Quote:
Originally Posted by Eratosthenes
what is socialism Renato?
There are many who dont mind socialist welfare when it is applied to corporations and the banking cartels.
Take the fossil sectors in AUstralia for example - they receive about 12 billion dollars per year in tax payer funded rorts and subsidies. And this obscene hand out is given to a mature industry that is blessed with many economies of scale and market advantages (not to mention the fact that it is also over 80% foreign owned)
So when you say "socialism" you need to define it and also outline where it is applied in our society and who benefits from it.
The system is stacked - its rigged.
This is why we have perhaps the biggest corporation in the world EXXON-MOBIL post 73 billion dollars in PROFIT and pay 2% in tax.
You do not what to know what the tax payer in Australia pays to fund the corporate welfare system.
(Pension asset test? Perhaps what is needed is legislation that prohibits corporate welfare hand outs - if the corner family owned Bottle shop is subject to tough love and capitalist discipline, so should the Coles and Woolworths bottle shop chains)
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You can check Wikipedia to find out what Socialism is. No point in me defining it.
I just saw the woman from ACOSS on the Richo program on Skynews. I had to laugh given what I wrote earlier. She wants higher capital gains taxes, she wants higher superannuation taxes, she wants the family home included in the assets test, and she is all in favour of the new pension asset measures.
Subsidies to fossil fuel companies - you are either talking the nonsense Green and ACF stuff or something more sensible as in this article,
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-11-1...bsidie/5881814
So, if companies spend money on research and marketing to target their customers - then that money is a legitimate tax deduction, No arguments from the Greens and the ACF. But if a company is spending money exploring for fossil fuels, so that it can make profits and pay tax in the future, and it gets a legitimate tax deduction for its exploration in an area that the government considers crucial for the country - then that is considered a subsidy and a rort by the Green crowd. That is nonsensical, as far as I am concerned.
Then there is the diesel fuel rebate which the Greens and ACF say is a subsidy and a rort. The government introduced fuel taxes to build and pay for the upkeep of roads. The resource companies, however, given where they operate have to build and maintain their own roads, and for the most part don't use government provided roads. Plainly it is totally unfair to charge those companies taxes on their fuel to pay for everyone else's roads while they still have to build and maintain their own roads. And so, both Coalition and Labor governments think it fair that they get back the tax component of the fuel that they use on their own roads in the form of a rebate. Exactly how is this a subsidy and a rort?
Most commonly, all these outrages (such as that offered by you) about big companies making big profits and paying little tax relate to people not understanding or deliberately choosing to not understand the difference between Cost and Accrual accounting. So, if a company is building a big project which will make them big profits in the future, by accrual accounting - as required in their annual reports - they have to book a profit of the value of what they have built that year, even though it has generated not a cent of money that year. But by Cost accounting, as generally required by the Tax office, they put down what they really got in terms of money in and money out, and pay tax on their taxable income. So it's not unusual for the Annual report to show a big unrealized profit (since the idea is to give shareholders an idea of the true health of the company) and to show also a smaller taxable profit - since that is the money profit it actually made. And there are numerous other differences between Accrual Accounting, Cost accounting and the accounting required by the tax office (which is not exactly the same as Cost accounting).
Regards,
Renato
