Companies Pass on Higher Taxes to the Consumer

[Apoi_Viitor]

"If you raise taxes on corporations, they will simply pass those on to the consumer by way of increased prices for goods."

How would you respond to this?

[Sensible Socialist]

I'd use the capitalist's logic against them. If some corporations raised prices, due to the market, another firm would lower their prices in order to bring in more business. After all, corporate taxes aren't going to put any firms out of business, so one of them would make the smart move to keep their prices lower than the competition. If the market always works things out, it will work out higher corporate taxes.

See the look on their faces when you use their precious market to beat them down. :laugh:

[GPDP]

I prefer to just point it out as a failure of capitalism. If a corporation raises prices, shouldn't that make the corporation the bad guy here? Why shill for them in that case? If they don't wanna pay their share in higher taxes, they should be fucking nationalized.

Obviously it won't work on the libertarians who are religiously dead set on giving up all their privileges so corporations can make a quick buck, but that should be enough for most people.

[thesadmafioso]

All the more reason to separate them from that power. As the corporation is an organ of the capitalistic system, it is naturally going to be one set on the generate of the most amount of profit in the shortest period of time. When presented with hindrances to this intent in the form of mild taxation they will not hesitate to make the worker bear the burden for them so as to preserve their own excessive gains.

There is really no sense to this and it just makes there economic role even more readily apparent to the proletariat when they engage in this sort of activity; it merely provides us with yet another argument to wield against capitalism.

[Kotze]

It should be noted that there is already a gap between mainstream pundits and mainstream economists.

The explanation from mainstream economics how much taxes go into rising prices it that it depends on the degree of monopoly: Where there are low barriers to entry and the producers are just getting by, so that a rise in taxes without rising prices would mean going out of business, the customers will have to share a big part of the burden. A private enterprise that is a monopoly sets a high price regardless of whether it is taxed highly or not, so when you lower the tax on such a company that doesn't translate into lower prices.

When somebody believes higher taxes go directly and fully into higher prices, it might be a good idea to ask that person how often they have had the experience of lowering taxes leading to lower prices.

[Jimmie Higgins]

"If you raise taxes on corporations, they will simply pass those on to the consumer by way of increased prices for goods."

How would you respond to this?
That this is usually just a stick that corporations use to try and intimidate people into not supporting taxes on businesses. They also say that if you raise taxes jobs will move away, but if you don't have tax revenue to have good roads and ports and electrical and other infrastructure, jobs will go away anyway, so the whole argument is circular and basically an attempt to make workers pay for the collective interests of capital.

But there's more truth to this argument than its false cousin that higher wages make prices go up... after-all prices have been going up and outpacing wages for quite some time now. I think capitalism wants taxes because it allows them to equally pay for common things rather than have to hire their own personal police to stop strikes and whatnot.

[jake williams]

There's actually a whole branch of economics that has to do with tax incidence - who is going to bear the effects of different taxes. Taxes on corporate profits are not at all the same as sales taxes in terms of who they effect, in terms of who comes home with less at the end of the day.

I agree though that, insofar as capitalists always try to make workers bear the burden of any taxes, of course we should be replacing capitalism as an economic system - we should be abolishing capitalism for other reasons. But this is not to say that some taxes will not be born more by capitalists than by workers, and we should in fact strive, when we can, to make this the case.

[Q]

"Well, in that case we should just end this whole farce of pumping around money for the sake of making more profit".

[gendoikari]

"If you raise taxes on corporations, they will simply pass those on to the consumer by way of increased prices for goods."

How would you respond to this?

um.... higher prices mean higher profit, higher profit means higher taxes. Course they'd still be making more if the same number of product was bought but not everything is elastic like that. This would be true for staples but nothing that's not essential. course there's always the good ol' stand by if everyone's charging too much for food the guy with the grocery store gets shot.

[Arlekino]

When I going to shop supermarket Tesco fuck I always careful what I put into basket the prices up and up well seems soon poor people only we eat bread and butter. So fuck capitalist they eating all us in life. I wish big strikes against prices.

[RadioRaheem84]

I prefer to just point it out as a failure of capitalism. If a corporation raises prices, shouldn't that make the corporation the bad guy here? Why shill for them in that case? If they don't wanna pay their share in higher taxes, they should be fucking nationalized.

Obviously it won't work on the libertarians who are religiously dead set on giving up all their privileges so corporations can make a quick buck, but that should be enough for most people.

Chomsky raised this very point when he translated what a politician really means when he says a city cannot raise corporate taxes for risk of hurting jobs; he means you're not in power, corporations are. A politician is asking public power to step aside for public tyranny.

9 times out of ten, the libertarian will side with the corporation and call it liberty.