Who Really Pays the Corporate Tax? Investment, Jobs, and the Politics of Taxing Firms

A corporate tax is legally paid by a corporation, but a corporation is not a person standing apart from society with an independent capacity to bear economic pain. A firm is a network of workers, owners, consumers, suppliers, and investments. When government taxes corporate profits, the legal liability may appear on the company’s tax return, but the economic burden can be distributed through lower returns to owners, weaker investment, lower wages, fewer jobs, or higher prices. This is why corporate taxation is not a technical argument about whether one sympathizes with “business.” It is a question about capital formation and, ultimately, about the opportunities available to ordinary people.

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