The best part is when they say us paying taxes on our wages counts as their taxable contributions to society.
All taxes, tariffs, wages, insurance, fees, bribes and whatever else a company pays is all passed onto the consumer.
Regarding corporate tax vs income tax, I’d be very curious what the total corporate $revenue vs $payrolls looks like for context
Corporate income tax is a deception.
At the end of the day, there are people who are going to bear the burden of the tax. Is it going to be investors? Or are they going to push it off onto consumers with higher prices? Or employees with lower wages? It depends on the elasticity of demand in a given industry and the specialization of the workforce. But it’s deceptive because people tend to think it’s not *them* bearing the tax, when very often they’re paying higher prices and getting lower wages because of corporate taxes.
At the end of the day, if we want to tax investors we should make it a capital gains tax. If we want to tax employees we should make it an income tax. If we want to tax customers we should make it a sales tax. But we should be honest about what class of people we’re burdening the tax with rather than pretending the burden is going to be held by non-people.
Yes and LLCs, S-corps and other types of companies pay *zero* tax. Individual income tax (including FICA) is where the bulk of taxation happens, as your diagram illustrates. All corporate profits will eventually either be reinvested or distributed to shareholders (and then taxed *again* as individual income), so it works out ok in the end.
Probably, though income tax often is an extension of croporate tax.
Your local businesses don’t pay coporate, so much as the owner pays individual income taxes. Likewise gains from ownership and investment flows are income taxes.
This is data without a way to conceptualize/apply who, or what, it represents. Hard to attach a meaning beyond the literal data like your title tries to.
This is probably true in most countries. Taxing individuals will always make more money than taxing corporations just because of the massive difference in numbers.
This clarifies to me the need for a wealth tax, including on owners of shares of corporations. Companies are just groups of people working together, owned by shareholders. It never made sense to me why the company itself should be taxed separately from the owners. Just tax the owners once! Don’t punish people for working together. I believe that a wealth tax could be combined with completely eliminating corporate income tax. Given a wealth of roughly $50 trillion, a wealth tax of just 2% could enable the complete elimination of corporate income tax as well as make a dent in the deficit. This would both reduce the crazy level of inequality (feudal levels at the moment) as well as make it easier for businesses to grow in the USA. Win win?
amazing how little estate and gift tax there is
Guess that’s why America is being driven to oligarchy
The majority of businesses (95%) are pass-through entities that get taxed on the owner’s individual return. So the data is a bit misleading.
US labour incomes make up 60% of GDP; corporate incomes make up 12% of GDP. So this is broadly to be expected.
Buddy I’m curious about who you think own corporations. Aliens?
Corporations are owned by people who pay taxes. Corporate profits are used to pay these people. Taxing the corporations and then the owners again would not be right.
It’s also much easier for corporations to avoid paying taxes directly through a lot of different write offs that aren’t available to individuals
Tons of companies in the US are S-corps (taxed at individual level). This data is not surprising.
There’s no such thing as corporations paying taxes. All the taxes are paid by the consumers. Corporate taxation is just obfuscation.
Personal income was also 6x higher than corporate profits in 2024
Corporations pay 20% income tax and their investors pay 20% capital gain tax but investors count as “individuals” although the true source of their incomes come from corporations.
Small businesses also count as “individual” as they are passthrough.
Without proper contexts, this chart is meaningless and misleading.
This is by design. First, you have certain tax structures (LLC, S-corps, etc…) which pass through the taxable income to the taxpayer, these entities do not pay tax themselves. You want to encourage businesses to invest in the business itself to continue hiring people and pass that tax burden to the individual.
If individual income tax rates were sufficiently progressive, the low corporate income tax rates might be fine.
Corporate tax should be 0. The difference can be made up with income tax and capital gains tax.
You should have been known that
Where do individuals get their money?
Mitt Romney was famously mocked for saying corporations are people, but that is the reality: a corporation is nothing but a collective of people pooling money for a business. People still pay individual taxes on their income and on their gains from corporate investment. Taxing the corporation significantly more on top of that would be ridiculous.
Hate them all you want; they’re the ones making your investments (401k, IRA, mutual fund, whatever) grow for you. I guess people like taxing themselves multiple times.
That’s just to service the deficit!? a.k.a. the interest payable each year.
So where’s his tariffs?
Income tax includes a lot of forms of business tax as well, including but not limited to capital gains from actually profiting on investments.
Also, just conceptually, the normal income tax burden falls partially on corporations as well. If you need net $35,000 as a bare minimum to even survive in most cities, companies have to pay more or else they will not have any employees
![[OC] TIL: Individuals in US pay ~5x more Tax than Corporations 🤯](https://www.europesays.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/kny8fc4n78kf1-1080x1024.png)
29 comments
Wow, the deficit seems to pay a lot in taxes
The best part is when they say us paying taxes on our wages counts as their taxable contributions to society.
All taxes, tariffs, wages, insurance, fees, bribes and whatever else a company pays is all passed onto the consumer.
