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[Lord Shonus]

On the other hand, I've been surprisingly pleased with my own Senator (Portman), who I previously disliked and voted against. His criticism of the proposals has been very much in line with what the people of Ohio are vulnerable to, and I did not expect that. Now, that respect will evaporate if he votes in favor regardless, but at least his criticisms are well placed.

[Frumple]

Eh... I haven't even bothered checking what mine are saying on it, honestly. Between one being rubio and the other being D I'd be mildly surprised if I couldn't kinda' guess the thrust of things (ten pounds of bullshit in a half pound chamberpot, something with a general sentiment of recommending to his GOP senate peers they sodomize themselves with a rusty railroad spike, respectively) without actually reading it. If the GOP ends up trying a runaround on the CBO and then shove-through shenanigans afters, I might get around to it just so I can mail that rat bastard rubio a letter filled top to bottom with properly selected invective.

And the discussion on it will last only 20 hours! NO DEBATING just pass it!

It'd be rather unfortunate for everyone if that happened, methinks. Especially the Rcritter on the senate that stated publicly they'd be sending it to the CBO before continuing.

[EnigmaticHat]

Maybe this is a stupid question but is a -294% tax rate the same thing as a 0% tax rate?

No, it means you get 294% more back from the government than you paid in taxes. Such things are not uncommon at the low end of the income scale, but much rarer at the higher end.

Secondary question, does that mean that the government gave them 294% of their taxable profit as money?  Cause that's, ah, what the fuck?

[Draignean]

Maybe this is a stupid question but is a -294% tax rate the same thing as a 0% tax rate?

No, it means you get 294% more back from the government than you paid in taxes. Such things are not uncommon at the low end of the income scale, but much rarer at the higher end.

Secondary question, does that mean that the government gave them 294% of their taxable profit as money?  Cause that's, ah, what the fuck?

I know, right? A company like Mylan can't even break the -300% mark? I mean, goddamn, this is why we need more corporate tax breaks. Until such time as the government is reliably paying taxes to the companies, we live in a broken society!

[TheDarkStar]

Do companies usually spend most of their profits on expansion/growth? If so, you could go on and argue that a -294% tax rate isn't enough because Mylan is close to having a deficit all the time so to make sure it doesn't go bankrupt taxes need to be lower.

[EnigmaticHat]

Do companies usually spend most of their profits on expansion/growth? If so, you could go on and argue that a -294% tax rate isn't enough because Mylan is close to having a deficit all the time so to make sure it doesn't go bankrupt taxes need to be lower.

As I understand it a big name company should have such consistent income and amazing credit they have no real reason to save money.  That doesn't mean that they spend it *well* mind you, but yeah, its going to go into either expansion strategies or bonuses/dividends.

What big companies strive on is their income statements.  Big time investors want to use money to make money, that means buying in and then selling out some amount of years later.  US companies are bought and sold in the relatively short term and so it doesn't matter if your company eats dirt and shits gold, it needs to shit a little more gold every year or else the investor that bought in 6 months ago isn't getting anything out of it.

So what you see is that companies love to re-invest only in lump sums.  If you spend money on employees or rent or air conditioning or selling products at a loss or whatever, it goes on the monthly expenditures part of your balance sheet.  If you spend money on a new location or research or a new project or short term marketing, you don't write that down as lowering your profit, because you were just spending last year's income.  I think.  But yeah its all about perception.  You want to be seen to have a profitable company, the actual profits don't go into anyone's pocket (even the massive CEO pay is peanuts compared to the profits themselves).  Where actual human beings make money off US corporations right now is in selling them to other people who want to make money off of selling them.  Our economy in a big way resembles a casino.  Or a bank; actual banks don't pay much interest on deposits right now but investments will allow wealth to keep pace with inflation.

Edit: Sorry, should have made this more explicit.  If Mylan were at a deficit it simply wouldn't exist.  US companies are expanding or dying.  Every industry has a startup period where its not expected to make money; past that point the initial investors will probably try to play up the value of their assets so they can convince an established company to absorb them.

