Friday, November 05, 2010

Gordian Tax Knot: This follows on an idea I floated a few years ago: Kill the corporate income tax for good. Corporations don't pay it anyway -- it's built into their pricing structure, so that the consumer pays it anyway. (No serious corporation ever lost money on a product by failing to work taxes into their overhead.) It's a tax on the consumer, and a regressive tax to boot. So when a politician tells you that the greedy corporations need to pay their share, they really mean that you need to pay higher prices at the store.

When I brought it up, I linked it directly to ending corporate welfare, and suggested that the hit Uncle Whiskers would take on revenue ($250 bil, according to the piece linked, although I was coming up with $150 bil -- don't recall where my numbers came from) would be partially offset by reduced outlays to the GMs and Chryslers of the world, along with famous rent-seeking pigs like the energy industry. But dynamic scoring side of the argument says that the increase in jobs would likely bridge the gap through increased income tax revenue.

I still think this is a great idea.

h/t Derb, who seems to think this idea has never been bandied before.

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