[dnautics]

I'm kind of the opposite. We should have 0% personal income tax and a minimum corporate income tax.

A personal income tax incentivises the state to surveil the economic activity of individuals and play games with nudging people to do X or Y, and puts the burden of tax filing and the consequences of not reporting (which some people just can't do correctly).

Contrariwise, a corporate income tax can be thought of as a "user fee" for the privilege of the corporate veil and limited liability. If you don't want your mom and pop shop to pay corporate income tax, simple: don't incorporate, and be responsible for your personally responsible for your employees' well being. And thus it becomes a driver of small business growth and a progressive taxation (the beneficiaries of bigcorp profits are going to be disproportionately wealthy). If you can't afford an accountant to keep track of what taxes you owe, don't incorporate. Etc.

[adventured]

Corporations don't generate enough profit to float a nation's tax needs.

Corporate profit in the US is generally somewhere around $2 trillion per quarter when times are very good. That's including all businesses, from mom & pop to Microsoft, and that includes all profit from global operations (not just domestic operations).

A 50% tax would only pay for just over half the US tax revenue needs (assuming you make the mistake of taxing global profits at 50% as well) and that would probably cripple the US economy. Many of the consequential corporations would attempt to flee (so you'd have to implement some form of government-sponsored slavery to keep people in). A 100% tax would immediately begin to collapse the US economy as businesses would no longer be able to save for any future purpose (including recessions, business problems, unexpected opportunities, and so on) and they would fail rapidly.

The only tax source large enough to support a nation is an income tax on individuals. That's why, for example, no nation in Europe has ever attempted to fund their expensive and well-experimented welfare states in the way you're suggesting. They know it doesn't come close to working.

[dnautics]

> The only tax source large enough to support a nation

The US did quite well for a time without income taxes. If I recall correctly, the US even went from a nearly destroyed nation to global empire, building up several colonial territories, and constructing battleships that went around the world, in a time period where there was no personal income tax.

[partiallypro]

Your proposal would actually punish mom and pop stores in aggregate. Limited liability is incredibly important to business operation.

[dnautics]

Those operations can choose to pay income taxes. A lot of small operations (contracting shops whose customers are businesses) will do just fine without limited liability. You can also limit liability on a contract by contract basis. Many people are incorporating their operations just to be able to claim business expense deductions on their income stream. This seems unnecessary.

[cutchin]

I don't understand how this would work. You would tax corporations based on actual income? So money-losing businesses would have to pay taxes on their income even though they operated at a net loss? And low-volume/high-revenue businesses would pay less in taxes than high-volume/low-revenue would?

[ykevinator3]

One of the problems is that net loss is fictional. Companies use well meaning tax credits and deductions to offset income. His point is fair but the specifics need a little tweaking.

[dnautics]

I am agnostic on if it should be based off of income or profit and leave those sorts of details up to congress.

[yonaguska]

> leave those sorts of details up to congress.

Yep, let's leave it to the "experts".

Policy "details" tend to have drastic unforeseen consequences, and our congress-critters tend to defer responsibility of those details to lobbyists.

We the Constituents\People\Voters have a responsibility to do our own thorough research and not allow Congress to figure out the details.

Precision matters and details can make all the difference between a good policy and a destructive policy.

[inter_netuser]

How can one possibly do this? The amount of regulations/laws produced is so enormous, it is impossible to keep up.

[dnautics]

The good news is that in my plan, you don't have to care. Unless you are the cfo of a company, or an accountant.