Spoiler: story time (click to show/hide)

Its actually very interesting, someone in my family is an executive (not CEO level but usually answers directly to the CEO) and he's has talked about some things that he's seen.  One time he saw a company he was part of absorb a lot of high power executives as a way to make themselves more appealing for a merger larger.  But then when the merger happened most of the smaller company was dissolved except for those same executives that were acquired fairly last minute.  To this day he doesn't know exactly what happened but he thinks it was some kind of high level company politics, probably an attempt by those executives to seize power in the giant company.  This same guy is also really struggling in his current company because the previous owners oversold its value to the current owners; so he's being held to the standard of growing the company past its original sale price but its original sale price was inflated making growth and thus a profitable sale in the future unlikely.  If you ever feel your company doesn't value you, this shit is why.  Its all high level politics by people who usually haven't worked in the industry much less the company itself.

[sluissa]

Maybe this is a stupid question but is a -294% tax rate the same thing as a 0% tax rate?

No, it means you get 294% more back from the government than you paid in taxes. Such things are not uncommon at the low end of the income scale, but much rarer at the higher end.

I don't think it's usually that simple. What usually happens is it's allowed to be applied to future taxes. Trump himself had a thing go on similarly in the past. He "lost" a billion dollars through some business deals and then simply didn't pay taxes for the next few years because he was able to roll over his "losses" into the next years. That can go on for several years, but I think there is a limit. With a company like Mylan though I'm sure they've planned it out and have something new ready and waiting.

[redwallzyl]

Maybe this is a stupid question but is a -294% tax rate the same thing as a 0% tax rate?

No, it means you get 294% more back from the government than you paid in taxes. Such things are not uncommon at the low end of the income scale, but much rarer at the higher end.

I don't think it's usually that simple. What usually happens is it's allowed to be applied to future taxes. Trump himself had a thing go on similarly in the past. He "lost" a billion dollars through some business deals and then simply didn't pay taxes for the next few years because he was able to roll over his "losses" into the next years. That can go on for several years, but I think there is a limit. With a company like Mylan though I'm sure they've planned it out and have something new ready and waiting.

yet when normal people suddenly lose a lot of money for cercumstances out of their control we confiscate their houses for not being able to pay their taxes.

[Frumple]

Whee. Good news everybody, it turns out what we were saying earlier was wrong, and that voter roll information was changed, but they caught that and fixed it in time for the election, doubleplus pinky swear we totally got it this time!

Though it does look like that article cites unnamed officials so 2c and all. Still. "Fun" how that seems to keep escalating every time it hits the news again.

_{^{ps if you happen to be in illinois and didn't already notice you might want to do some personal info updating just saying}}

[EnigmaticHat]

Maybe this is a stupid question but is a -294% tax rate the same thing as a 0% tax rate?

No, it means you get 294% more back from the government than you paid in taxes. Such things are not uncommon at the low end of the income scale, but much rarer at the higher end.

I don't think it's usually that simple. What usually happens is it's allowed to be applied to future taxes. Trump himself had a thing go on similarly in the past. He "lost" a billion dollars through some business deals and then simply didn't pay taxes for the next few years because he was able to roll over his "losses" into the next years. That can go on for several years, but I think there is a limit. With a company like Mylan though I'm sure they've planned it out and have something new ready and waiting.

The other thing that Trump took advantage of was bankruptcy laws.  When a company goes bankrupt its the company that loses things not the people involved... even if in practice the company's finances are closely tied to the owner.  Trump in particular got a lot forgiven in one of his bankruptcy dealings including getting to stay on as CEO and that's where his "bankruptcy laws have been very kind to me" quote comes from.

US law really is fucked up right now in terms of finances.  Small business laws can be exploited to simply go bankrupt instead of paying your employees, then start a similar new business (possibly even under a shell corporation that owned the first one).  So you can graduate college with a bunch of private student loans, get a job, not get paid even tho you did the work, then you go bankrupt and your debt is almost entirely not forgiven.  While the guy who didn't pay you still has the same amount of money as before since he had almost no assets in the business.  And absolutely none of that is illegal.  Nor will your debt be forgiven in time, yet in spite of all that you're probably STILL better off as a broke 20 something with an English degree and a bankruptcy on your record, than someone who has no undergraduate or vocational degree.

