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Comment by mbar84 | Hacker News Reader

Companies. Don't. Exist.

We made these things up because they are a convenient and useful abstraction, but let's not forget that they are a legal fiction. So guess what you call a company that pays taxes? Fiction! Companies can't pay taxes because they don't exist, only people can pay taxes. So when you tax a company, it ultimately comes from the pocket either of an owner, an employee, a supplier or a customer.

If we were honest about this and not just looking for a boogeyman that we can pretend to stick the bill to, then we'd switch to a conversation about capital gains, income and consumption taxes.

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Which is all well and good but a group of people organized in a company create an entity that is separate from that of any member or subset of the group. It has its own finances, a collective will, assets, debts, income.

I see no contradiction in taxing companies in a manner generally consistent with that of a person and treating employees of the company as a type of laborer paid by this entity.

Families. Don't. Exist. apparently either. The only fiction is that we anthropomorphize the group like it's singular. That doesn't mean that the group isn't a thing unto itself.

I would hope you don't think of yourself as just a mound of cells.

A company is people, I was reading earlier how in some parts of australia the police are a company. When you have someone over to your place you say "I have company". It is a legal abstraction as much as marriage or employment is a legal abstraction.

For publicly traded companies, the owners don't make executive decisions,the execs do and the owners range from random people on cash app to multi-billionaires. Perhaps instead of a tax, they should grant the government equity and pay dividends?

Companies exists as legal entities. This is why corporate funds can be frozen/confiscated separately from personal funds.

It is not just an abstraction, without the concept of companies a lot of financial concepts are simply impossible to express.

Galaxy brain: We made taxes up too. Surely if both companies and taxes exist only in the fiction world then companies can be taxed?

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