Wednesday, July 13, 2011

I feel so much better now

Ben Bernanke says the economy will get better Real Soon Now (tm). This is the same Ben Bernanke who just a few weeks ago said the economy was getting worse and he didn't have a clue as to why.

Well, here's a theory: Rupert Murdoch paid negative $4.8 billion in taxes on profits of $10.4 billion. That's right, the U.S. government gave Murdoch $4.8 billion. [UPDATE: Reuters has retracted this report. See the comments for details.]

In other news, the state of California is going to close 50 state parks to help close the state's budget deficit. The move will save $19 million (with an M, not a B).

But we can't raise taxes on Murdoch because that would kill jobs.

9 comments:

Dennis Gorelik said...

So if my corporation has losses then I would get tax refund from the US government?

Or if my corporation buys another corporation with tax losses then my corporation would be able to get tax refund?

I doubt it.

What might be possible, is to reduce amount of taxes paid.

Ron said...

> So if my corporation has losses then I would get tax refund from the US government?

No, of course not. You've completely missed the point. If your corporation has losses then you have no money left over to hire accountants and lobbyists, and pay bribes --um, I mean, of course, make campaign contributions. So the more money you make, the less you pay, until at some point you make enough to cross the threshold to where the government pays you.

Dennis Gorelik said...

My conclusion from that is: government is too complex and has too much money.
Tax system should be simplified and taxes lowered.
At the same time government should spend much, much less.

So it simply will not have money for such ridiculous negative taxes.

Ron said...

> My conclusion from that is: government is too complex and has too much money.

Yep.

> Tax system should be simplified and taxes lowered.

Definitely simplified. Lowering taxes is more problematic.

> At the same time government should spend much, much less.

Less on what? What would you cut? Defense? Medicare? Social security?

> So it simply will not have money for such ridiculous negative taxes.

This was the theory advanced by Republicans under Reagan, that you could shrink government by "starving the beast." It doesn't work. The beast doesn't starve, it just runs up an enormous debt.

Dennis Gorelik said...

I'd cut (over 10 years):
1) Defense by ~70%
2) Social security by half.

Medicare spendings can stay as they are and getting slowly eaten by inflation.

No credits to businesses "too big to fail" or for any other reasons.
Business must pay to government, not the other way around.

------
Cutting taxes does not automatically reduce spending, but it helps to reduce spending.

What I would also do is to increase top government officials salaries. At least 10x.
But at the same time trim total bureaucracy budget.

So better and brighter people would compete for top government positions, but overall government population would be significantly reduced.

Ron said...

Sounds good to me. Good luck getting it through Congress.

MaysonicWrites said...

Of course, the Murdoch tax story turns out to be wrong: caused by a strange change in News Corp accounting conventions in 2007.

Miles said...

Hmm not sure if my earlier comment showed up - but this was debunked and that's why the link doesn't work anymore.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/13/column-dcjohnston-murdoch-idUSN1E76C25320110713

Ron said...

Wow, thanks for pointing that out. It seemed a little improbable to me on its face at the time, but it was Reuters so I believed it.

Double-wow: the old link it just dead. It does not forward you to the retraction. Look like Reuters can't be trusted at all any more.