On Jul 9, 2010, at 6:54 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> I don't think that's true. Taxes are a deduction from profit. They may
> _try_ to pass the cost on, but a corporation is already charging as high
> as it can and still sell enough,. That doesn't leave room for pasing on
> the extra cost of a tax.
>
> Doug may be able to comment more technically on this.
There are a lot of arguments about who pays the corporate tax. Corps probably pay at least some of it, otherwise they wouldn't lobby so hard for tax breaks. But, still, since a corp is really just a network of relationships organized towards the ultimate benefit shareholders and top management, and not a person in any real economic sense, corps can't really pay taxes. The CBO assumes that corporate taxes are half paid by capital (in the form of hits to profits and dividends) and half by labor (in the form of lower wages), which is probably sensible.
Doug