@jonnythan Said 
When you invest money the government gets to tax it twice on the way back - they tax it when the company you invested in makes money and then tax it again when the company returns some of the money it made to you.
It takes money to create jobs. Whether you use your money to directly create jobs or invest your money in someone else who will create jobs is fairly irrelevant.
There's a few points here.
1) I'm getting tax incentives
for investing in other countries. Now why would we do that?
2) Employee wages and salaries are already deductible to the company employing them, why do we need to give extra incentives on top of that?
3) There's important psychology here. In theory, you're right. In practice, Richie McRichie has a bunch of money - he can work hard and be taxed a lot starting a company, or he can sit back and pay someone to do the hard work and get tax breaks for that.
4) You know, just because apple stock goes from $100 to $500 doesn't mean Apple is employing 5 times more people, yet those gains get special tax treatment. If the goal is for the government to induce private sector to create jobs, there are far more direct and efficient ways to do it than tax treatment of investments.
5) Why should investments get special tax treatment even if it does create jobs?
6) I do think we should eliminate corporate taxes and just tax individuals so any "double taxation" argument is moot.
Apr 17, 2012 @ 06:10:01
