[stonemetal12]

As long as you want really. Say you have 100M shares outstanding. You do stock buy backs over the years now there is only 50M shares outstanding. You do a two way stock split, now there are 100M shares outstanding again.

[lalos]

You would still pay taxes when selling the stock for profit.

[jungturk]

Yes, though in the US the capital gains tax (for investments held over a year) is quite often lower than the tax on dividends (which are treated as income).