[throwaway34241]

It's basically the shareholders that pay this tax - the corporate tax being described here only on applies to the profits, so salaries for example would be counted as an expense and not included in that.

There's also not a lot of reason for this to be passed on to the consumer - if raising prices would let the company make more profit, it would make sense for them to do that anyway regardless of the specific tax rate they pay on those profits.

As for taxing the shareholders directly, they of course do do that in addition to the corporate tax. One way the corporate tax is a little bit different is that it's paid before income is distributed to the shareholders, so if a company accumulates a huge cash balance but doesn't do any share buybacks / dividends, it will still pay the corporate tax even though the shareholders won't pay any tax (unless the company starts distributing the profits).

[djrogers]

Shareholders tend not to wind up holding the bag - higher corporate taxes result in higher prices at the consumer level.

[svachalek]

No one ever wants to argue the opposite -- "but if you tax consumers, they won't spend as much, and corporations won't make as much money!" Although personally if I had to bet on one way or the other, I would say this reversal is easier to prove.