>>Corporations earning billions of dollars incorporate overseas and pay zero
>>taxes...you and the rest of society are picking up the check on that one.
> Of course you are anyway since corp are legal entities and any taxes they
>pay don't just spring up from nowhere. They are taken from us in higher
>prices, from the shareholder's equity (and with very few exceptions the vast
>majority of the stock is held outside of the Inherently Evil board of
>directors) or wages.
> If you want to tax them for extra rev., go ahead and do it. Don't try to
>sell it like you are stopping the robber barons because all you are doing is
>taking money from one of these three pots.

First, what you have to understand is that what doesn't get paid in taxes ends
up in huge dividends to members of the BoD and to the CEO...millions of dollars
in bonuses that might otherwise have been paid in taxes.

Second, you have to look at the long term trend in taxation of the last fifty
years. At one point, about fifty years ago, corporations made up about 70% of
the tax burden, while individual taxpayers, consumers, made up about 30%. Over
the decades, that has shifted until it's nearly inverted...with corporations
paying about 30% of the overall tax burden, and consumers paying the remaining
70%. Specifically because the corporations have received so much in tax
breaks, corporate welfare, and other writeoffs that billions of dollars simply
go untaxed.

You're right, if it doesn't come out of one pot, it comes out of the
other...only in this case, that pot is your wallet.

As for higher prices...there's a limit which people will generally accept for
some items, and in truth, you're getting gigged for higher prices anyway. When
Michael Eisner took over Disney, he raised the ticket price at Disneyland so
that it brought in millions more that year in revenue. And as it turns out,
his bonus that year...was exactly equal to what had come in through the jacked
up ticket prices.

jms

(jmsatb5@aol.com)
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