Tax Update Blog: Permalink

« Previous · Tax Update Blog Home · Next »

Corporations are people too!

August 15, 2011

Mitt Romney caught some grief for telling an Iowa State Fair heckler an obvious truth - corporations are people. They are a tool for people to organize their activities and cooperate to do things. That this is at all controversial is sad.

TaxVox explains:

He’s right, of course, in both the legal sense—the law treats corporations as if they are people—and in the economic sense—what happens to corporations affects people. Corporations are merely a legal convenience that people use to organize their businesses. That specifically applies to the taxes corporations pay: The corporation is the conduit but the burden of the tax falls on individuals. The question is “On whom?”
There are four main possibilities: the owners of the corporation, owners of capital in general, workers, and consumers.

If corporations aren't people, why on earth did the taxpayers bail out GM and Chrysler? If corporations aren't people, the case for the bailout goes from being merely lame to incomprehensible.

Christopher Bergin has more.

UPDATE: Welcome, Going Concern readers! Check out this take from David Henderson.

Tags: Christopher Bergin.Mitt Romney.Roberton Williams.tax policy.Tax.com.TaxVox.