President Joe Biden stated that he ran for president “to fundamentally change things” and “to build an economy from the bottom up and the middle out, not from the top down [often referred to negatively as “trickle down” by the Democrats].” Vice-President Harris has emphatically told the mainstream press that she was the last person in the room with Joe Biden and proud of ALL the decisions and policies put forth by the Biden-Harris Administration.
Ask yourself, are you better off today than you were under the Trump Administration… vote accordingly! Even if you are doing extremely well today, you are still paying substantially more for everything you purchase, if you can get it, compared to the Trump years. But I digress.
During her recent presidential campaign, Vice-President Harris has proposed raising the corporate income tax rate from 21% to 28%, stating that this would be “a fiscally responsible way to put money back in the pockets of working people and ensure billionaires and big corporations pay their fair share.” Harris is completely wrong… her proposals will hurt the “working people!”
With respect to corporations, they DO NOT PAY Taxes; they are merely efficient tax collectors. In the February 22, 2014, issue of The Economist, far from a conservative or libertarian magazine, they stated: “The big question is whether it makes sense to tax corporate profits at all. A company is a legal entity; if it is taxed, it must pass it on.”
Corporations do not pay taxes, only individuals pay taxes. When a corporation is taxed, either: (1) the stockholders absorb the tax, through a reduction of dividends and/or company value; (2) employees are penalized, by cancelling raises or bonuses and not hiring new workers; and/or (3) customers pay the tax through an increase in the cost of the products or services purchased from the corporation. Over time, all taxes are ultimately passed on to the customers, whether poor, middle-class, or wealthy.
Contrary to what we hear from the media, academia, and the Democrats, it is the middle-class and the poor that suffer from taxes imposed upon corporate profits.
The Economist has even taken the position that “the rich world needs to cut red tape to encourage business.” The cost of government regulation represents another tax or fee ultimately absorbed by the middle-class and the poor. The regulatory and tax environment that exists today, especially under the Biden-Harris Administration, keeps the middle-class and poor from being able to start new businesses; they are unable to compete with the entrenched large corporations who have huge armies of attorneys and accountants, which are necessary in today’s over-regulated and over-taxed environment.
Only consumers, workers, and investors pay taxes, not corporations. The corporate income tax and regulatory environment is a hidden stealth tax that negatively impacts poor and middle-class Americans.
The next time a Democrat, an academic, or a media-type says that corporations are not paying their fair share of taxes, call them out as either ignorant of basic economics, or Liars trying to manipulate the public to accomplish their socialist goals of a utopia of equality for all. As the late historian and philosopher Dr. Will Durant wrote in The Lessons of History:
“Nature smiles at the union of freedom and equality in our utopias. For freedom and equality are sworn and everlasting enemies, and when one prevails the other dies. . . Utopias of equality are biologically doomed and the best that the amiable philosopher can hope for is an approximate equality of legal justice and educational opportunity.”
As Dr. Ben Franklin explained, “The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.” Kamala Harris and the Democrats consistently violate their oath to support the Constitution, by blatantly taking money or property from one group and giving it to another group to buy votes and stay in power.
Dr. Thomas Sowell wrote a 13-page pamphlet titled, “Trickle Down” Theory and “Tax Cuts For The Rich,” debunking this “non-existent theory.” He explained the origination of the trickle down theory: President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech writer referred to “the philosophy that had prevailed in Washington since 1921, that the object of government was to provide prosperity for those who lived and worked at the top of the economic pyramid, in the belief that prosperity would trickle down to the bottom of the heap and benefit all.”
Roosevelt’s speech writer was referring to a series of tax rate reductions proposed by then Secretary of the Treasury, Andrew Mellon, which were enacted into law during the decade of the 1920s. But the actual arguments put forth by Mellon had nothing to do with a “trickle-down theory.” As Sowell explained, “Mellon pointed out that, under the high income tax rates at the end of the Woodrow Wilson administration in 1921, vast sums of money had been put into tax shelters such as tax-exempt municipal bonds, instead of being invested in the private economy, where this money would create more output, incomes and jobs.”
