• psycotica0@lemmy.ca
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    15 hours ago

    Sorta, but despite what some governments have decided, corporations typically aren’t people. Most companies don’t want to accumulate savings, the way humans do. Profit is cool, for sure, but companies don’t save up for retirement, or go on vacations, or have kids. So some buffer to survive a less profitable year, or a costly watermain break or something, is prudent but that’s where it might end.

    Anything more than that, and maybe you hire some new staff, in which case that expense to you becomes income for your new employee, which they pay income tax on. Or you buy more merchandise, which the government may collect sales tax on. Or you may expand your office, and the government collects tax from the construction company and property tax on the new unit. Or you may offer a bonus to your existing employees, which is again income tax for them. Or you could issue dividends to shareholders, which they’re taxed on when they receive them.

    So the logic is that the things a company spends its money on are taxed in different ways, and the corporate income tax is basically the catch-all for “and then the rest of the money you didn’t spend some other way”

    Now, do we lowly humans typically get double-dipped when we have our income taxed, but then after that also sales tax when we buy stuff? Yes. Yes we do…