I wrote this as a comment on an Ontario Liberal Party discussion platform leading to the 2018 Ontario election. I don't know how long the link will survive, so I am pasting the text of the posted idea and earlier comments below my text.
My long comment, responding to Jenny and to the main idea:
It is a mistake to think corporate tax is not paid by individuals - only individuals pay tax. Sometimes they pay directly and sometimes through their legal entities such as corporations, partnerships and trusts. The government taxes corporations as a way to hide the tax from immediate view by citizens and is totally counterproductive. All the assets and all the profits of a corporation are engaged 100% of the time in creating value for citizens and when you tax something you get less of it. By taxing business production you get less production and society has a lower standard of living.
The fact that 10% of Canadian already pay 55% of the taxes is not irrelevant to this issue. In many and likely most cases, the most productive people are shareholders of a corporation and thus pay both personal and corporate income taxes already.
The idea's assertion that income inequality is bad and that corporations are totally about greed is a travesty. To better understand this, consider how you become one of the rich people in society. Let's say you come up with an idea to make life better for others - to keep things super simple, say you invent a better vegetable peeler. You must invest your brain power in creating the initial idea, building prototypes, testing them, researching manufacturing and distribution. You must make sure you are not running afoul of the thousands of regulations the province has that restrict trade. You must search for and hire staff to help you get things rolling. You must learn how to deal with the intricacies of trade barriers between countries and also their internal trade barriers such as those between provinces. You must finance the equipment, marketing and inventory of the business and pay staff while the product is being brought to market; you take significant financial risks and might lose it all.
Now assume you start to have sales, but it may take many months or even years to recover what you have invested, with no guarantees at all that you will do so. All along the way your staff have been paid and have been happy to work for that level of pay, or else they would rationally work elsewhere. No one forced them to work for you and they took no risks except those inherent in working for a small business. Every day in the early life of the company the staff worked, they were making a profit for themselves while the business founder was not. They decided they were better off, that their lives were being improved, that they received more value through their pay than the time they dedicated to the work.
Now let's say the business starts to become profitable. How? Only because enough customers have decided that their lives will be better off for buying your veggie peeler than by holding onto the few dollars it costs them. Their lives are improved in a small measure, and the business owner and all employees are also better off. Trade is a win-win transaction when it is freely chosen - it must be, by definition. If only a modest number of people agree that their lives are improved by buying your peeler.
Now to the meat: how do you become rich? A really large number of people must agree that their lives are improved by trading their dollars for your peeler. Millions of people must agree that you are creating value for them. Not only that, you are competing against all other peelers made by all other companies, plus once your peeler hits the market it will give other people ideas about how to compete with you. To build a successful business you must not only achieve excellence, you must maintain it indefinitely or else another will earn the market share you once had.
Consider Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon, apparently the wealthiest man in the world today. His business idea has become so loved by his customers and the company has so many millions of customers that his net worth (mostly Amazon shares that could lose 100% of their value if the company fails to maintain excellence) is over $100 billion dollars. Did his wealth come at the expense of others? Did he take their piece of the so-called "income pie"? Did he achieve this by forcing people to work for him at pay lower than they chose? No. No. NO! Amazon employees all work there because they have identified Amazon as a place they want to work and have accepted the pay offered. Many employees have likely become millionaires through ownership of shares in the business. Amazon customers are better off - why else would they shop through Amazon? Thousands of other businesses sell through the Amazon platform. Many other businesses sell services to Amazon. Jeff Bezos is fabulously wealthy because he has revolutionized a portion of the marketplace and created value for hundreds of millions of people and growing. All those people have chosen to trade a small amount of their value for that provided by Bezos and his company - and they can take away everything Amazon has and all its employees and all its share value, just by changing their minds about whether Amazon is creating value in their lives.
The fact that income inequality rises when Jeff Bezos creates incredible value for millions of people all over the world is an outcome to be celebrated, lauded and recognized as a great moral achievement, not just an economic one. Morality is our guidelines for surviving and thriving, and the creation of a new mountain of wealth in society is the pinnacle of morality successfully applied to improve human lives. Bezos is not Bernie Madoff - he has not stolen or defrauded anyone - that is the mindset of those who see wealth as a pie to be divided. Bezos has designed, tested, baked and continues to bake new and undreamed of pies that are beloved by hordes of his fellow men. To frame it another way, Bezos' wealth has been voted to him and bestowed upon him through consumer choices as recognition by his fellow men of the value he creates.
Yes, Bezos disrupts the economy, but to improve it, not to denigrate it.
Yes, this is a right and left issue. On the right stand people who wish to be free to choose their own path in life, to be free of coercion by others or their government. On the left stand those who are against individual rights, against human freedom, against reason and the human mind, against win-win trade and for the use of force to make others do their bidding. On the left stand people with guns pointed at citizens. On the right stand people who defend the right of citizens to choose. Which side acts as a bully?
My first, short comment:
This idea is so full of errors and contradictions entire books would be needed to fully address it. A basic course in economics and finance would be a start.
Who creates, operates, finances and owns the businesses, the corporations excoriated above? Who pays the corporate taxes? Who pays individual taxes? Who earns the profits of businesses and uses them to invest in greater future production or to improve their lives? Canadians, Ontarians, taxpayers - they are synonymous. With the most productive 10% among us already paying 55% of income taxes, is that enough? Not for everyone, apparently.
Comment from Jenny:
Hi, David, the 10% paying 55% of income taxes is irrelevant. The idea was the low corporate tax; it is not that the head of the corporate is paying low personal income tax.
