Isn't part of this that US vessels are not competitive on a global market because of taxation?
if you built and registered a ship in the US, wouldn't taxes be much more than say a ship registered in a small tax-advantageous country? (for a ship that basically wasn't in US 99.9% of the time)
Retirees do this with motorhomes - why register in california and pay all those taxes when you will be out of the state traveling all the time. Register in North Dakota or something and still drive the same route.
(note taxes could be state income taxes because of residency, or vehicle registration taxes which are a % of vehicle value)
I’m sure that’s definitely part of it, but there’s lots more stuff to it.
I’d say the “where to register your ship” question is the category of “complicated” - since obviously if we lowered our taxes to be as low as Panama then we’d get more registrations which sounds good - and “low tax” is better than the “zero” taxes we get from them now, but then the other country would just undercut that, and so on, and now nobody can get any tax revenue anymore.
It’s why the global economy doesn’t lend itself to simple sound bite answers like “just build American ships” or “just raise/lower tariffs” etc.
It’s too bad no one on any ballot seems to do anything but useless grandstanding, when it comes to actual problems like this.
if you built and registered a ship in the US, wouldn't taxes be much more than say a ship registered in a small tax-advantageous country? (for a ship that basically wasn't in US 99.9% of the time)
Retirees do this with motorhomes - why register in california and pay all those taxes when you will be out of the state traveling all the time. Register in North Dakota or something and still drive the same route. (note taxes could be state income taxes because of residency, or vehicle registration taxes which are a % of vehicle value)