Corporate Tax Should be Abolished

I shall now refute a number of my opponents arguments and make a number of other points which I missed earlier. (1)"First, one foolish policy does not justify another, so if corporate personhood is a foolish policy, and it is the justification for corporate tax, the solution is not to keep both, but to get rid of both." Again, on the issue of corporate personhood, what you fail to take into consideration is an important aspect of corporatism, limited liability. This is a fundamental aspect of a corporation's legal structure in order to protect investors and shareholders. However, because a corporation has such an inalienable right, it must have some means of social accountability. Because corporations can as a collective deal with lawsuits, and allow shareholders to dump debt on to society when they are unable to account for their own. I'm not suggesting this is a foolish policy because it carries many economic benefits, but corporations must pay for such a privilege and be accountable to society as a COLLECTIVE. (2) "It makes sense that a corporation would have the right to "use" the roads, because what this means is that the owners of a corporation have the right to employ somebody to use the roads. Since all the owners of the corporation and the employees all have the right to use the roads, it makes sense that they still have this right when they call their arrangement a "corporation"." Certainly individuals have such rights to use the roads and infrastructure provided by tax payers, however what this argument doesn't take into account is the additional burden placed on such infrastructure and government works by corporate and/or industrial operations. Individual people are unable to utilize such infrastructure to the overwhelming extent as corporations. Corporate entities increase the number of heavy transportation vehicles, more significantly contribute to environmental impact (practically entirely), utilize government services more strenuously and ultimately account for the necessity for additional public infrastructure when construction new shopping centers, manufacturing plants, offices etc. Ultimately, the individual corporation accounts for an increase in the need for localized government expenditure, therefore it is logical to require the corporation, rather than individuals from elsewhere, to pay for such a project. This similarly takes place in State and Local jurisdictions through income tax, with regard to education and infrastructure among many other practical government works, so that the local government is using local taxation revenue to provide local services. Ultimately, individuals are unable to account for the overwhelming usage of government works as a large, collective organisation, of which should as a whole be taxed for such use. (3) "To summarize, all of the public services currently funded by the corporate tax could receive the EXACT SAME AMOUNT OF FUNDING, AT LESS HARM TO THE ECONOMY, if the corporate tax were abolished and replaced with a better method of raising revenue." Well, this is ultimately false. You mentioned previously that as a means of replacing the corporation tax, income taxation on the wealthy should be increased, with supposedly 'less harm to the economy'. But there are a number of issues with this. Firstly, members of the upper class and the upper-middle class are the biggest spenders in the United States. To increase income tax on these classes would thwart spending in retail, on housing and other goods and services, which would ultimately damage the economy equally or to a greater extent than a corporate tax. It's a logical fallacy to assume that removing the corporate tax would 'have less harm to economy' if replaced by an income tax, because in terms of the fiscal side of things, it would carry similar consequences to the economy and raise a similar amount of revenue. What makes the corporate tax more important and thus more preferable to an increase in the income tax is ultimately the need to make such large and powerful groups of collective citizens accountable to the government and for their actions, and ensuring they have collective societal accountability due to the privileges legally granted to them. By abolishing the corporation tax, what you will find is that tax evasion would be come increasingly easier. Wealthy individuals would increasingly reclassify their earnings as 'corporate income', and thus escaping income taxation (of which you propose to increase). Such a process would be unbelievably easy considering our current tax code, and ultimately profits would be able to be shifted offshore and through tax escape strategies, of which modern businesses today excel at. While it is a very much circumstantial argument, thousands of businesses and individuals devote a substantial amount of time and effort to seek out ways to pay less tax, and the removal of the corporate tax will tax evasion much easier. You will find also, that corporate taxation works as an effective means of dispersing the wealth of corporate ventures more effectively. If a corporation were to commence operations in Zambia, a corporate tax would funnel revenue into the Zambian government from the bank accounts of investors in the United States. Likewise, such a process takes place throughout US states with corporate taxes run by the states. With finances being funneled from investors in California to the people of North Dakota, through such means of taxation, it is an effective means of spreading the wealth geographically. Without the corporate tax, there would be increase in disparity between the states, and many states would find themselves being exploited for their natural resources, but the wealth returning to people of other states. That's simply not fair, and yet another reason why corporate tax should not go.