Jeff Bezos wants to build a business park in space Blue Origin is leading a consortium hoping to put the first commercial space station into orbit. The craft is set to combine research and tourism facilities, and provide an office address in space for businesses. Dubbed Orbital Reef, the two initial partners are Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin, which will get the platform into orbit …
If we can claim jurisdiction over Colombian hippopotamuses then I'm sure we're able to extend it to something built with 'merkan technology launched and controlled from US soil.
But our bigger businesses -- that includes Amazon -- don't actually pay tax. They'll collect sales taxes (VAT in your wold) off the customers but real corporations don't pay taxes. Its the rules.
"...juri[s]diction over extraterrestrial assets..."
Even with permanent space-based structures, ultimately anything in space bringing value to Earth can be taxed at the point the value reaches Earth, and anything in space needing resupply from Earth can be levied some sort of levy in lieu of tax for anything leaving Earth.
It's going to be a long, long, long time before there are enough assets and people in space to form their own semi-closed economy that's semi-independent of Earth, and even if off-world formed it's own independent government, it would still charge it's own taxes.
"Even with permanent space-based structures, ultimately anything in space bringing value to Earth can be taxed at the point the value reaches Earth, and anything in space needing resupply from Earth can be levied some sort of levy in lieu of tax for anything leaving Earth."
That's an interesting concept. I wonder if it would work. Let's see, moving something from one jurisdiction to another, possibly via some sort of shipping port. Maybe we could call goods going out "ex"-ports and good coming in "im"-ports, or something like that. :-)
I imagine Elon will simply outfit a starship with office supplies and park it in orbit. Possibly to make some money, but mostly to annoy Bezos.
Plus, the SpaceX version will already have a decent internet connection - all the starlink gear will come in very handy.
I would not be arrogant enough to state that I know the motivations behind those companies. The stated aim is to make the human race multi-planetary, although Tesla isn't really much of a part of that plan.
That's rather different to putting a tin can into orbit so you can declare the tax location of your Earth-bound companies as "not in your jurisdiction, buddy".
I have no doubt that there will be plenty of tax wrinkles to work out if we ever do get two full communities of meatsacks on two different planets, mind you.
GJC
The tech behind tesla cars is repurposable for space travel. Batteries are necessary throughout space ventures.
Beyond that, Oxygen would be at a premium on a planet that didn't have natural generating capacity so a solar grid powering electric vehicles feels the natural solution.
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According to some figures I saw, to be in the top 1% of uk adults, you need to be earning over £120k. Taking out non-taxpayers, you need to be earning more like £160k to be in the 1%. It's probably different in each country, and considerably different if you take the world as whole. Not to mention who you mean by the other 99%. In most developed countries, you'd probably not include people under 16 or 18. In some countries, you might want to include anyone working, no matter their age, even if that means including a 12 year old "bread winner".
The "1%", or any other figure bandied about is usually used as an emotive term to beat someone with and is often pretty meaningless without some context. It's probably better to stick to terms like "super rich" or whatever :-)
Stupid. Utterly stupid.
An office address is useful for being close to where you produce something. Even if it isn't tangible goods, space is an environment where there's nothing.
And it costs millions to get there. And it dangerous to human health to stay there too long. Plus, the walls of the station are paper-thin, they can be breached by a pebble of sand. And to take a shit you have to shove a tube up your ass. Not to mention the food is pre-chewed.
I very much doubt any CEO of any company is going to enjoy being in space for business purposes. Sure, fucking the secretary in zero-G won't get old soon (or will it ?), but the sheer fact is that, while he's up there, actual business is happening down here.
And let's not forget that blasting off from Earth is not 100% certain to get you into space. You can also be blasted to bits.
It is way too early for this kind of project.
Now, when we have a functional space elevator, or some other way of getting people into orbit with 99.999% reliability, then we can start looking into mining asteroids and yes, that will be a time to have an orbital business space.
But until then, get access to space secure first.
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