[seibelj]

Corporations already pay myriad income taxes and distributed profits (capital gains and dividends) are taxed, paid by the recipient. Corporate tax is double taxation and is inefficient. The optimal corporate tax rate is zero and I wish people would understand this.

35% corporate tax rate the US had before the tax cut was completely absurd and the only corps that paid it were small ones that didn’t have in house staff to get around it. Even your favorite socialist European countries have far lower rates than 35%.

If we set the rate to 0% companies would stop playing all these stupid games and fire all the people who spend their lives waging this war. It drives me bananas!

[jermaustin1]

This is something that a lot of economists agree on: tax the rich, not the corporations. I happen to agree with it as well.

The problem is the ultra rich then leave the money in the corporations, and find ways to benefit from their company cars, company jets, and company manhattan duplex penthouse apartments above their offices that they then pay a nominal rent for.

I think that below a certain revenue (not profit), corporations should be taxed at 0%. Problem is (same with free webhosting), people take advantage and just start spinning up hundreds or thousands of corporations (real estate companies do this already for liability).

No matter how you structure it there is no way to provide tax advantages to one entity without having people game that system.

[bob_theslob646]

Seriously this. It absolutely baffles me how many accountants and lawyers there are in the United States. I find it funny that there's not that much automation on that front.

We will always need people to check over numbers but the question is always going to be, how many and how much should you/they be paid to check over numbers versus building a system that can check for numbers and alert someone when something looks fishy...

[tasty_freeze]

The 35% is absurd if you ignore all the tax breaks which allow the average paid tax rate to be under 20%.

A point that I'd like to make is the government can be viewed as many things, but one of them is a provider of services: legal, military, diplomacy. These all cost a lot of money, and you are arguing that companies, who benefit most directly from those services, should not have to pay for them.

If the US spends, say, $2B enabling Shell's business interests, why shouldn't that price be built into the product? And before you say: you're an idiot, it would mean higher prices for consumers, yes, exactly. The cost of goods should be baked into its price.

[jessaustin]

I think the idea is that taxes aren't only evaded at the level of the firm. Shareholders also evade taxes, but through "double taxation" they might still end up paying something.

[throwawaysea]

I don’t think the designs of tax structures are that clever or principled. I think it’s more like “we want to spend more and so let’s find the most politically expedient revenue source we can get away with”. Over time, the legislation (and spending habits) put in place by all the politicians that come and go results in an inefficient, inscrutable mess that is modern taxation and government spending, along with requisite anomalies like taxing the same dollar several times.