Corporations and Government

This contains some serious absurdity.

The very idea that anyone other than the consumer pays the tax is ridiculous on it's face.  Taxes are a cost of doing business.  The cost of doing business is always passed on to the consumer.  If it is not, the business goes bankrupt.  The author claims that all economists reject this idea.  They might, but they're wrong.  He uses the example that if a "corporation" raises prices due to increated corporate tax, a small company will undercut them.  That is true until there is no where to go.

(Corporations) are legal entities that exist only because governments permit them to and are artificial vehicles through which sales, wages and profits flow.  I submit this is one of the greater absurdities in the column.  Corporations are not "allowed" by government.  Their incorporation provides them with certain tax treatment, but they are not "allowed". 

People will do business with each other, regardless of what government does or does not allow.  It is either business done in the open or "underground".  you have something I want or need and rather than take it from you by force, it is much more simple to trade for it.  I can trade my labor to my employer for something of value (money), then give you that money for something you have that I want.  We both retreat alive and have something of value that we did not have before.  What I provide you can be anything agreed upon as having a value equivalent to that which you are supplying me.  We can pay the government for the "privledge" of doing business (taxes) or we can be far enough underground to avoid them.