All corporate profits accrue to people ultimately. It also would eliminate arguments for preferential rates of taxation on capital gains and dividends.

It would be a cleaner and more transparent tax system than what we have now, too. It would also be easier to guarantee that the tax burden currently applied to businesses actually has a progressive incidence than the current system, where we aren't really sure how the true incidence of corporate taxes falls. It varies by industry currently.

Why stop pretending corporations pay taxes?

Actually, all that's really being discussed are large corporations, but there are many small corporations - I used to have one - and we certainly paid taxes unless, of course, we actually lost money, but if we lost money it was honestly (drop in business, whatever). Never once were we hiding money offshore or anything to fake losing money.

What pisses me off more is not only are companies like Monsanto or ExxonMobil shuffling funds, but many are recipients of subsidized government largesse.

And in Apple's case, if they paid it to individuals, the individuals would have to pay taxes, but they're not paying it to individuals. They're sitting on over a half-trillion dollars. There's no trickle-down there and no one's paying out. It's like they think they can keep their potential taxable in escrow indefinitely until they figure out how to get it out without costing them. I know companies like to keep a warchest - and they should - but I think it should be after taxes.

Increases in the net value of a corproation are reflected in the stock price, which generates capital gains for the shareholders. I'm all in favor of taxing those are progressive rates to capture that.

The warchests are ultimately used for dividend payouts, share buybacks, acquisitions, etc. All of this is ultimately income to individuals as well. It's just a question of the timing.

There's not a whole lot of difference between the corporate tax and a sales tax, except that one is on profit and one is on revenue. Both will be ultimately passed along to customers.

I would be open to abolishing the corporate tax in exchange for raising the taxation of dividends and capital gains to the same as regular income. Currently dividends are taxed at a lower rate due to double taxation (i.e. they are already taxed at the corporate level before being paid). Failing this, at the very least the US should switch to a "territorial" system of corporate taxation like every other country, which would also stop the problem of "inversions" and eliminate the competitive disadvantage of US-domiciled multinationals relative to foreign multinationals.

If everything the company made was bought and sold in this country he might have a point but that is not reality.

and no it is not a valid point in a global economy. You can not tax people in other countries so a corp that produces its product in this country and sells it in other countries would use our infrastructure to produce that product with out paying anything towards the upkeep of that infrastructure.

Yes the tax gets passed on to the consumer but the consumer also has the option of whether or not to buy the product or there may be no consumer in this country at all to tax.

I am surprised people fall for this crap.

Apple offshores $158 billion to avoid taxes now.

http://fortune.com/2015/01/31/washington-has-its-eye-on-apples-158-billion-in-offshore-cash/

Sic the IRS on Tim and his scam.

They should pay PERSONal income taxes.