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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jeff Hayden who wrote (136835)	4/17/2010 8:50:27 PM
From: Paul Smith	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543511

...adjust the stockholder's capital gains taxes back where they should be. 80 or 90% sounds about right. Not sure I follow - why should capital gains taxes be higher than income taxes?

To: Jeff Hayden who wrote (136835)	4/18/2010 8:36:43 PM
From: Cogito	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 543511

>>You might be right there. take the taxes away from the corporations and adjust the stockholder's capital gains taxes back where they should be. 80 or 90% sounds about right.<< I'm sure you weren't serious about this proposal, but really, the question of whether or not corporations should be taxed, and if so how much, has nothing to do with the question of capital gains taxes. The "double taxation" issue comes up when corporate shareholders are taxed on the dividends they receive from the corporation. The argument is that the corporation has already paid taxes, so when the dividend income is taxed, the shareholders have, in effect, been taxed twice on the same earnings. But most corporations don't pay dividends. Shareholders in Apple, Inc., for example, have never seen a dime in dividends. So when Apple, Inc., pays taxes on corporate earnings, those earnings are taxed only once. I'm only using Apple as an example, of course. If I buy stock in Apple and then sell the shares later for a profit, my gains have nothing to do with corporate earnings, except to the extent that the share price may have appreciated in recognition of those earnings. The company doesn't provide my profit from its own earnings, so if I am taxed on my gains, once again, the money is taxed only a single time. I don't see why corporations shouldn't pay taxes, given that they benefit from services provided by the government. It has nothing to do with any rights they have or haven't got. Likewise, I don't see why people shouldn't pay taxes on capital gains. If we're going to tax income, it seems as reasonable to tax the income generated by capital as it does to tax the income generated by personal labor.