Dr. Sowell continued, “What actually followed the cuts in tax rates in the 1920s were rising output, rising employment to produce that output, rising incomes as a result and rising tax revenues for the government because of the rising incomes, even though the tax rates had been lowered. Another consequence was that the people in higher income brackets not only paid a larger total amount of taxes, but a higher percentage of all taxes, after what have been called ‘tax cuts for the rich.’ There were . . . similar results in later years after high tax rates were cut during the John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush administrations.”
President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) ushered in the 21% flat corporate tax rate. Many of the key tax-saving components, such as reduced tax rates and revised tax brackets for businesses and individuals, expire after 2025. Biden, Harris and the Democrats continue to lie to you by characterizing Trump’s TCJA as “tax cuts for the rich.” And, if Harris and the Democrats are elected, they will let these tax-saving provisions expire, leading to an increase in taxes for ALL taxpayers, especially hurting lower-and-middle class Americans.
Kamala Harris and the Democrats are blatantly lying. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service published the stats relating to the TCJA for the first year after it took effect. The middle-and lower-class Americans received the largest percentage of the tax cuts, 16%-to-26% for those making $15,000-to-$50,000, while those making $500,000 or more received only 9%. Trump’s tax cuts were not just “tax cuts for the rich.” The lower-and-middle classes received the greater percentage benefit of the Trump tax cuts!
The tax cuts made in the 1920s, and under the John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush and Donald J. Trump administrations led to rising output, rising employment, rising incomes, and rising tax revenues for the government. In addition, the people in the higher income brackets paid a larger total amount of taxes and a higher percentage of all taxes.
Unlike the Democrats, even the ancient Chinese understood that reducing taxes increases revenue to the Treasury. Grand Chancellor Li Si (246 to 208 BC) advised Emperor Qin Shi Huang of the Qin Dynasty that lowering taxes would stimulate economic activity, thereby increasing overall revenue. The emperor needed more revenue to tackle his ambitious projects, including the construction of the Great Wall of China and the Terracotta Army.
It's a proven fact that more money will flow into the U.S. Treasury when taxes are lowered on business and investment capital, period! Dr. Sowell concluded:
“To the extent that the American economy has changed since the time of Andrew Mellon, it has changed in ways that make it even easier for wealthy investors to escape high tax rates. A globalized economy makes overseas investments a readily available alternative to buying tax-exempt bonds domestically. Even if the domestic tax rate is not ‘high’ by historic standards, what matters now is whether it is high compared to tax rates in other countries to which large sums of money can be readily sent electronically. Meanwhile, unemployed workers cannot nearly so readily relocate to other countries to take jobs created there by American investments fleeing higher tax rates at home.”
During the Obama-Biden Administration, many large corporations headquartered in the United States relocated overseas to places like Ireland with a corporate tax rate of 12.5%. Multinationals headquartered in Ireland pay an effective tax rate between 2.2% and 4.5% because of Ireland’s extensive global bilateral tax treaties. Other large international corporations headquartered in the United States left their money offshore rather than bring it back subject to U.S. taxation. President Trump’s TCJA of 2017 stopped the exodus and made it beneficial for large corporations to bring their money back home.
BEWARE: If an elected politician wants to tax corporations, he wants to TAX YOU assuming and hoping that you lack understanding. Vote these hypocrites out-of-office! On November 5, 2024, vote for President Trump and the Republicans. ALL the ignorant or lying Democrats, who support raising taxes and regulating every aspect of our daily lives, MUST BE DEFEATED.
Dum Spiro Spero—While I breathe, I hope.
Slàinte mhath,
Robert (Mike) G. Beard Jr., C.P.A., C.G.M.A., J.D., LL.M.