Nobody benefits from a company growing indefinite wealth without distributing it to actual people.
> So for example the company can rent houses, cars, and airplanes for every employee
If they could do this, all companies would do this already to avoid taxes. In reality, this is dealt with by (in the UK) considering those things "benefits in kind" aka equivalent to cash.
No, many would benefit in very obvious ways, if you just think about it a little bit: if you want to accumulate wealth you prefer to be taxed on what you spend rather than what you earn. That allows you to save more quickly, it allows you to create a dynasty where wealth is passed to your offspring, who in turn would prefer to pay taxes on their consumption rather than their income.
So if a company served as a type of money making engine but didn't distribute anything, you can save by purchasing shares and letting compound interest work to your benefit and then spend some of that in your retirement by selling some of your shares and give the rest to your kids. You would have a lower overall tax burden as you could earn like a king but live just a middle class lifestyle, allowing your kids to live like kings even if they earned just a middle class lifestyle, and with some left over due to the magic of interest.
This is why if your income >> your consumption, you really want only consumption taxes.
There is also the issue of precautionary saving. Most people prefer to have money in the bank to insure themselves against future loss of income, and this type of precautionary savings benefits people even if there is no consumption, just as having insurance provides a benefit even if you never get into an accident. So if you don't need to pay taxes on savings, then you can shield yourself more easily from future income losses and smooth consumption so you always prefer taxes on consumption, which do not make consumption smoothing more difficult, than taxes on income, which do. Think of it in this way -- a tax on insurance makes insurance more costly and thus more difficult. But financial savings are a form of insurance for when you lose your job or face some other financial setback.
So in summary, one can argue that the purpose of money is consumption so "nobody benefits" by acquiring money that they don't spend on consumption. But this is a naive view that ignores the role of risk, time and inter-generational concerns.
> So in summary, one can argue that the purpose of money is consumption so "nobody benefits" by acquiring money that they don't spend on consumption. But this is a naive view that ignores the role of risk, time and inter-generational concerns.
It's also not what I've said.
Isn't this exactly what companies like Apple etc. are doing? As it accumulates wealth, the stock price (which is supposed to reflect the value of the company) goes up as well. And thus the shareholders benefit.
If you have piles of cash and don’t plan on spending it, somehow, on your business then you can’t expect your stock to rise and in fact if you’re so inept that you don’t know how to spend your billions your stock price may actually drop.
The more cash they gather, the higher the lower bound of the share price.
And don't apple pay dividends?
Company B has X revenue, Y in profits, and $1T in cash.
Which of the two would fetch a higher price in an acquisition?
yes I realize it’s nuanced and depends on country.
And yet companies actually do this. Perhaps your model of what motivates companies is wrong?
Shareholders do. And shareholders own the company.
there's already laws in the books today that those are taxable as in-kind compensation
What goes away is the incentive to locate all of the company's IP in a subsidiary in the Cayman Islands, and then rent it all back to the subsidiary in New York at wildly inflated prices that ensure that all income is technically earned in the Cayman Islands. Because it would no longer matter where the income was earned, it would only matter to whom it is paid out to. Less protection for billionaires who are primarily interested in asset inflation.
I'm pretty sure this would actually increase total taxes collected because it shifts tax burden away from low and easily avoided corporate taxes, and towards individuals that pay higher income tax rates that are much harder to avoid. But even if it doesn't fully compensate, you can easily adjust top bracket rates to fill the gap, without any worry that it will hurt workers like the corporate income tax does.