Dave Johnson, Speak Out California.

Here we go again with the “corporate taxes are passed along to the consumer” lie.  Instead of telling the public about harm to the public interest from budget cuts, teacher layoffs, privatizing public resources, police cutbacks, etc., instead we hear about how taxing the rich is a terrible thing.

What am I talking about?  See The Tax Foundation – Tax Foundation TV, Radio Ads Show That Corporate Income Taxes Cost the Average American Household $3,190.  They have a couple of ads their corporate funders are paying them to run.

And of course there is the usual scholarly proof that we should all give ever more money to the corporate rich,

“Research from the Congressional Budget Office shows that in a global economy where capital is highly mobile but workers can’t easily move abroad, workers end up bearing the brunt of corporate taxes. In 2007, Economist William Randolph found that 70 percent of corporate tax burdens fall on employees through lower wages and productivity, while the remaining 30 percent fall on company shareholders.”

Taxes are not a cost that can be “passed on to the customer.”  Taxes are calculated as a percentage of profits, after all costs are figured in. A well-run business charges the most it can get for its product or service. If the business has competitors it has to price its product or service in some relationship to competing products or services. Were a business to add to to prices to cover taxes this would increase the price above what had been determined to be the optimal price! If a company were able to raise prices to cover taxes the it would mean the company was previously negligent in not pricing as high as the market would bear.

And if the company was negligent, then increasing prices to cover taxes would increase profits, which would increase taxes, which would require an additional price increase, which would increase profits which would increase taxes.  Etc. – you get the picture.  It’s a silly idea.

In the same way, a properly-run business has as many employees as it needs.  When profitability caused them to apy taxes, it means they employed the correct number of people to realize that profit, and certainly are not going to lay someone off because they made a profit that was taxed.

But one step further on this.  A corporation itself is neutral on taxes.  After all, a corporation is just a bundle of contracts, and doesn’t really have interests any more than a chair has interests.  It is the owners who have interests and it is a good idea to think about any “passing on” involving corporate taxes is that it can lower the amount of money that is “passed on” to those people at the top of the economic ladder.  Realizing this changes the way the brain understands the problem here.  The fundamental question then becomes WHO is benefiting from our economy, and our legal infrastructure that creates and protects corporations.  It really is about which people are getting the cash, and seen in this light, this idea of lowering or elimminating corporate taxes takes on a new meaning.

This ad plays on public misunderstanding of taxes – a misunderstanding previously created by the same crowd.  (Similar to the idea that if you earn a penny over $250K all of your earnings are taxed at the higher rate.)  So it is like a further step in a strategy of creating increasing ignorance, so that you can further harvest the public…  (Why can’t WE think in terms of multi-stage strategies, but to instead increase public understanding and appreciation of democracy?)

So, when will we start hearing about the harm caused to the public interest by reduced taxes on corporations and the rich causing us to lay off teachers, cut police and firefighters, defer infrastructure maintenance, etc.?  When do we hear about how this hurts, instead of always about how taxes hurt the rich?

Click through to Speak Out California