re: #114 schnapp

You missed this bit, apparently:

Now, new IRS data shows typical American companies paid only 25.3 percent of their U.S. book income in federal corporate taxes in 2005, despite a statutory corporate tax rate of 35 percent, by using loopholes and shelters.

re: #114 schnapp

Taxes alter a firm’s behaviour. They are an expense to firms and to maintain profits they must give lower returns to either workers or investors. Since capital is more mobile than labour, because it is easier for investors to pull out of a country than for workers to emigrate, the burden of higher taxes will fall on workers rather than investors.

Oh, I get you. You’re talking about lower wages, not fewer employed workers.

It’s certainly true that capital has a coercive power over labor to demand lower wages given the immobility of labor. however, why you say that this has to do with corporate taxes rather than simple profit-seeking behavior from the companies, I’m at a complete loss for. If those taxes were removed, it wouldn’t alter labor’s willingness to work for those same wages. So why on earth would those corporations raise those wages for workers from that extra profit? Just for the hell of it?