> Why is "double-taxation" bad? It's not that double-taxation is bad but people are claiming that corporate profits aren't taxed or are taxed at very low rates

> Why is "double-taxation" bad? It's not that double-taxation is bad but people are claiming that corporate profits aren't taxed or are taxed at very low rates (I've heard people use numbers like 5%) and so need to be taxed more on general fairness grounds. Pointing out that they are already taxed negates that argument. In general, all "fairness" arguments (this tax is "bad") to taxation are quite awful, because they tend to be made by people who have no idea of what the actual incidence of taxation is. (Really most fairness arguments of any kind are awful and suffer from similar problems about people not understanding the consequences of their proposals and thus not being qualified to decide on what is fair and what is not). For example the same people enthusiastically argue for taxes on corporations but not sales taxes, when these have the same incidendence and thus are the same tax. The difference is primarily one of shifting the burden of who fills out the paperwork and a lot of marketing. And that tendency to view taxation on grounds of fairness (e.g. emotion) rather than economic concerns (the ultimate cost of the tax) is what opens the door to massive tweaks of the tax code by various lobbyists. A simpler tax code that treated all sources of income in the same way and did not distinguish between expenditures would be a much better system than we have now. No tax deductions for any purpose and no separate treatment of wage or capital income, or inheritance income, etc. Just put it all into one pile and apply the tax rate for that pile. Similarly consolidate all corporate and sales taxes together into a single VAT that does not distinguish by industry or product type. Then if the government wants to give money for fab construction (a foolish policy, IMO) they can do that directly. It would be great if we had taboos against tweaking the tax code entirely.