Who pays Corporate Taxes?

[WarGamer]

It's a great topic.

FWIW, as I've opined here previously... increased Corporate Taxation is NOT the way to get into the pockets of the wealthy.

5 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	DUH! The Corporation, Mr. Apple and Mr. Alphabet.
	0 (0%)
	Consumers
	3 (60%)
	Employees
	0 (0%)
	Retirees
	0 (0%)
	Stockholders
	0 (0%)
	#2-5
	2 (40%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
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[WarGamer]

1. For those who are curious...

I'm an advocate of the following

1) Some iteration of a Wealth Tax. The UK Wealth Tax Commission did great work on the topic.

2) "Per transaction" Wall Street Trading fees. Start at $0.01 a share for stocks under $5/share and up to $10/share for stocks over $500

3) Taxing unrealized gains, other wise the richest man in the world, Elon Musk can pay nearly ZERO taxes except when he is FORCED to execute some options. Theoretically... someone worth 100 Billion dollars could pay ZERO in taxes if he lives in an AirBnB, rides UBER, takes no salary and lives off of the millions he cashed out a few years earlier.

4) Tax Capital Gains as regular Income. It's bad enough that some asshole playing golf made $500k in an hour a couple mornings ago when TSLA stock took off but it's even worse that he doesn't pay at least 39.6% on it

5) I'm not opposed to a VAT tax for a set period of time with checks mailed out to lower income families and individuals to cover their VAT monthly.

[Zeitghost]

2. It depends on the product being sold.

The cost of any tax is split between the producer and the consumer in amounts proportional to the relative price elasticity of the product being sold.

With a product like gasoline that has very inelastic demand, the price is almost completely passed on to the consumer through higher prices. With luxury goods that have very elastic demand the price is mostly absorbed by the producer in the form of lost business.

[WarGamer]

3. So in other words...

Things that ordinary people buy the most will cost more.

And I'd argue that if Ferrari (RACE) pays more US taxes they'll tack it onto the MSRP.

Corporations have a fiduciary duty to their stockholders. They will ALWAYS adjust the price of goods sold to maintain a profit level expected by the investors.

And nowadays those investors include individuals, in their IRA and investment accounts and Institutions like CALPRS, the California retirement fund that relies on stock market PROFITS to pay benefits to retired school teachers, police officers, DMV workers, Social Workers and Nurses who spent decades in County Hospitals.

[Igel]

6. Depends.

If the price can be increased without crashing demand, consumers.

Employees also can take a hit. As it is, employees have had compensation increase quite a bit in the last 10, 15 years, but haven't seen it in their paychecks--I've gotten raises every year for the last decade and almost every cent has gone to keep my health/etc. insurance payment about flat. (There's a reason that they talk "wages" and not "compensation"--but then turn around and talk "compensation" for upper-level management, and not "wages".)

But you rightly point out, contrary to a common opinion, that shareholders are a truly mixed bag and some of the largest are retirement funds.

Ultimately, though, corporations are people with a veneer of separate personhood. You can't point to the corporation, every time you try you point to people. Managers, investors, employees. In the same way that a union is also a corporation, or Greenpeace, or a church, but you can't point to the union, Greenpeace, or church--at best, you can point to the building that the people spend time in.

Who pays depends on pricing and employee/investor flexibility. But it's always people, and since most people are rather ordinary, that means ordinary people.

[Zeitghost]

4. And FWIW

Option 1 and 5 are the same thing. A corporation is its stockholders.

[WarGamer]

5. I know... wink wink.

Maybe you missed the sarcasm re: Mr Apple and Mr. Alphabet