In his commentary in The Wall Street Journal in 2010, Michael Boskin went over the disadvantages in levying an income tax on corporations. Within his argument, he observes, “Of course, the corporation is a legal entity; only people pay taxes.”[1] In so doing, he transcended, if only for a moment, his own approach that was oriented simply to giving the pros and cons of corporate taxation. His observation is significant, and it gives us a launching pad of sorts by which we can approach the corporate income tax as a itself as a concept, rather than simply assessing its utility. In short, corporate taxation is an oxymoron if only humans pay tax. In fact, we can conclude from Boskin's remark that the doctrine that corporations are legal persons has been incorrectly construed.
The full essay is at "A Critique of the Corporate Legal Persons Doctrine."
1. Michael Boskin, "Time to Junk the Corporate Tax," The Wall Street Journal, May 6, 2010.
