[pishpash]

"Corporations are people, too!" as in, the people who hold their wealth in the form of corporations and generate their income from capital. Realize that it's not just an inane phrase, they are talking about themselves. They want to escape being taxed and they always succeed. Everybody else can pay, please.

What's incredible is that there are many more of regular people than these "people," yet regular people do not act cohesively to form a political bloc so they bicker amongst themselves.

[philwelch]

Regular people own wealth in the form of corporations, too. Half of all Americans own stocks. Public and private sector pension funds own large amounts of stock. University endowments include stock investments and private equity. Sovereign wealth funds, such as the Alaska Permanent Fund, own large amounts of stock.

If we want to tax the rich, let's tax the rich. Let's not tax straw men that intermediate wealth for everyone, because that's what corporations are.

[pishpash]

Half (46% in 2013) of all Americans owned some financial wealth, that's already counting indirect investments -- I believe this number came from a study by Ed Wolff. In the same year (2013), the bottom 80% together owned about 5% of the financial wealth in the US, under the same definition counting indirect investments (80%-99% owned about 50%, 99%-100% owned about 45%). So no, "everyone" does not benefit in the same way from corporate wealth and "regular people" (the bottom 80% seems like a pretty good proxy) have basically nothing to do with it, even in aggregate -- forget about per capita.

As for not taxing corporations at all and instead fully taxing dividends and gains, that's a different discussion with its own merits.

[philwelch]

That’s kind of like saying that because I have a house on a tiny plot of land and my rich neighbor owns half the land in town, that property taxes don’t affect me. It doesn’t really follow.

[chii]

It certainly woudn't affect you as much as your rich neighbour. And if the additional tax on land brought in more community services, you would be all for it, whilst your neighbour would be against (since he'd be paying a majority of that cost to fund said community service).

[fjsolwmv]

It's amazingly elitist to ignore the fully half of Americans who own none of this capital

[philwelch]

My point is that if you want to punish the other half of all Americans (including poor grandmothers living on pensions) as a means of taxing “the rich”—which is exactly what high corporate taxes do—that an injustice has been done. Advocating for the interests of a diverse half of the population is many things, but “elitist” is not one of them.