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Meta Uses A.I. Data Centers to Avoid Billions in Federal Taxes

255 points · 249 comments · gmays

  1. bpodgursky · · focus · HN ↗
    The actual solution here is to eliminate the corporate income tax and capture the money via higher capital gains and dividend income taxes.

    All of this boils down to politicians knowing (even if they can't say it publicly) that the corporate taxes are badly structured and tax incentives are often revenue-positive (since in reality, every economist knows you should not be taxing business inputs, and in fact European VATs are structured around this idea), but being unable politically to do the sane thing and capture the income at a point it can't easily be gamed.

    1. mindslight · · focus · HN ↗
      Let's flip it around - eliminate the personal income tax and only tax corpos. If the asset holding class wants to take on personal liability to save on taxes, let them.

      (And yes I say this knowing full well how disregarded entities and whatnot currently work. So please no "well ackshuallies" that merely bake in assumptions from current tax law)

      1. bpodgursky · · focus · HN ↗
        It doesn't work. US corporate profits were $4T in 2025, income tax receipts were $5.23T.

        Even if you taxed corporate profits at 100% (which of course, takes the stock market to zero and effectively ends the economy, but ignoring that) you have a huge gap.

        1. mindslight · · focus · HN ↗
          Current income tax receipts come from somewhere, right? So this argument only works if you're also arguing that a significant chunk comes from people who are employed by other individuals (non-corpos). Otherwise, for taxes that individuals currently pay on income from corpo employers (the vast majority of personal earned income, I'd venture), that money can instead go directly from the corpos to the government.

          The one big thing I know my model is missing here is appreciation of real estate held by individuals, but it seems relatively straightforward to leave capital gains (and other unearned income) intact to start while removing the tax on earned income.

          1. bpodgursky · · focus · HN ↗
            No... payroll comes from revenue, not profits.
            1. mindslight · · focus · HN ↗
              Yes exactly, which means to draw a bound there is a much larger number in addition to your $4T profit figure.
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