Originally Posted by
MEMA300
If you or the oil companies did not have to pay taxes, you would not lower your prices. The market has already shown it can pay what you are charging. Your profits would just go up. Prices rarely lower, even when costs decrease(except airline tickets). Have items that used to be more expensively made in the u.s. and are now made cheaply in china decreased in price to the consumer? I think not.
Read what I wrote again
.
I said if I did not pay taxes, my hourly rate would be less. I didn't say anything about lowering my rates if I magically started not having to pay taxes.
That being said, the point of my post was that WE as consumers effectively pay the tax on corporations. It's built into their prices.
I also disagree with you about lowering costs, "prices never lower" are you kidding? A "desktop" computer in the 60's was in the millions of dollars, now it's $600. Technology that came out 5 years ago goes for pennies on the dollar on eBay. Gas prices have gone up and down over the course of time. Some things don't go down because they are indexed with inflation. Some things like cars cost much more today than they were in the 50's but have made huge leaps in safety and features such as Airbags, ABS, GPS navigation etc, you can't compare the two. Rest assured if taxes went away those items would go down.
Taxes are also effective at stopping corporations from pursuing certain investments. Canada is a prime example, they are taxing the #### out of oil up the profits after taxes just don't make it worth it.