Tax on interest

[Christian Gregory]

Taxes paid by corporations in 1999, the latest year for data, were roughly $1.02 trillion. Tax that at, say, 34% and you've got another $340 billion to play with in federal budget. That's about a 15% increase over the last few years.

To get to the other side of Michael's question, I'm guessing that the initial reason for taxing dividends on the corporate side was, if not to encourage investment and retaining earnings, then at least not to make it less attractive on a tax basis than paying out divs. It's not a cost of generating revenue b/c that cost is paid by capital gains (ie accounting opportunity cost)--or what?

Christian