>> So with the 35 percent of corporate tax ...
... which, as shown here recently, is more like 16% ...
>> It is a double taxation anyway ...
Didn't we resolve this one a long time ago?
>> And then there are also tax in the individual level.
When he says "and there is also" -- does he mean "triple" taxation? :)
I presume he's talking about the tax on dividends here; he couldn't be so stupid as to be talking about wages paid, which are deductions to the corporation. I like the logic of taxing dividends at the corporate level: there needs to be *some* good reason for them to re-invest in their business and not just pay out to the shareholders. Anyway, I guess most big companies get around this by using share buybacks instead; it's a nice indirect dividend.
>> By the way the revenue isn’t going to be very much because
>> the corporate tax used to earn 5 % of GDP in revenue. It’s
>> gone down about 1,5 % of GDP. So it doesn’t add too much.
Right: it's gone down because the policy choice has been to cut it, not because it has become less relevant -- will someone hit this guy with a clue stick? The Bush tax cut was a ~$1.5T "stimulus" that hasn't been reconsidered in the context of the current one. Pot: meet kettle.
>> And in a recession period there won’t be any profits and tax,
>> so the revenue will be very little.
If there's no profit to tax, then why would a corporation care? The tax on profits could be 100% for all they care.
Well, you might care if you were Exxon and you *did* have huge profits. Exxon, by the way, has recently been paying about 10% of the total corporate income tax bill.
So yes, this is backwards: if you're the only one making profit in a recession, you *should* be paying taxes, because of your good, uh, fortune. Who else is there?
/jordan