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Comment by mindslight | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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