I hate articles like this: Apple, Google, Amazon Pay Corporate Income Tax Well Below Official Rate – US Business News – CNBC.

Of course they do. The default tax rate is something like 40%. However expenses are deductible, reducing that rate to what may seem like a pittance.  Maybe it would make more sense to look at it like this:

Suppose I go out and start a C-Corp as a second business and (as a simple number), I make $10,000 this year in profit. I manage to whittle my effective tax rate down to 10% by tracking my expenses really well. So I end up with $9,000 in after-tax business profit. Assume that I distribute this all out to myself at the end of the year. Now I have to pay personal income tax on $9,000 of income. Let’s pretend I have to pay 15% on those gains through some tax trickery where I pay a low rate. By the time I’m done, I’m left with: $7650

1 – (7650/10000) = 1 – .765 = .235 = 23.5%

There’s a reason why the LLC and S-Corp organizational structures are the preferred structure of small businesses – these structures avoid the double taxation problem and both entities essentially serve as a pass-through.

The problem with growth stocks is that they do not pay out dividends, making this example a bit more difficult to see. However growth stocks typically re-invest profits to grow the share value. Assuming the stock price increases between the time you purchase it and when you sell it, you are paying taxes at the corporate level and then at the personal level when you cash in.

Even if the price of the stock loses value and you sell at a loss, the taxes have already been paid. Even then, your ability to claim a loss in a diversified portfolio is minimized. You have to take all of your capital gains, subtract the loss and then claim the loss on your tax form. The max loss you can take is $3,000 (you can can carry excess losses forward). However, because the stock is a growth stock, you essentially re-invested your share of the profits in the business. You paid taxes on a portion of the corporate income, but when it comes time to claim your capital loss, you can’t claim those taxes, paid at the corporate level, as a part of your capital loss. This effectively reduces the value of the loss you can claim/carry.

For non-dividend-paying stocks, the only time you are not double-taxed is when the business pays a 0% tax rate and you have a capital loss that exceeds your capital gains. Over a diversified portfolio, the likelihood of such an event is minimal. You will have to pay some taxes at the corporate level, as a shareholder, somewhere in the portfolio mix.

And for those who seem to think double-taxing of dividends is a myth or a “privilege” of being a shareholder in a corporation, the IRS specifically states it is a double-tax.

This is a nice idea I’ve mulled over in the past. As phones become more and more powerful, you can dock your phone and you have your computer tied to a monitor, keyboard and mouse (and other peripherals)- always on, everywhere you go, all the time.  And it is kinda cool seeing Ubuntu taking some risks here.

The question is, where does it fit in? There’s a couple of references to business-use cases in the specs. But there’s also a lot that businesses might not be too pleased with – namely access to apps that would otherwise be restricted on the desktop. I’d venture a guess that phones are more commonly lost than are laptops, leading to questions (at least in my head) about how much security can be applied to the Ubuntu side of the phone.

According to this article at PCWorld, Mark Shuttleworth doesn’t seem to concerned on the security angle -and admittedly, Linux does have more than a few security options out there that can be applied.

I was thumbing through a copy of Time magazine (that I don’t subscribe to, yet still shows up at my door weekly), a rare event as most just hit the trash when I found a pull quote from George Lucas (speaking about the Star Wars franchise):

Why would I make any more when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are.

Lucas’ position is an interesting place at the intersection of creativity and product delivery. I tend to believe Lucas hasn’t quite found the balance between art and product – something, I would assume, creative types often struggle with.

There’s no doubt that Lucas has been successful (monetarily and popularity-wise) with the Star Wars franchise. Yet, all of the creativity that went into the first three movies (IV, V, and begrudgingly VI) occurred at a juncture where the the films were primarily driven by creativity and art. With Star Wars IV being such a surprise hit, the gravitational mass of the Star Wars enterprise has long eclipsed the creative cycle and become more marketable-product. And when consumers expect a product, they don’t necessarily like divergence from what they originally bought into.

Coyote has a decent piece up (snippet here or full article on Forbes) primarily dealing with progressive ignorance. In short – it summarizes the (oftentimes willful) ignorance of the left when it comes to public policy prescriptions for “fixing” capitalism.

However we should not forget the need to look at the flip side of the coin. The right has often been long on the talk of capitalism and free markets – but let the left slide and even doing their own part.

Romneycare anyone? What’s a more free market – a market free of government coercion or government coercion as the core means of product delivery?

Earmarks? Nothing beats padding the wallets of the connected and Republicans haven’t done much to conceal their hypocrisy here.

Or how about the tenure of Republican Ray LaHood in his fiefdom of regulation and taxpayer-funded handouts?

So  I’m often torn when I see posts like Coyote’s. The (arguably flawed) choice we’re left with is, which is better: those who deliver all of the wrong solutions because they often don’t know better or those who deliver all of the wrong solutions when the already know better.