I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious - that corporations exist within a society and use a multitude of important "resources" to function at all. That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too.

> I noticed the discussion on natural resources so I just wanted to point out the obvious

While what you said is certainly obvious, it had nothing to do with what I said.

> That's why it's pretty natural to have corporate taxes too.

It is absolutely idiotic to have corporate taxes. Corporations are nothing more than proxies for the shareholders. All profits are passed to the shareholders. Once they are, those shareholders then have to pay taxes on those profits.

You end up with double taxation.

In recognition of this, we create something called a capital gains tax, which is less than the normal tax rate ... and then tax corporations to compensate for that. Nice.

You end up with a situation where most of the taxes the corporations pay end up being passed to the consumer and the rich get a tax break. Is that what you support?

Get rid of capital gains, tax all income at the same level, and get rid of the corporate tax.

I'm sure there are structures where corporate tax is 0 and dividends are taxed at the same rate as any other income. That is a reasonable structure.

If one wants a cap gains tax that equates to the double taxation then cap gains would be higher than income tax. Could also be reasonable.

How do you think we make roads, energy?

With natural resources. Which have royalties, permit fees, etc. Read what I wrote again.