - Reduce tax avoidance: Since a company's tax liability is linked to its market capitalization, it may be more difficult for a company to avoid paying taxes by transferring profits to countries or regions with lower tax rates. - Disadvantages: -Disadvantages: -Disadvantages: -Disadvantages: -Disadvantages - Ownership [[dilution]]: The issuance of new shares to pay taxes may dilute the value of existing shareholders' shares and discourage them from investing in the company. - Increased volatility: volatile stock prices may make it more difficult for governments to predict and rely on stable tax revenues. - Market manipulation: companies may attempt to manipulate stock prices to reduce their tax burden, leading to market distortions.

discussion

Sam Altman considered taxing companies at a fixed rate on their market capitalization.

  • Market capitalization and firm productivity

    • I’m not sure the market capitalization properly reflects this.
      • An argument that is nothing more than a popularity contest from stupid people.
      • Wal-Mart has a large market capitalization, but the blue-collar worker ratio in value creation is large, so productivity gains from AI are less effective.
        • Delay is high because information alone cannot solve the problem, but is interspersed with the development of physical devices to solve the problem.
    • In the context of worrying about the labor market breaking down, why not worry about the stock market breaking down?
      • A market where transactions are concluded with variations in pricing due to the clunkiness of human predictions of the future.
      • If AI shows better forecasting performance than humans, won’t everyone rely on the AI’s judgment and thus the variability in judgment will disappear and transactions will cease to be concluded?
  • I don’t disagree that redistribution methods need to be redesigned, but I do agree that they need to be redesigned.

    • Should it be a universal basic income?
    • Should the underlying funds be equity taxable?

capital

  • stock taxation
  • Instead of taxing stocks, central banks should print money.
    • Composition to collect from “cash holders” in the form of inflation

redistribution

  • Encourage redistribution based on individual decisions - polygamy - I suspect there is much more opposition in the Christian world than to tinker with the tax system… - Legal in large parts of the Middle East and Africa. - Personally, I wouldn’t want to have more wives even if it were legal… - The human “desire to have many spouses” is small compared to the “disparity that will occur” and is weak as a means of eliminating the disparity. - Increase the [tax deduction for donations - The argument that we should put higher incentives on individuals to redistribute through donations at their discretion. - For example, even if the government cannot reduce health care costs for the elderly through the Silver Democracy, individuals who do not like it can donate to non-profit organizations that support child-rearing.

I was going to write about the relationship between employee compensation and stock options that pay in stock purchase rights instead of cash, but I had a feeling that was not the case at all.

  • If the government issues 2.5% of the market capitalization in new shares and the government takes those shares, it is the shareholders, not the corporation, who are bearing the tax burden. It is the shareholders who lose from the dilution.
  • Related: Double Taxation Argument for Taxing Net Income Even More When It’s Already Taxed
    • The argument that we should stop taxing profits because double taxation is a problem.
    • You’re still taking property taxes from real estate owned by corporations.

Isn’t the amount of state ownership of a company’s stock gradually increasing each year, in essence a gradual nationalization?

Membership-based employment” in Japan, where layoffs are difficult, is not a good argument for basic income.


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