Who pays more taxes corporations or individuals?

Answer 1

This is a great question since when we think about taxing the rich we think we are taxing individuals, but in reality we are taxing individuals and corporations. The question not answered is: should we be taxing corporations and just how many corporations are we talking about? Corporations are income producing organizations treated as individuals. Individuals may or may not be income producers, but even if they are not income producers, in the end, when they spend money they will provide opportunity for income to be produced. For example, a rich person buys an aircraft. The company who sells the aircraft, buys raw materials, pays employees, etc to manufacture and sell that aircraft. In other words, the rich person creates employment and profits. Corporations have slightly different paradigm to deal with. In order to produce something, they have to have capital to start their business. True, there some very rich individuals who can start their own corporations and fund them completely, of more often, business start slowly, building capital slowly, they borrow needed funds, (assuming they have capitol equity) or they sell shares to raise money. If they are taxed too much, that is money they do not have to invest in the business. The problem still remains, the business have to buy the manufacturing equipment before they can make taxable profits, so even if they can deduct the cost of doing business, they only can do so if there are profits. So in the end if we mistakenly confuse real business with individuals who have wealth we are over taxing our income generators.