A Minimalist Approach to Corporate Income Taxation

Abstract

An ever-shrinking hallmark of our federal income tax system is the apparent double taxation of some, but not all, business income. That is, some business income ultimately flows to the human shareholders of C corporations. These corporations pay corporate income tax on the taxable income they generate. Then, as and when such corporations distribute their after-corporate-income-tax income to their human shareholders (or equivalently, as and when their human shareholders sell their shares in such corporations), the human shareholders pay individual income tax on the amounts so distributed (or equivalently, on their capital gains).