Do you think corporations just absorb taxes? If so, then I have some swampland to sell you. Corporations compute taxes into the cost of doing business, just like they factor in labor, materials, energy costs, etc. Taxes are just one more factor in the price of the products we buy. The ones who truly pay corporate taxes are the people who buy the corporation's products.

Some economists estimate that the costs of regulatory compliance (think EPA and OSHA) and corporate taxes are as high as 40% of the cost of everything we buy.

Watching a home being built is a real education in how the system works. My wife and I have went through this educational experience twice in the 1990s. Homes are built by contractors (corporations), normally with several subcontractors doing specific tasks like framing, electrical, plumbing, dry wall, etc. Most of these subcontractors are small businesses who pay taxes on their income. As a result, they factor in those taxes into the costs of their services. The main contractor adds up all of these subcontractor charges, factors in a roughly 20-25% profit for themselves, and presents the bill to the new homeowner. The homeowner is charged property tax based on the home's value, which of course is partially composed of taxes. In effect, he's being taxed on taxes.

The same thing applies to other products, be they bread or cars. Each person along the product's food chain has his own expenses, and (with the exception of the farmer who has little control over commodity prices), passes these costs on to the next person in the chain. Think of all the thousands of parts in a typical car and think of how they're made, from the miners through the steel mills through the subcontractors for everything from bolts to engine blocks to the final manufacturer. The end result is always the same - the consumer pays for all of the costs including taxes on the item's cost and taxes are a big portion of the item's cost. To think otherwise is to be terribly naive about economics.