Would you support a constitutional amendment declaring that . . .

[Paendragon]

Would you support a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people?

I know there are other facets of this discussion, but I'm curious if the bipartisan support I've seen in polls would be reflected on the GB.

Poll to follow.

Edited to clarify: This is not about yesterday's amendment proposal. I'm curious as to whether you would support any amendment at all. Wording can be negotiated as long as the prevailing factor is a distinction between human being being people, and corporations being . . . well, not people.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Corporations should have no "relgious beliefs", no matter what the judicial activists on the Supreme Court believe.

 

[garbage can]

IMO, Corporations do not pay taxes, people do.

 

[Disgustipated]

IMO, Corporations do not pay taxes, people do.

That's not an opinion. They do or they don't.

 

[CandiCame]

IMO, Corporations do not pay taxes, people do.

*facepalm* Corporations pay taxes. Why the hell would you think they didn't?

 

[phrodeau]

I would support a way to place corporations under arrest and put them in jail, when they break laws.

 

[CandiCame]

Corporations are taxed at a higher rate than individuals.

Here's the wiki article on the subject.

 

[Wrong Element]

Would you support a constitutional amendment declaring that corporations are not people?

I know there are other facets of this discussion, but I'm curious if the bipartisan support I've seen in polls would be reflected on the GB.

Poll to follow.

I don't know if I'd go quite as far as a constitutional amendment. Corporate personhood has its uses, arguably (though there are free economies that get along fine without it).

I'd settle for an amendment that clarifies what used to be common sense, which is that the First Amendment applies only to human beings.

 

[Que]

No. What a retarded idea. Which rights that "people." i.e. citizens enjoy should a corporation be denied?

The right to hold private property? The right to self defense? The right to various torts such as slander, or recovery or moneys owed? The right to due process? The right to unreasonable search and seizure?

 

[CandiCame]

No. What a retarded idea. Which rights that "people." i.e. citizens enjoy should a corporation be denied?

The right to hold private property? The right to self defense? The right to various torts such as slander, or recovery or moneys owed? The right to due process? The right to unreasonable search and seizure?

The search and seizure one has been a big topic lately. "People" ie, corporations not wanting to allow proper audit searches of their overseas assets and whatnot. People want more transparencies, but the "people" believe that to be between themselves and their accountants.

...possibly just themselves.

 

[JustaSCOUNDREL]

I would support a way to place corporations under arrest and put them in jail, when they break laws.

I would support a law charging you for the O2 you waste by breathing and another for the CO 2, global warming gas, you exhale just to try to pay for your overwhelming ignorance.

 

[Colonel Hogan]

IMO, Corporations do not pay taxes, people do.

That's not an opinion. They do or they don't.

*facepalm* Corporations pay taxes. Why the hell would you think they didn't?

People's individual incomes are taxed depending on whether their income is:

"Wages, salaries and tips, etc." (line 7)

"Taxable interest" (line 8a)

"Tax exempt interest" (line 8b)

"Ordinary dividends" (line 9a)

"Qualified dividends" (line 9b)

"Taxable refunds, credits, or offsets of state and local income taxes" (line 10)

"Alimony received" (line 11)

"Business income or (loss)" (line 12)

"Capital gains or (losses)" (line 13)

"Other gains of (losses)" (line 14)

Other categories of individual income are listed on IRS Form 1040 (see lines 15a to 22) along with "Adjustments" to income (lines 23 to 37) and "Tax and Credits" (including deductions) (lines 38 to 56). Additionally, persons who engage in business activity under the legal organization of a corporation pay taxes on various forms of income (subject to other forms of adjustments and credits) specifically relevant to that form of business and as described on IRS Form 1120.

Generally speaking, there is little legal rationale for why the liberties guaranteed in the Bill of Rights would require fundamental alteration or restriction simply by virtue of an individual's filing status under IRS regulations.

Certainly a greater potential for harm may exist depending on a corporation's size or the very nature of the business in which it is engaged. Civil law and legislative regulations are appropriately focused on this potential risk.

But the "personhood of corporations" is a misnomer under which the civil liberties of people owning or operating corporations is discussed as well as a distorted lens through which those same rights are viewed.

Though appropriate restrictions of liberty may occasionally apply (i.e. the forfeit of "right of association" by business owners under "Public Accommodations" provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 comes to mind), a society whose value of individual liberty is paramount should in all circumstances possible default to the conditions which preserve and expand liberty, conceding only to those most extreme and exigent circumstances which would diminish it.

 

[Boxlicker101]

IMO, Corporations do not pay taxes, people do.

For-profit corporations pay income taxes on net profits. It is a set rate, rather than a graduated one. Publicly traded corps do not have any particular religious rights although closely held ones sometimes do.

 

[RobDownSouth]

Corporations are taxed at a higher rate than individuals.

Here's the wiki article on the subject.

There is a large difference between nominal tax rates and effective tax rates.

The nominal rate may be higher than the individual rate, but the effective rate is often much much lower, which explains why companies like GE can go a decade without owing any federal income tax whatsoever.

 

[about_average]

"Corporations don't pay taxes, people do" is a sound bite way of saying every corporate expense (an expenditure required for doing business) is passed on to that corporation's consumers. Taxes are an expense.
The theory is that if corporations didn't pay money to the IRS the cost of goods would go down.

