U.S. business contributes smallest share of federal taxes in a generation

I still don’t understand corporate income taxes. These are just pass through entities. All the money goes to actual people which are a lot easier to tax than a corporation. I think it’s such a waste of human capital having corporations incentivized to spend on armies of lawyers and accountants trying to come up with some baroque legal construction to avoid taxes. Maybe I am ignorant about tax law but people seem a lot harder to “invert” to cheaper tax jurisdictions no matter how rich they are.<p>I would even go as far as saying that payroll taxes are the same. Taxes hidden from the general public with weird incentives that break stuff in unexpected ways. We would be better served with more income, property or sales&#x2F;vat taxes.

According to the OECD, corporations paid 7.1% of the US tax burden. Note that in the France, that Randian paradise, that figure was 5.1%: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;taxfoundation.org&#x2F;sources-government-revenue-oecd-2019" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;taxfoundation.org&#x2F;sources-government-revenue-oecd-20...</a>. Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, and Spain also relied less heavily on corporate taxes than the US.<p>The remarkable thing about the political debate in the US is that folks on the left talk about all the public benefits the government offers in Europe, but are dead silent about how Europe pays for those benefits: consumption taxes. US consumption taxes account for 15% of revenues. That’s just half the OECD average.

&gt; Corporations only paid 7.6% of the tax take -- the lowest share since at least 1960, according to the IRS data<p>That sounds low but it&#x27;s not far out of line of the rest of the OECD. The mean is around 9%. Sweden is about 6%. The two members above 20% (or anywhere near it) are Chile and Mexico.<p>Corporate income tax is kind of a mess to implement and enforce.

Why is it desirable to tax the business rather than the wealthy owners and stockholders? If the business money flows to those making millions of year, tax the millionaires some high rate at a new tax bracket.

I&#x27;m ok with reduced taxes in general. An extraordinarily small percentage of our tax money goes to essential services: police, fire, EMS, etc. The efficiency of the US government (deliverable per dollar) is very poor. It may not be like this in every country, but for now, it&#x27;s likely best to keep those dollars in the hands of individuals and businesses rather than a forced transfer elsewhere.

Once upon a time, most business income was taxed on the business side. For small businesses, the tax paperwork was a pain. So passthrough laws were made, allowing the owners to treat the business income as personal income, simplifying tax paperwork. The tax is still paid.<p>These changes over decades have moved the same tax from being called corporate tax to personal tax. There is nothing nefarious about it.<p>This last year, more such changes made to simplify taxes for small buisness moved more of the income in this manner.<p>I have been a small business owner for a long time, and do precisely this, because it simplifies my paperwork. The tax is still paid.<p>In aggregate this accounts for a lot more than most people realize.<p>Here&#x27;s what happened this last year to move the needle<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nerdwallet.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;taxes&#x2F;pass-through-income-tax-deduction&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nerdwallet.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;taxes&#x2F;pass-through-income-ta...</a>

Look, if you raise the rates or establish a more concrete AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax - a base rate that can&#x27;t be ducked under), then corporations will just move their headquarters to another country with more favorable tax conditions. IMHO establish AMTs on corporations not headquartered here to incentivize them to move here and bring jobs.

If you look back in history, taxes always have been for ordinary citizens. Even before modern tax systems.

Wondering why no one has mentioned the fact that Entrepreneurship has been weakening for the last 25 years... Seems like one would expect corporate taxes to go down when there&#x27;s fewer companies.

Businesses don&#x27;t pay taxes, their customers do.

When people cite the stock market as proof Trump&#x27;s trade war isn&#x27;t hurting average Americans, it&#x27;s helpful to show them this chart.

I don’t think fair tax system doesn’t exist. (With a few exceptions in EU)

Tax corporate revenues. Problem solved.

All the tricks and loopholes means that the corporate tax rate is almost a red herring to distract voters from what really matters, which is how easy it is to hide your money overseas. As we&#x27;ve seen with Ireland, tax havens are fully compliant with helping American corporations get around the law.

Just to make sure we understand something here:<p>Taxation is robbery.<p>If you want companies and individuals to pay taxes, you&#x27;re defending a state that is unethical (as taxation forces people to give away their private property through coercion), and authoritarian (&quot;democracy&quot; is no justification for the use of force).<p>If you have any supposed justification for a centralized state that enforces taxation through the use of force on its citizens, you&#x27;re only denying the fact you agree with crime.<p>Please stop talking about companies and individuals paying more taxes. We should all be paying no taxes through coercion.