Happy Friday, Entrepreneurship students. Today you were given your last major assignment for the octet - answering the question, Should large corporations, such as Amazon, be required to pay taxes? We have spent the past three days looking at the information that can help us answer this question. Since we have had an unusually high number of absences this week, I want to retrace our steps below to help everyone get back on to the same page. Step 1 - Tax Systems After looking deeply in to how taxes are calculated off of your pay cheques using the tax brackets at both the federal and provincial level, we looked at three different systems for charging taxes: flat, progressive and regressive. Here's a quick review: Flat = Everyone pays a flat rate percentage of their income, regardless of how much money they make. Progressive = the higher you climb up the tax brackets for your region, the higher the percentage of tax owed becomes. This is what we have in Canada. Regressive = the higher you climb up the tax brackets for your region, the lower the percentage of tax owed becomes. This is seen in many states in the USA, such as Washington, Texas and Florida. Step 2 - Canada's National BudgetOn Thursday morning we looked at how Canada budgets out our expenses for the year. We learned that Canada spent approximately $375 billion in 2019. To find out a bit about what that money covered, we studied the 2019 Budget - the 2020 budget was scheduled to come out on March 20th last year...we all know how that one ends, but in a nut shell, covid and the ensuing economic crash made the budget irrelevant just days before it would have been published and so it never was. You can look at the budget and its highlights here: https://www.budget.gc.ca/2019/home-accueil-en.html As you look through the website, look to answer these questions: 1. What does Canada allocate money from their budget towards? 2. Based on this budget and the highlights on the website, what seems to be our priority as a society? 3. Are there any surprises on the budget that you didn't realize we paid for with our taxes? Step 3 - Economic Theories: Trickle- Down vs. Middle OutNext we looked at two opposing theories of economics to explore some of the different ideas about who should be taxed at which levels. I have attached an article on each of these theories to help you understand what the main ideas behind each theory are. Also attached are the questions that go with these articles. Complete and hand in at your earliest convenience.
Step 4 - Applying this information to AmazonThe last step before we can answer this question of whether or not large corporations should pay taxes is to bring a real life example in to the discussion. Amazon famously has been able to avoid paying federal income tax despite posting profits of $11.9 billion. While it sounds like an absurd idea, there is more to this idea of not paying taxes than just receiving a cheque back from the government. These tax breaks are used as incentives to encourage and motivate companies to grow and help stimulate the economy. Watch this video and read the attached article to understand WHY it is that Amazon avoids paying taxes.
We finished out the discussion by weighing both the pros and cons associated with large corporations not paying taxes in a group discussion. If you were not in class on Friday, I would recommend making a pros and cons list so that you can see both perspectives to the argument. Step 5 - Responding to the question.It is your turn to respond to the question now. You have a few options as to how you will share your opinion on the matter. Take a look at the assignment description attached below to see what interests you most. Regardless of which option you choose, I am looking for you to include three things in to your response: 1. Thesis - a clear position on what you believe and will support throughout the project. 2. Supporting Evidence - you must support your opinion using evidence from the articles, videos, discussions, or any additional research that you do. For example, bringing in statistics or specific examples to make your case. 3. Critical Analysis/Commentary - explain why these stats and examples are significant. What do they mean for our society as a whole? What are the problems you see with either position?
We will have time in class next week to work on our projects, but if you haven't been in attendance this week, I would recommend getting a start on looking at the information and figuring out your position over the weekend.
