[Silence]

Let me rephrase that:  They wish they could legally tax the megas.

[GiraffeShaman]

Oh the megas do pay taxes. However, their lobbyists pretty much tell the Congress what the tax rates and exceptions should be. Kind of like the real life current day US, but much more blatant. The corps do want for example some public infrastructure, which requires taxes be paid. They just don't want to pay a lot. And they don't really care about say how great the roads are in the Redmond Barrens.

The Neo Anarchists are the guys that really oppose the Corps. But they vary a lot in professionalism. Many of them are just screaming idiots and the like. The Berlin chapter in particular seems to be hardcore professional rebels. The fact that Captain Chaos was one also seems to indicate that they have some professionals among them. They never seem to succeed in making any kind of meaninful largescale change though. Not that surprising, considering it's a dystopia. And look at who their oppenents are. The Berlin chapter who are probaly the best of them are trying to make problems for Lofwyr the Great Dragon. Not the healthiest of occupations.

Yeah, one of my roster of Johnsons that I reuse is Stuart Glassman, elite auditor for the IRS. He basically pays shadowrunners to go seize items such as vehicles from rich UCAS citizens that aren't paying their taxes.

[Silence]

Good, easy work compared to some jobs out there.

[CanRay]

The Chrome Accountant used to be an IRS Agent, IIRC.  I think he became a Shadowrunner because it paid better, got him better respect, and was safer.

[Reaver]

The Chrome Accountant used to be an IRS Agent, IIRC.  I think he became a Shadowrunner because it paid better, got him better respect, and was safer.

It's all about dollars and sense.

[Sengir]

They just wish they could get the AAAs to pay taxes.

Do not underestimate the power of unpaid taxes or the IRS.  The FBI had to go to the IRS in order to get Capone on tax evasion, after all.

Capone was a local crime boss and the US a functioning state. The UCAS (and pretty much everything else) is a 3rd world nation while the AAAs are separate states with superpower status, what exactly is the IRS gonna do?

[Nath]

We were taught to think that bad = criminal outlaw. If it's bad, there ought to be a law banning it and law enforcement to go after the perpetrator.

In Shadowrun setting (and generic cyberpunk setting at large), corporations are bad. Because of the aforementioned teaching, we tend to think that what they do must be illegal and that they just don't get caught for some reasons, like law enforcement and the government at large not doing its duty.

But it doesn't work like that. Corporations are legal beasts by nature. They do not break the law. What they do is have the law rewritten the way it suits them. And it may includes still having the government cracking down on anyone who does not respect the law (including the corporations who did not realize they were no longer in the alpha predator pack).
That's typically the case for everything extraterritoriality allow the megacorporation to do: they can have for free the government harassing all those A-rated smaller competing corporations for trying to do what the big boys do.

The thing is, it works with the "megacorporations" as a whole. Nine of the Big Ten may agree that, say, a 5% flat tax for megacorporation is the Right Thing to balance UCAS budget and fund Pentagon procurement plans. If the head of Renraku Americas tries to pay only 4.87% to proudly display a better profit margin than Renraku Asia at the big board, and get caught, he may find himself on the wrong end of a decision (or worst, a congressional inquiry) based on a report written thanks to intelligence anonymously handed over by other megacorporations intelligence services, backed by politicians whose campaigns were funded by these corporations, and covered by medias owned by them.

[Sendaz]

They just wish they could get the AAAs to pay taxes.

Do not underestimate the power of unpaid taxes or the IRS.  The FBI had to go to the IRS in order to get Capone on tax evasion, after all.

Capone was a local crime boss and the US a functioning state. The UCAS (and pretty much everything else) is a 3rd world nation while the AAAs are separate states with superpower status, what exactly is the IRS gonna do?

The Megas still would pay tax for the same reason they keep the governments around.  To manage the day to day functions like maintaining roadworks, infrastructure and so on that they don't want to have to muck around with.

[Crunch]

To the extent that the Megas pay taxes it's only on territory subject to national law. A Stuffer Shack in DC might very well pay sales taxes to the UCAS and or local governments. A Stuffer Shack in the concourse at the extraterritorial Renraku Archology might pay sales tax (more likely not, just a rental agreement) to Renraku and a Stuffer Shack on Aztechnology corporate soil wouldn't pay taxes to anyone.

