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Comment by bubbleRefuge | Hacker News Reader

How about just get rid of double taxation in corporate taxes? Eventually, taxes will get paid via distributions or sale of stock by individuals.

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Everything is double, triple, etc taxed. The corp->shareholder thing is an arbitrary point to focus on.

Some amount of revenue must be raised. Suggest an alternative. Not taxing corp profits will result is less overall tax income (it wont be made up in shareholder taxes).

given that money is printed/created at the federal level, we don't need a complicated tax enforcement system nor need to tax everything under the sun at the federal level. corporate taxation is a waste of time.

Why not advocate for taxing only corporations, rather than the more oppressive direction of taxing only humans? Corporations intrinsically run on accounting report paperwork, meaning tax forms are an incremental cost rather than a novel burden. And they receive massive benefits from the state - liability protection, outsized access to the legal system, and often direct subsidies.

Because corporate taxes are paid on profit (revenue-expenses). So as a company I can claim a lot of stuff as a expenses. Executive salaries? Anything left after that? Lemme quickly create a separate company in some low tax jurisdiction and pay them for marketing expenses, and suddenly I have no profits, and nothing to tax. Regular people can't do that.

You also generally can't tax the revenue instead of profits (except perhaps few percent of revenue as the minimal tax), because different companies have hugely different amounts of revenue and expenses.

None of that is really a show stopper when talking about an overhaul of the tax system and what it targets.

Speaking of taxing revenue instead of profits, that's another reason the current tax regime is so galling (at least speaking from a USian perspective). Individuals essentially are taxed on revenue and can't deduct things that would otherwise be straightforward deductions in a business context, as necessary and proper expenses required to earn that revenue.

we should eliminate income taxes on wages as well at the federal level.

You do know my income has already been taxed? Why am I paying double tax when buying alcohol? Why is my income taxed when the companies revenues were already taxed?

There is no double taxation. Transactions are taxed, not money.

income taxes was what I was refering to.

Or never if the stock is owned by a foreign national, charity, sovereign wealth fund, etc.

Reasonable corporate taxes are a net positive for the economy of the county that issues them.

Then you would be in favor of only taxing retained profits. Corporations keep piles of money for future use. It would make sense to allow deductions for dividends distributed to shareholders. But could also fix the stock buyback loophole by not allow deduction.

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