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Many Voices, One Freedom: United in the 1st Amendment

March 28, 2024

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Another Zombie Progressive Policy that won’t die: increased business taxes. Emperor Palpatine, excuse me, Emperor Joe now proposes higher business taxes. According to Marketwatch, his Imperial Bidenship proposes increasing corporate taxes up to 28%. (Trump and a Republican Congress had reduced them from 35% to 21%.)

Watch Us “Tax Businesses” While We Actually Tax You

In this cultural climate of crying “misinformation,” I will kick it up a notch. I cry, canard! The notion of “business taxes” is a canard and a lie. It is the old con-man / magician’s trick of misdirection. “Watch the colorful silk kerchief. I wave around with my right hand while I pick your pocket with my left hand.” “Watch us tax businesses while we actually tax you.” We have swallowed the lie of a “business tax” ever since 1909, when the 16th Amendment to the Constitution was ratified (BIG mistake).

A Business Tax = A Tax on You and Me

Why do I say business taxes are a lie? Because in the business accounting world, taxes are a cost of doing business. All costs of doing business are built into the price of the product or service sold. Wages, cost of raw materials, cost of heating the factory, cost of electricity for the office, etc., etc. are all added up and divided by the number of products produced for sale. Add a percentage of the profit margin, and you get the price of the product or service that you and I pay.

So, what happens when corporate taxes rise by 7%? That $2 loaf of bread becomes $2.14. That $2.70 gallon of gas becomes $2.88. That $1.50 pair of socks becomes $1.60. The corporation isn’t paying. You and I are paying. 

All while claiming, “We didn’t raise your taxes; we raised taxes on those greedy businessmen!” It is a trick. A lie. A way of camouflaging and hiding the fact that Congress has just raised YOUR taxes. The tax is hidden in the price of the product.

Remember the Boston Tea Party?

Why hide the tax on you? Because when you can see a direct link between a higher price and the higher tax, you will be angry. Remember the Boston Tea Party? Why were the colonists upset? Because taxing the tea meant the colonists paid more for their cup of tea. The British Parliament attempted to hide the tax by taxing the tea producers, who passed it on to consumers. Our ancestors were smart enough to realize that this was a tax on them, tea consumers, not the tea producer businesses. 

Here’s How the Trick Works

When you buy $100 in products and look at your sales receipt and see the tax you pay goes from $7 (state sales tax) to $14 (state + federal tax), you might write your congressman. You might even decide to back another candidate at the next election. BUT, when you buy products now priced at $107, you don’t see a separate tax line item on the sales receipt. You think, “Oh well, inflation.” That’s how the trick works. You don’t realize the increased price is actually an increased tax. 

TANSTAAFL

The libertarian science fiction author Robert Heinlein popularized the acronym TANSTAAFL. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. Big city bars in the 1930s offered “free lunches” in order to entice customers in to buy beer and other drinks. Guess what? The price of the lunch was embedded in the price of the beer. You paid for the lunch. The practice continues today in Las Vegas, where casinos offer cheap meals to entice you into gambling, where you usually lose more money than the meal would have cost.

Likewise, the corporate tax is touted as “a tax you don’t have to pay.” And Generous Joe might give you a freebie: an Obamaphone, cancel your student loan debt, and fund the bankrupt pension plans of California and New York State Government employees. Freebies! Paid for by those evil big corporations. (Not!)

“There’s a sucker born every minute,” circus showman P.T. Barnum allegedly said. Don’t be a sucker. Don’t believe the politician’s shell games, canards, and lies. Think for yourself. You worked hard for your money. You may not be able to prevent the politicians from taking your money from you, but you don’t have to believe their lies. Tell the truth: Uncle Joe didn’t tax corporations; he just taxed you!

MANY VOICES, ONE FREEDOM: UNITED IN THE 1ST AMENDMENT

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