> > All taxes are at the expense of profits.
>
>Which is why my idea is to get rid of the _individual income tax_ ...
>since all of payroll (and most of the other) taxes "paid" by individuals
>_really come from companies_ why bother with the additional 140M+ tax
>returns each year;
Because it makes every wage earner into a tax cop, filing millions of returns which allows the tax office to cross-check the returns put in by their bosses. (For this service wage-earners get paid a small fee, called a "tax refund", by the tax office.) Its an invaluable revenue protection device and the workers filing the returns work very cheap.
(Personally, I haven't lodged a tax return for 25 years, but since my connection to the labour market is relatively tenuous, the tax office doesn't bother me about this.)
>just have the (far smaller in number) corporations
>(and would-be Schedule C filers) pay it all.
Unfortunately, bosses are inclined to be less than completely honest with the tax office about their actual profits. So called "income taxes" are a fairly progressive tax anyhow, as they tax employers according to the labour they exploit, so taxing profits at the point of extraction.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas