Corporations Are People

One of the videos that seemed to interesting me was when the author said that even though the effective corporate tax rate goes down the government's tax revenue stays more or less constant. The aspect of that argument coming to my attention is that not income taxes are also paid by individuals, so corporations being taxed less does not mean individual tax rates are any lower than they previously were. This may cause the total tax revenue to remain fairly constant. Also, it was very interesting to learn that the implicit marginal tax rates means people who earn $20,000 per year are no worse or better off than people earning $45,000 per year. To me, that means there is little incentive for people to actually get promotions or higher paying jobs that can be more demanding or difficult. In another sense it may be a good thing that people who earn less are just as well off as those who earn well. Also, since corporations don't pay taxes and rather the workers, consumers, or investors pay those corporate taxes it raises the question of who corporations really are. I want to say that corporations are not specific individuals and are rather entities, so saying that they don't pay taxes seems to be assuming that corporations are some sorts of individuals. I do not understand the argument that corporations do not pay taxes because corporations are a group of people authorized to act as a single entity and legally recognized as such, so when those individuals pay the taxes, to me, it is the same thing as the corporation paying the tax. Furthermore, if a corporation did not have to pay any taxes whatsoever it would likely be far better off because it earnings would increase and that would drive its market value up, so in a sense they do indeed pay a tax. I am not an expert on taxation, so it's hard for me to understand how exactly effective tax rates are calculated for corporations. Still, I don't think saying that corporations don't pay taxes is entirely true when people make up the corporations.