[Sengir]

The Megas still would pay tax for the same reason they keep the governments around.  To manage the day to day functions like maintaining roadworks, infrastructure and so on that they don't want to have to muck around with.

The word you are looking for is "development aid", not "tax". Who knows, maybe Renraku holds an annual concert where all the bigwigs (remember, it's not just that the Fortune 500 started their own states, they also took all the big earners along with them) can donate for all those poor ex-powers

[Nath]

To the extent that the Megas pay taxes it's only on territory subject to national law. A Stuffer Shack in DC might very well pay sales taxes to the UCAS and or local governments. A Stuffer Shack in the concourse at the extraterritorial Renraku Archology might pay sales tax (more likely not, just a rental agreement) to Renraku and a Stuffer Shack on Aztechnology corporate soil wouldn't pay taxes to anyone.

What a Stuffer Shack would pay to Renraku would be more appropriately called "royalties". I don't think corporations have a point in borrowing terminology from state governance, even if the result is very similar.

Extraterritoriality is no unique solution for tax evasion. Corporations still have to move raw materials and goods in and out the factories and stores, and as they leave extraterritorial enclaves, they becomes subject to tariffs. Also, corporations are not and cannot be fully operating on extraterritoriality. Extraterritoriality applies where the corporations has ownership, lease or rental of a facility. The act of ownership, lease or rental itself is not subject to extraterritoriality, since it is the requirement for it. So corporations may be subject to land taxes for instance.

The corporation very existence is also immaterial and a such does not take place in particular place that could be extraterritorial. Physically, Ares Macrotechnology is nowhere except maybe as a registration form stored somewhere by Michigan state administration. Corporate sales may take place in extraterritorial facilities treated as outside of UCAS soil and thus not be subject to VAT, corporate benefits on the other hand are just numbers on a filling. It does not matter where it came from (the tax code only cares if it was already taxed by another country).

Oh, and the Renraku Arcology example is starting to really get old. The Seattle arcology has been shut down for fifteen years now.

[Crunch]

OK insert any other piece of extrateritorial land. The Renraku Arcology seemed like a convenient shorthand for "Extrateritorial corporate holding in which a second party corporation might conceivable have a storefront."

I doubt whether governments have much power to levy taxes other than sales and use taxes in the 2070s.

[Sengir]

Extraterritoriality is no unique solution for tax evasion. Corporations still have to move raw materials and goods in and out the factories and stores, and as they leave extraterritorial enclaves, they becomes subject to tariffs. Also, corporations are not and cannot be fully operating on extraterritoriality. Extraterritoriality applies where the corporations has ownership, lease or rental of a facility. The act of ownership, lease or rental itself is not subject to extraterritoriality, since it is the requirement for it. So corporations may be subject to land taxes for instance.

Corps are sovereign national entities, with citizenship, military, and everything else various theories of statehood demand. If they buy land, it's like the purchase of Alaska -- they pay the price, maybe adhere to other conditions of the treaty, but it's their territory.

[Nath]

Corporations are not sovereign.

For AA megacorporations, all it takes is seven judges of the Corporate Court to vote "yes" for them to loose AA status, extraterritoriality and everything they had that break the laws of the countries where it's located.
For Evo, Horizon and Wuxing, it requires a majority vote from the Big Ten (involving weighted votes formulae) when their representative seat on the court is up for reelection.
For the founding members of the court, it would require a rewrite of the Corporate Court charter, which may be slightly more complicated to reach, but it still does not make them sovereign.

[Lusis]

My question is an exploration of ideas for runs; where runners are working for a gov't entity against a corporation or other gov't entity.

Corporations are basically an allegory for the feudal kingdoms of old Europe, in SR; however, the corps-as-villains is almost cliche at this point. At the same time, secretive gov't organizations conducting less-than-legal operations is almost cliche in RL fiction (even though it happens at an increasing rate these days, but I digress).

So my challenge to myself is to devise a likely conspiracy where a gov't agency seeks to control the corps through infiltration and assassination. . The details of the run  can handle myself.