In a lot of ways what we see with downsizing is exactly the same thing.  When your corporation is struggling, if you downsize and cut wages even tho the corporation dies a slow death it doesn't matter because the investors are a legally separate entity.  In fact if your heavily downsized company happens to go bankrupt, as a shareholder you get to be potentially one of the people that gets a payout from the proceedings.  Unafraid of bankruptcy, you can go for unsustainable growth in the short term and a quick sale.  The only people who lose are you employees... and your customers... and your creditors... and whoever buys the company from you... and anyone lives in the area your company is based in... really everyone except the current investors.  Meanwhile this encourages the consolidation of businesses since a mid or top of the pack corporation that dies is going to have its assets absorbed into larger corporations instead of smaller ones, pushing out of the market small businesses that could have had less toxic business practices and a more horizontal structure.

Of course Obama tried to relieve some of the pressure on the poor and young with public student loans and healthcare reform.  So at least if the economy is going to go light on corporations it would go a little lighter on the little guy too.  Now Republicans have rolled back what little student loan reform they didn't block, what they're doing to the education system is going to kill the prospects of anyone under say 14 years of age*, and they're trying to carve up our healthcare too.  This shit is why I won't need to read a ballot for the rest of my life.  I'm still going to out of principle, but like what would it take for a Democrat to be less in line with my beliefs than a Republican at this point?

*a little money is leaving universities and that's going to suck but a LOT of money is leaving K-12 public schools.  What happens when public schools suck?  Incoming students into universities don't have the base of knowledge to learn the advanced stuff, that causes dropout rates to increase, universities to make less money, and the people who do graduate will be less educated because more time will be spent on basics.  This devalues college degrees and increases student loan debt while reducing the access to all levels of education for low income families.  Fuck you Betsy Devos.

[origamiscienceguy]

Hooray. Uncle Ted isn't supporting the bill.

[Starver]

Hooray. Uncle Ted isn't supporting the bill.

But is Uncle Bill supporting the ted?

[Folly]

It seems obvious, to me at least, that Trump did tape his conversation, and he spent the last month trying to get his secret team of audio nerds to edit the tapes so he would sound innocent and Comey would sound guilty. They finally gave up and had to tell him that what he wanted was impossible. Trump 'fired' them to cover his tracks, and now is claiming that there never were any tapes.

[EnigmaticHat]

Hooray. Uncle Ted isn't supporting the bill.

I doubt it will last to be honest.  They need 51 out of 52 republican senators to support the bill, 4 have spoken out against it.  4 senators is really not that much and I think its clear that most of the "resistance" to Trump in the senate is planned in advance.

The real question is: do the Republican senators *want* this to pass?  There's an easy argument that forcing millions of their supporters out off insurance and further pissing off Democrats would be a political suicide note; on the other hand failing to repeal Obamacare might ALSO be a political suicide note.  The way I see it there are 3 options:
1.  It passes
2.  It gets voted down
3.  Either a recess happens before it gets voted on, or something changes to cause them to not risk a vote

In the case of 3, we're back to an unstable environment waiting for the next Trump event.  I believe that all Republican Senators want 1 or 3, and that in their meetings with each other they're outwardly all for 1, but many (probably most) secretly want 3 and are willing to maneuver for it.  The real risk here is that Mitch McConnell wants to manipulate the Senate rules to make a vote happen way faster than it should, before anyone can analyze the bill and the public can react.  If that happens, either 1 or 2 will happen and all hell will break lose either way.

I don't think the Republican Senate realizes what a powder keg this is.  They're thinking of it in terms of their story, the story of us vs Obamacare.  But no, they are now linked to Trump in the same way Democratic senators were linked to Obama.  Just as Trump's Russia scandal has marred Republican congressmen despite having relatively little to do with them, if they rapidly surprise-pass "Trumpcare" it will taint not only their name but Trump's name.  To have both those scandals going on at the same time would be seriously bad news.  On the other hand if option 2 happens, that will mean that for one of the first times in 2017 a senator has voted against their party; I doubt it will happen but it would be at least as much of a disaster for the Republicans as option 1 would be.

[Sheb]

Isn't it the case that most of the bill don't kick in until the next four years? I guess they figure that they can vote it, lie through their teeth about the effect and wait it out.