 

[Liar]

Swap "corporations" for "organizatons" and I'm on board. Churches, trusts, non profits, clubs, unions... unless the expressed purpose of an organization is to advocate an position, it cannot possibly speak for it's individual members. Churches have religious freedom for obvious reasons. PACs and political parties have freedom of speech, as long as they say what the members signed up for them to say.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It's a dumbass economically illiterate idea whose only function will be to disallow Capital accumulation outside of wealthy families.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

"Corporations don't pay taxes, people do" is a sound bite way of saying every corporate expense (an expenditure required for doing business) is passed on to that corporation's consumers. Taxes are an expense.
The theory is that if corporations didn't pay money to the IRS the cost of goods would go down.

Explain to us please the mechanism by which taxes are "paid" by corporations without altering the profit margin of the company. Enlighten us on how beautifully this keeps taxes low on the consumer by putting all of the burden on a corporation. If you need to, please feel free to consult with Mike Yates before answering. This type of thing is his wheelhouse.

 

[about_average]

Explain to us please the mechanism by which taxes are "paid" by corporations without altering the profit margin of the company. Enlighten us on how beautifully this keeps taxes low on the consumer by putting all of the burden on a corporation. If you need to, please feel free to consult with Mike Yates before answering. This type of thing is his wheelhouse.

I don't know what the fuck you're arguing about.
Can you read? What did I say that wasn't true?

Did your face get much of a bruise from your knee?

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

It is not a theory; that is a gentle slander, one U_D loves to use.

In his economic view, which you echo, any time a corporation gets a reduced cost of business, they do not pass it on to the consumer because they are greedy, they ignore the competition and take it as profit to give to their wealthy stock holders in the form of dividends because only the rich own stock.

Don't get your panties in a wad. Everyone understands that if corporations were paying no taxes, the market would force the price down, they just do not like it, so they invent Sophism to prove that it ain't true, but, they're just Sophisms, the fallacy of everyone that I know thinks the same thing...

 

[about_average]

It is not a theory

I'm using this standard definition of "theory":
- A proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural and subject to experimentation

Unless you can link to data showing where corporate taxes have been reduced with a corresponding reduction in the cost of goods, it's a theory.
Don't forget that any data has to allow for all other market influences to establish an actual correlation.

This is for your face
http://i.slimg.com/sc/sl/photo/i/ic/Icepack-DEF.jpg

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

I'll jump right on that as soon as you show me your links to the converse.

Until then, I'll stick with Mises.

I agree in this with my principal teacher, mentor, and master Murray Rothbard. I would only want people to recognize matters for what they truly are. I would want them to recognize taxes as robbery, politicians as thieves, and the entire state apparatus and bureaucracy as a protection racket, a Mafia-like enterprise, only far bigger and more dangerous. In short: I would want them to hate the State. If everyone believed and did this, then, as É. de la Boétie has shown, all power of the state would almost instantly vanish.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe

 

[about_average]

I'll jump right on that as soon as you show me your links to the converse.

Umm..sorry, that's not how science works.
When you claim something is a fact without any evidence, it's not the job of others to prove a negative.

 

[CandiCame]

There is a large difference between nominal tax rates and effective tax rates.

The nominal rate may be higher than the individual rate, but the effective rate is often much much lower, which explains why companies like GE can go a decade without owing any federal income tax whatsoever.

That's not the major reason that most corporations don't pay taxes. There's still a rate table; it's not fixed. The major reasons have more to do with the internal mechanisms for the company that bring their profit margins down rather than the rate table. It's a needlessly complex set of circumstances that I, personally, feel needs to be streamlined and simplified. We don't need three different employee taxation classifications, for example. We don't need 4 different inventory claimant categories. There's a lot of things that seemed designed JUST to find somewhere to 'hide' profits. And it's a pain in the ass. It just... really needs to be streamlined. Fucking depreciation doesn't need all those different categories either... It's just that the more I think I about it the more I can think that's just plain redundant and stupid on corporate taxes.

 

[4est_4est_Gump]

Umm..sorry, that's not how science works.
When you claim something is a fact without any evidence, it's not the job of others to prove a negative.

Go to FairTax.org

Some years ago, a group of Flat Tax entrepreneurs commissioned a study for the best replacement to the current tax code confident that the study would prove their theory that the flat tax was the best way to raise revenue. This proved to be wrong.

The interesting thing discovered in the study is that embedded cost, to the consumer in not just corporate taxes, but, just as importantly, the cost of compliance (in which statement I infer also the cost of lobbying for protection from taxes and competition) is 23 to 30% of the cost of each good or service.

Now, I do not think I really need to provide a bunch of charts, graphs and google links to clearly make the contention that if you end the class-envy driven Sophism of corporate taxation that there is, indeed, going to be great benefit to the consumer in the form of deflationary market pressures. But if you want links to such things, you will find them there and if you go to Mises.org and use the search function, you will find correct price and tax theory on the subject.

If you want to cling to your Sophism and "theory," sobeit, I am never going to be able to change your mind with links (for generally then the Sophist attacks the source), but at your fingertips you have the power of discovery and examination. It is what changed me from being a Capitalist-hating Socialist to a Federalist/Austrian-type; as a very proud "liberal" I possessed the ability to see the world with an open mind free of envy. It now seems to be a tenet of new-age "liberalism" to believe that they know everything and anyone who disagrees knows everything else.



I do note that you cannot back up your original summation about the statement that people pay taxes as a ludicrous concept at best.