Bleep, bleep, and more bleep. All monies paid by corporations as taxes
come out of the consumers pocket. Period.

All this crap about shifting burdens is political double talk about
bribing voters with the voter's own money. You sound like Senator Kerry
explaining how the flat tax would allow the high income folks to escape
their fair share when in fact it would have cost his wife $750,000 in
additional taxes.

"Icebound" wrote in message
...

"Jay Honeck" wrote in message
news:A2pWe.331656$x96.76629@attbi_s72...
But on the other hand, the shareholder is not usually also the
worker. Where corporations have millions of shareholders, a great
many shareholders may even be outside the country. Hence taxing
corporate profits before distribution, probably guarantees a better
chance of getting at the money before it leaves the country, whether
it is going to legitimate shareholders, into dodgy tax havens, or
being siphoned illegally by the executive.

That's nice, but irrelevant.

...snip...

Example: Here in Iowa City, there is a 5% state sales tax, and a 7%
hotel/motel tax, added to the price of every, single hotel room.
When we advertise our hotel, we sure don't quote the "with tax" rate
(hell, *we* don't get any of that money), but when you check in --
golly! -- your $99.95 suite now costs $111.95!



That is exactly how it *is* "relevant". Your example has added 12USD
of taxes to the consumer. If that 12USD was not collected from the
consumer, the equivalent would have to be collected from the workers.
You have changed the distribution of the taxation load.

You may argue that is good place to shift the load, others may argue
that is bad.

Also, your example is strictly consumer taxation, not taxation on
corporate profit. Corporate taxes may or may not be passed down to
the consumer. The corporation's reduced after-tax profit may be
offset instead by slower expansion. Or, in a "competitive market",
the corporation well may have to reduce dividends to keep prices down
and maintain market share. That's where the big debate occurs....

And especially, corporate taxation addresses the issue of profits
leaving the country.

My whole point was not the right or wrong of how the balance should be
distributed between workers, consumers, shareholders, and corporate
expansion.

My point was that adding or reducing corporate taxes changes this
balance and is *not* a simple pass-through always to the consumer...as
you suggested in your original post. Instead, corporate taxation is a
re-distribution of the taxation load away from the worker.


And of course, as you suggest. it *isn't* simple. Governments have
interesting ways of "decreasing" (or "increasing") taxes for some
sector, whether labour, corporate, or consumer.... only to institute
other benefits/costs that may totally negate or even reverse that
action.

So it may be interesting to see the actually amount of dollars which
the government gets from each of those 3 sectors, if reliable numbers
could be found, somewhere. One particular budget-analysis think tank,
will have us believe that the overall share of government revenue from
corporations (in 2003) was lower than any year since 1930, except for
1983. And was 1/3 lower in 2003 than even 2000.

Again, we can argue that this is good, or this is bad, that is not the
point. But that share of government revenue has been shifted to
somebody else. *That* is the point. Corporate taxation
re-distributes the tax burden.