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Comment by juskrey | Hacker News Reader

Why no one ever mentions how much companies effectively contribute to various salary and employees income taxes? Corporate tax is practically nothing.

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Solid point, though those on here that don’t run businesses probably don’t get the scope of what companies pay that those big ones aren’t able to avoid.

> employees income taxes?

that's the employee's contribution, not the company's.

Right, but if the company didn't create the job, the income tax collected would be zero.

I'm not saying the income tax collected is purely coming from the company, but take Amazon for example - their economic activity creates jobs which pay salaries that are taxed.

> their economic activity creates jobs

yes, but the employee would've gotten another job else where, so it's _not_ the company that's creating the taxation benefit! They therefore, should not be given the benefit of attributing that taxation (for PR purposes)!

The company did make some investment which led to the job - but they did said investment for their own benefit, not to create more jobs for which taxation can be levied.

They would have gotten a job elsewhere? But that’s not always the case. Sometimes there is no other job.

Well, if my employer is a small company, they pay my additional taxes plus their own. So, why big companies should have an edge in front of the small ones?

Companies that pay billions in taxes also contribute. Why let a handful get away with it?

Wrong incentives. When basing on salary/personal income taxes, government is interested to raise everyone's income less inflation if it wants more taxes (let's skip 20th century aberrations like > 90% income taxes for now). Corporate tax is an opaque mechanism with unknown corrupt incentives, effectively turns into blackmailing of business and IMO should be dropped whatsoever. Many countries are adopting zero corporate tax (having dividend and salary taxes instead).

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