posted on Nov, 4 2006 @ 03:09 PM
Losing The Shell Game
The problem with this notion of "taxing corporations" is that it assumes they won't pass the tax burden on to their customers.
It turns out that this assumption is false.
I've never worked for a corporation that didn't pass its expenses -- including taxes -- along to its customers.
Aside from the fact that the U.S. tax code is carefully engineered to make this incredibly easy, corporations simply can't function if they don't
make money.
This fact is often hidden by tax rules which allow profitable businesses to appear to operate at a loss while actually making truckloads of money.
Raising taxes simply means they need to find some way to pass those expenses along, because they sure as hell aren't going to eat them.
"Clever" taxes designed to get around this (like the infamous "Windfall Profits Tax" on oil companies) nonetheless tend to result in undesirable
consequences, like driving businesses overseas, into strategic bankruptcy or other ploys that ultimately negate any supposed benefits of such
taxes.
So "taxes on corporations" are really nothing more than taxes on their customers.
And if you buy goods or services from a corporation, that means you.