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Woz says 'Jobs started Apple for money' – then says it must pay 50% tax like he does

Kristian Walsh

He could be counting the indirect taxes that every citizen pays: VAT (GST/Sales/MWSt), levies and duties, fuel taxes are all government revenue. In the UK, HM Revenue collects nearly as much from VAT as it does from direct income taxation.

Corporations are exempted from these, as their purpose is to ultimately to collect these taxes on behalf of the government.

In that vein, there's also a very logical argument that corporations should pay no tax at all on their profits, because their purpose is to distribute profit to their shareholders, and you can then tax those shareholders on that income, and tax them at a higher rate than currently. (for Corporate shareholders, you just keep applying the profit distribution until you reach a living human who can be taxed on income).

Doing this would prevents the ludicrous situation where shareholders of Apple receive a piddling, miniscule dividend, while the company sits on hundred billion dollars of cash that it can't spend anywhere. (... until the US treasury department does another one of its once-a-decade corporate tax amnesties)

Such a system can only work if every country accounts for income and tax in a compatible way, to avoid double-counting or non-counting. The OECD "BEPS" guidelines are a start in this, but some nations are slow to fully implement them (and not Ireland, Luxembourg or Netherlands... think a little more star-spangled)

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