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Thank you, Entrepreneurship 11 and 12 students, for a great first full week back at school. There have certainly been some weird changes made to how we do school - I know I've been finding it exhausting to focus on just one subject for five hours every day, and I'm sure you are too - but you have been so great at making the necessary adjustments happen and I commend you for doing what is needed to take care of each other and keep school open. This week, we started working on a major project for this course: creating a business plan for a hypothetical business that you could one day start up and run. This project is designed to give you a lot of choice as to how you want to apply the ideas discussed in class to an area of your own interest and passion. While there are a lot of parts to this project and it can look overwhelming at first, I appreciate your hard work and participation this week to get this assignment off to a good start. We all work at different paces and, going in to the weekend, some of us might have more work still to be completed than others, so I want to use this post to provide you with the information you may need to continue working on this project at home over the weekend. At this point in the project, we have spent time working on the following aspects of our business plans:
The faded aspects of the project we will work on developing in class on Monday, and you do not need to think about this weekend. Below are instructions and examples for the areas of the business plan that you may want to work on developing over the weekend so that you are up to date on Monday. Business Description:Your business description is going to be approximately one page explaining what your business does, the reason why the business does what it does, who they sell to, and how their product is distributed to the customer. Think of the concept statements we wrote at the start of the week. These statements served to answer four questions in just two sentences:
While the concept statement gave us a really clear and concise idea of what our business idea was to work with, for our business plan we need to add more details so that potential investors can understand what we are doing. If in your concept statement you said that your company makes smart phones, in your business description you should describe what some of the features of your smart phone are that differentiate it from the other smart phones in the market. Here is a great example of a well written business description for the Atlanta Bread Company to use as a template. Mission Statement:The mission statement is an expression of a company's specific aspirations. It is a statement of what the company considers to be success. A good mission statement is specific and clearly states what the goals of the company are. For example, "Our goal when we created Tesla a decade ago was the same as it is today: to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport by bringing compelling mass market electric cars to market as soon as possible." - Tesla, Mission Statement "Facebook's mission is to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together." - Facebook, Mission Statement Both of these examples provide a concise and clear statement of what their respective company's goals are and gives them direction to guide decisions. As you write your Mission Statement, decide what your goal is for your business besides making a profit. What would success for your company look like? Vision Statement:The vision statement exists to establish why the company exists beyond making a profit. It may reflect the beliefs and values of the company. Think of it as a statement of how the company would like to see the world look in ten years as a result of the company's existence. For example: "A world without Alzheimer's disease." - Alzheimer's Association, Vision Statement This vision statement is super short and simple, yet it tells us a lot about the organization. It provides a future-focused direction for the company that is challenging and inspiring enough to push the organization to achieve something that is not currently a reality. "Use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis." - Patagonia, Vision Statement Patagonia's vision is that, through the success of their business, they can be apart of enacting positive change to the ongoing environmental problems in the world. Their statement shows a clear belief in making the world a better place. As you write your vision statement, ask yourself, "How would I like the world to look in 10 years as a result of my business?" Competition/Market Analysis:A competition analysis is fairly self-explanatory: it is our chance to analyze our competitors and think about what they are doing. Completing a competition analysis for our company serves two purposes: first, it allows us to see what the market is like and second, it allows us to identify market opportunities. On Wednesday we completed this template in class to organize the important details about three of our competitors: Now that we have completed this template, we need to put the information in to paragraph format for our business plan. When taking the information from this chart and putting it in to a paragraph, focus on answering three questions about your competitor:
Target Customer:In order to sell our product, we need to understand exactly who we are selling to. Unfortunately, it is not realistic to expect that we have made a product that every single person in the world will want or need, so narrowing down a specific type of person can help us develop our product, as well as recognize how big or small of a market we should expect. For the purpose of this project, you should identify 5-8 characteristics of your customers and develop your product to meet their needs. As you can see from the example we looked at in class, the more specific we can be about the type of people who we want to target with our product, the better we will understand the potential of our product. Distribution Channels:The distribution channels will show an understanding of how our product goes from being being an unmanufactured collection of materials to a product that the customer can purchase, take home, and use.
In class, we discussed Amazon's tax situation and how they are able to use incentives to lower the amount of tax they owe on their profit. We learned that, due to tax breaks given to corporations in America, Amazon did not pay any federal tax dollars last year. This is despite the fact that Amazon is one of the wealthiest corporations in the world right now, posting more than a $10 billion net profit last year. We discussed different economic theories, such as trickle-down economics and middle-out theory and connected them to Amazon's tax situation. We learned how the government budgets their spending with tax dollars and where these tax dollars come from. We even spent time weighing the pros and cons to Amazon's substantial tax breaks last year. Now I want to hear your voice on the matter. Given everything that we have learned about the tax system and economic theories, should Amazon pay taxes?
You will answer this question in essay format. Do not worry about trying to figure out an ultimate truth to this question. You can make a strong case for either side of the argument - there is no single correct answer. What I do want to see is that you support your argument by using evidence from the articles and videos we used in class. Reference the articles about economic theories, or the video we watched in class to help build your case around whether or not large corporations like Amazon should pay taxes. In case you need to reference these resources, I will attach them to the bottom of this assignment description. Your essay should...
If you get stuck, reference these resources from class to help construct your argument:
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EntrepreneurshipEntrepreneurship is an opportunity for students to learn about the world of business, finance, and marketing. In this class we explore both practical and theoretical topics in business to help students to understand what the entrepreneurial process is and if it is something they are interested in pursuing as a career. ArchivesCategories |