Regarding corporate tax vs income tax, I’d be very curious what the total corporate $revenue vs $payrolls looks like for context
Corporate income tax is a deception.
At the end of the day, there are people who are going to bear the burden of the tax. Is it going to be investors? Or are they going to push it off onto consumers with higher prices? Or employees with lower wages? It depends on the elasticity of demand in a given industry and the specialization of the workforce. But it’s deceptive because people tend to think it’s not *them* bearing the tax, when very often they’re paying higher prices and getting lower wages because of corporate taxes.
At the end of the day, if we want to tax investors we should make it a capital gains tax. If we want to tax employees we should make it an income tax. If we want to tax customers we should make it a sales tax. But we should be honest about what class of people we’re burdening the tax with rather than pretending the burden is going to be held by non-people.
Yes and LLCs, S-corps and other types of companies pay *zero* tax. Individual income tax (including FICA) is where the bulk of taxation happens, as your diagram illustrates. All corporate profits will eventually either be reinvested or distributed to shareholders (and then taxed *again* as individual income), so it works out ok in the end.
Probably, though income tax often is an extension of croporate tax.
Your local businesses don’t pay coporate, so much as the owner pays individual income taxes. Likewise gains from ownership and investment flows are income taxes.
This is data without a way to conceptualize/apply who, or what, it represents. Hard to attach a meaning beyond the literal data like your title tries to.
This is probably true in most countries. Taxing individuals will always make more money than taxing corporations just because of the massive difference in numbers.
This clarifies to me the need for a wealth tax, including on owners of shares of corporations. Companies are just groups of people working together, owned by shareholders. It never made sense to me why the company itself should be taxed separately from the owners. Just tax the owners once! Don’t punish people for working together. I believe that a wealth tax could be combined with completely eliminating corporate income tax. Given a wealth of roughly $50 trillion, a wealth tax of just 2% could enable the complete elimination of corporate income tax as well as make a dent in the deficit. This would both reduce the crazy level of inequality (feudal levels at the moment) as well as make it easier for businesses to grow in the USA. Win win?
amazing how little estate and gift tax there is
Guess that’s why America is being driven to oligarchy
The majority of businesses (95%) are pass-through entities that get taxed on the owner’s individual return. So the data is a bit misleading.
US labour incomes make up 60% of GDP; corporate incomes make up 12% of GDP. So this is broadly to be expected.
Buddy I’m curious about who you think own corporations. Aliens?
Corporations are owned by people who pay taxes. Corporate profits are used to pay these people. Taxing the corporations and then the owners again would not be right.
It’s also much easier for corporations to avoid paying taxes directly through a lot of different write offs that aren’t available to individuals
Crazy how the deficit be paying more taxes.
IRS data would help you interpret the tax sources: [https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-number-of-returns-filed-by-type-of-return-and-state-and-fiscal-year-irs-data-book-table-3](https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-number-of-returns-filed-by-type-of-return-and-state-and-fiscal-year-irs-data-book-table-3)
This Sankey diagram shows revenue and spending so you can see the full lifecycle of a dollar: [https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everything-you-want-to-know-about-government-spending/](https://usafacts.org/articles/this-chart-tells-you-everything-you-want-to-know-about-government-spending/)
Tons of companies in the US are S-corps (taxed at individual level). This data is not surprising.
There’s no such thing as corporations paying taxes. All the taxes are paid by the consumers. Corporate taxation is just obfuscation.
Personal income was also 6x higher than corporate profits in 2024
Corporations pay 20% income tax and their investors pay 20% capital gain tax but investors count as “individuals” although the true source of their incomes come from corporations.
Small businesses also count as “individual” as they are passthrough.
Without proper contexts, this chart is meaningless and misleading.
This is by design. First, you have certain tax structures (LLC, S-corps, etc…) which pass through the taxable income to the taxpayer, these entities do not pay tax themselves. You want to encourage businesses to invest in the business itself to continue hiring people and pass that tax burden to the individual.
If individual income tax rates were sufficiently progressive, the low corporate income tax rates might be fine.
Corporate tax should be 0. The difference can be made up with income tax and capital gains tax.
You should have been known that
Where do individuals get their money?
Mitt Romney was famously mocked for saying corporations are people, but that is the reality: a corporation is nothing but a collective of people pooling money for a business. People still pay individual taxes on their income and on their gains from corporate investment. Taxing the corporation significantly more on top of that would be ridiculous.
Hate them all you want; they’re the ones making your investments (401k, IRA, mutual fund, whatever) grow for you. I guess people like taxing themselves multiple times.
That’s just to service the deficit!? a.k.a. the interest payable each year.
So where’s his tariffs?
Income tax includes a lot of forms of business tax as well, including but not limited to capital gains from actually profiting on investments.
Also, just conceptually, the normal income tax burden falls partially on corporations as well. If you need net $35,000 as a bare minimum to even survive in most cities, companies have to pay more or else they will not have any employees
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