One quite popular and compelling family of ethical theories is utilitarianism, wherein "ethical" roughly means "resulting in the greatest happiness and well-bei

One quite popular and compelling family of ethical theories is utilitarianism, wherein "ethical" roughly means "resulting in the greatest happiness and well-being for all". Taxes and the public infrastructure and spending they support are clearly tied up in the well-being of most if not all in society. Taxes paid or not paid by corporations presumably impacts prices to customers, returns to investors, the success, failure or extent of public programs, and future decisions of taxes levied against individuals. How are taxes _not_ a thicket of ethical issues? However, I think a really ambiguous question is whether we should actually care about _corporate_ taxes over questions like treating capital gains income on the same footing as wage income. One expects that when corporations don't pay taxes, their shareholders eventually reap those savings as capital gains income ... so isn't it eventually taxed? I'm assuming here that only large multinationals engage in this sort of scheme; if there were a whole economy among rich individuals who always push their transactions through Bermudan-Irish shell companies, then perhaps it might never get taxed at any rate?