My understanding of the economics (via popular-press reporting [1,2]) is that corporate taxes are effectively paid by workers and shareholders. In the case of

My understanding of the economics (via popular-press reporting [1,2]) is that corporate taxes are effectively paid by workers and shareholders. In the case of Apple, many employees are high-income individuals. One way to tax them is to raise Apple's effective tax rate, by closing loopholes. Another would to move these individuals to a higher bracket, and tax them directly on income. The latter would allow the tax system to target only those employees who actually are high-income individuals. I don't know how that plays on Hacker News, but it doesn't seem to be politically feasible. Apple's individual investors are probably mostly high-net-worth individuals. (Apple might have more non-rich investors than a blue chip like GE does. I know quite a few middle class individuals whose only outside of funds are in APPL or TSLA. They have brand loyalty even if [with TSLA] they don't own the product. It's like playing fantasy football.) (The individual investors with the greatest number of shares are super-high-net-worth, of course[3].) To a progressive, it seems fair to tax them more, which taxing Apple effectively does. Those individuals aren't going to pay taxes on stock appreciation unless the capital gains exemption is rolled back. Now that Apple is paying dividends instead of just appreciating, raising the income bracket could be an alternative to closing the loophole. My understanding is that institutional investors in general are largely funds, endowments, and pensions. Apple seems to be mostly funds[4]. Funds are probably held by middle and middle-upper class individuals with mutuals or indices in their portfolios. (The poor don't own stocks. The rich own them directly.) The loophole benefits them. [Big disclaimer: I'm a novice in how to interpret this, and I wouldn't be surprised to be wrong.] [1] "Who Pays the Corporate Income Tax", Bruce Bartlett, New York Times, Feb 19, 2013. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/who-pays-the-corporate-income-tax/?_r=0 https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/19/who-pays-the-c... [2] "Who Ultimately Pays the Corporate Income Tax?", Uwe E. Reinhardt (Economics @ Princeton), New York Times, July 23, 2010. https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/who-ultimately-pays-the-corporate-income-tax/ https://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/23/who-ultimately... [3] "Top Apple Shareholders for 2017", John Edwards, Investopedia, October 6, 2017. http://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/120115/top-5-apple-shareholders.asp http://www.investopedia.com/articles/markets/120115/top-5-ap... [4] "Apple Inc. Institutional Ownership", NASDAQ. http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl/institutional-holdings http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl/institutional-holdings