Terms and Conditions

That's sure better than having the business, and the jobs, outside of the USA, and import the products.

Corporations are not persons. They have no emotions, no pleasure or pain, no children. It's irrational to be jealous of the income or the wealth of a corporation. Or an individual.

Taxing business drives jobs and productivity to places that tax less. Other states, other countries. Businesses create stuff and jobs. Why encourage them to take their "obligations" somewhere else?

The best thing to do for real, living people is not tax business. Don't we want to do what's best for people?

A lot of european leaders are mad at Donald for starting a business tax-rate war. Excellent.

Draft dodging is easier for corporations than it is for people. Just move to Ireland or Aruba.

Depends on how important it is to you and how much they want you. In negotiating one consulting gig I had to walk _twice_ before getting BigElectricCo to agree to pay net 45 with monthly invoices. They wanted net 90 with billing at the end of the project. One famous manufacturer of thermostats finally paid after almost 180 days.

If their motivation extends to a high enough management level, they can get it done. Of course their legal folks will be much happier if you start with their Ts&Cs and put in the things you care about, e.g. sane payment terms and a two-way NDA.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I know one contractor that hadn't been paid by A Big Company. Eventually he declared them bankrupt (fairly easy here I'm told, providing some preconditions are met), which froze all their bank accounts.

The bill was settled the same day: /cash/ was delivered by a motorcycle courier!

Yeah, you can do that over here too, but unless the contract and your liability insurance are rock solid you have to watch out for payback. I certainly wouldn't do that without talking to a lawyer.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

ISTR he did, and the lawyer was surprised he had been so patient!

I've no idea whether he did (or wanted to) work for that company again. I never touched that company because it was, infamously, run by an accountant that loved cost-plus government contracts

- and found tepid bodies to bill for the "work" "done".

Corporations do not have courage. Business is not creative, but (in most cases) lucrative. Charters mainly say 'for profit'.

How did you reach that conclusion? Read it on a bumper sticker? Businesses benefit from public works, infrastructure, institutions. Rather than only making contributions in envelopes of cash to public officials for campaigns, I support business contributions to the treasury. That leaves business with the same access to public officials that most voters have.

And the same access to public works, infrastructure...

A piece of paper filed in Delaware can't have feelings. People have feelings.

The people who manage corporations do take risks, sometimes gigantic risks. The corporation provides the resources to try it. It took decades and billions of dollars to develop the geared turbofan. It took guts and insight to dare it, not knowing if the world would want it.

Businesses created the modern world that we live in. The world that keeps you warm, dry, fed, connected, amused, and alive.

No, I thought about it. The sorts of bumper stickers I see around here say

RESIST!

or

KEEP TAHOE BLUE

I did meet a gorgeous lady who had a great sticker on the back of her Apple laptop:

You are thinking about businesses "paying their fair share", specifically the taxes that you prefer someone not-yourself to pay.

I am thinking about policies that are best for the people.

I think I can top that one. A large client went belly up on me and left me hanging with a five-digit amount. A liquidator was handling the remains of the company and that guy told me whether or not I get paid will depend on whether they deem my work "important". That peeved me so I sent a letter via certified mail stating that I will claim ownership of the design due to non-payment and if payment in full was not forthcoming within 10 business days I would sell the design to another company. They already had a buyer for much of what was left but without the rights to my design the value of the whole enchilada was compromised.

Reaction was prontissimo. No motorcycle, two guys flew in, with payment in hand.

Excellent.

Also demonstrates the importance of IP ownership clauses.

Engineers and lawyers have one thing in common: they both know that how things work as intended is often less important than how things /fail/.

Which is what NAFTA largely brought us.

I think legally they are. One guy tried to use that to travel in the carpool lane, having his incorporation docs on the passenger seat. He lost the first round in court though, they want their traffic ticket dough.

So do overly onerous law, red tape and so on. Body politicus generally does not understand that.

Yup. They are welcome to lower their own biz tax rates if they find they are now too high. It's not a war anyhow, it's just that we now have corporate tax rates that are average in a comparison with other industrialized nations instead of at the top.

It almost can't be a coincidence anymore, I got more consulting requests this January than in any month of any year before the tax reform, ever. While I am concerned about our spiraling national debt this tax reform could become the best thing that's happened to America in years. Wish I was 10-20 years younger.

Adding a trillion in national debt over 10 years is way down in the noise.

Isn't it a trillion a year now?

According to economists that is a concern because once interest rates rise, and they now have to, the debt service alone can swallow so much of the tax revenue that important stuff gets crowded out.

They will do what governments always do: print money and steal everyone's savings.

The latter they can only do via inflation and higher taxes. That tends to backfire.

Sooner or later (and it will be pre-planned) the bond markets are going to re-evaluate the sovereign debt of several large Western countries as being next to worthless. Then we'll see some fun.

"LLCs and S-corps work on a cash basis"

LLCs and Subchapter S Corporations are part of the legal framework. Cash (or accural) basis is part of the accounting framework. The choice of an accounting basis is independent of the legal entity type. My LLC uses accrual basis accounting on its 1120-S tax return. The first time that you file an 1120 (or an 1120-S) you are free to use either an accrual or a cash basis. After that, you are stuck with using the same basis from year to year. Unless you jump through some IRS hoops to change your basis.

Thank you,

Yet even large institutional investors are buying government bonds with maturities in the decades, occasionally apoproaching a whopping 100 years.

people were buying subprime too. Subprime is actually great investment area, as long as it's assessed realistically.