We’re your dividend
[“Oat Fund”]
VAT on Monsanto + profit sharing from I/O
I/O believes in paying our fair share, and we think our stakeholders should get a piece of our profits too. We propose to introduce Missouri state legislature instituting a Value-Added-Tax (VAT) to agricultural research on seed development. Businesses will pay a 10% VAT on goods they purchase and 10% VAT on the goods they sell. Local farmers will be exempt from the 10% VAT on goods they purchase, and institutions will be exempt from the 10% VAT on goods they sell.
What is a VAT?
“A VAT is currently used by 160 out of 193 developed countries because it is a more efficient way of generating revenue with no loopholes. Big companies and rich people are excellent at moving things around to avoid taxes – Amazon, Google, and other companies [Monsanto] funnel hundreds of billions in earnings overseas. A VAT makes it impossible for them to benefit from the American people and infrastructure without paying their fair share.
Taxing Income is an increasingly ineffective and inefficient way to generate revenue over time. Take a company like Amazon—it can do tens of billions in business and pay no income tax in a given period while storing its income overseas. A Value-Added Tax is much more efficient way to capture the true value of the American infrastructure and will be increasingly necessary over time as more and more work is done by software, robots and artificial intelligence.”
- Andrew Yang, Yang 2020, < https://www.yang2020.com/policies/value-added-tax/>
Precedent: Alaska Permanent Fund
The idea of a universal basic income — a check sent out by the government to every American, no strings attached, just for being alive — is sometimes decried as un-American, as a way for people to get money they didn’t work for.
But America contains one of the few places the policy has been tried at scale: Alaska.
The Alaska Permanent Fund is a state-owned investment fund established using oil revenues. It has, since 1982, paid out an annual dividend to every man, woman, and child living in Alaska.
- Dylan Matthews, “The amazing true socialist miracle of the Alaska Permanent Fund,” <https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/2/13/16997188/alaska-basic-income-permanent-fund-oil-revenue-study>