> Holders of bonds would be absolutely wrecked. That's a lot of institutions and wealthy individuals.
Not only institutions, but those who are in power (government) who have risk-tolerant positions in the market with nothing to gain but their own discomfort and retirement.
Just to add, PayPal is also most likely a credit card processor, serving as a Payment Facilitator (PayFac), which enables others to become CC Processors. It happens that PayPal and Stripe are money transmitters, which may come with being a PayFac.
Auth.net is a gateway/portal that facilitates CC transactions, and while you may be refunded on processing fees for the use of the gateway, someone, somewhere is likely eating the interchange and most likely occurring at the merchant level.
Notably, Square, founded in 2009 didn't become a money transmitter until sometime in 2013, IIRC, and I think a few laggard states in 2014. This was in service of Square Cash, not the core payments business. They were, however, merchant of record the whole time.
CC Processors like Visa and Mastercard do refund fees on CC processing, but the interchange or % of return is smaller than the actual gross. You don't necessarily get "all" of your refund, if you're a merchant.
Depends on the school at this point. One I know usually allows incoming freshmen to defer until April or May or something like that. When they later put out very draconian restrictions for the fall (they're allowing freshmen on campus but basically locking students in their rooms), it took a fairly major revolt from parents and alumni to make them relent.
Well years ago the joke was Amazon sold at a very small loss but made it up in volume, and we can see how that turned out... Maybe they're going to blow up this business model as well!
Amazon’s “losses” have mostly been a tax dodge. They would for example invest in software R&D without presenting it as an investment from profits but rather an operating expense.
If I pay you 100k then you spend 50k buying land that’s not a “loss”. When a company spends 50k on R&D that’s generally an investment not an operating expense. Plenty of other dodges exist for physical assets via depreciation games etc. Even just buying more brand averting is an option to increase capital without being taxed on it’s creation.
Buying land would technically be a capital expenditure where you can only claim a deduction if the land becomes less valuable. If you're talking about more "normal" business purchases like computers or equipment you get to deduct a portion of the expense every year as it depreciates. So if you buy a $2k laptop for a developer and in 1 year it's now worth $1500 then you can deduct $500.
For a business that really doesn't make a difference. If you have $1 billion in revenue but spent $999,999,999 in order to generate the revenue then your business income is $1.
Or the complete logical extreme. If I sell a dollar bill for $1 that's not income that should be taxed.
> If I sell a dollar bill for $1 that's not income that should be taxed.
You always have overhead so you can’t actually sell 1$ for 1$. Breaking even requires selling assets for more than their worth to cover transaction fees. We let companies deduct those fees, but what’s a fee and what’s an investment gets blurred. Especially when most companies don’t suddenly get destroyed after a single transaction. The classic razor and blade model being a prime example for hiding profits.
Sure, cash flow may make it seem minimally profitable, but that’s only relevant in this quarter or if you run out of cash. Spend X million on software development or brand advertising and can have a tax free transfer from income to capital. Leverage that for a few decades and suddenly your business is worth 10x as much without any apparent profit. Clearly an asset was being invested in.
Maybe this speaks to a need to tie taxes to income AND revenue. Not that I think the tax code should get any more complicated (quite the opposite), but if Amazon is selling at a loss to decrease the amount of tax they pay, while they starve out other companies in the market, there should be at least some benefit to society.
I'm a former biz analyst turned boot camp developer. After a couple of years slogging through, I started applying for jobs these past few months, with little to no traction, and as such have been feeling burnt out because I don't know the fundamentals, have little to no support at work, and felt like I had no future professionally.
So this encourages me to keep on learning, building, and hacking as best I can until I can get to an environment that helps me succeed through mentorship, product vision, and a capable leadership team.
