re: #207 Obdicut

Higher corporate taxes will always be passed on to the end user - the consumer. Corporations aren’t going to absorb higher taxes when they can pass them on to those who use their goods and services. That, in turn, will reduce demand as higher prices will deter purchases and reduce spending overall.

Throw in the asinine scheme of tax incentives for certain industries and you have corporate tax compliance issues that drain billions more annually from corporate coffers that could be reinvested, distributed (as distributions), build up cash reserves, or be treated as profits.

Tax simplification is absolutely needed to bring sanity back to the tax system. There is an opportunity to do so where eliminating many tax breaks that have no business being in there (sugar tarriffs, biodiesel subsidies, ethanol subsidies, farm subsidies, etc.).

The fact is that at no time in our nation’s history have so many people not been required to pay any tax at all - nearly 50% of US citizens pay no tax at the end of the year. That also means that when there’s a recession, those who are left paying the taxes get whacked (since they are disproportionately also affected by recessions since they have more exposure), the tax revenues drop precipitously. Just look at NYS/NYC and see what happens when Wall Street has a recession - it’s a multibillion dollar hit on the city and state budgets, and throws everything out of whack because there’s no one else who can pick up the slack; the notion that the rich can pay a still greater share means that when the next recession comes, the budgets will be even more out of whack because governmental spending remains out of line with revenues.