Why the corporate tax bracket should go back to 52%?

Most Americans have a radically incomplete understanding of how taxes work.

As a result, changes to the tax code made by Republicans in the years since the Reagan Revolution have done real damage both to the American economy, working class people, and to the vibrancy and vitality of our towns and communities.

Just like the debates around raising personal income taxes are demagogued by rich people in their shills,

there's a world of misinformation around the issue of raising corporate income taxes.

Most of these myths are promoted by the morbidly rich and exploit the fact that only a tiny fraction of Americans have ever run a business or taking a business course in college and so most Americans don't have a clue how corporate income taxes work.

They think that if you tax corporations, those corporations will both pay and then pass that tax along as higher prices.

That's only rarely true because there are so many good things that corporations can do that will

reduce or eliminate their taxes altogether.

They also think that taxing corporate profits somehow cripples or weakens them.

In fact, it does the opposite.

It strengthens and expands companies because of the positive behaviors that the threat of taxation provokes.

For example, back in the early 1970s before Reagan, the late Terry O'Connor and I owned

a small herbal tea, potpourri and smoking

mixture company that was doing very well. We had about a dozen employees who were

buying herbs by the ton, mostly from Eastern Europe and selling our packaged

herbal products nationwide. We were making good money

for a couple of guys in the early 20s. At the time the top income tax rate for a corporation

was 48 percent, down from 52.8% in 1969 on profits over $25,000 and as we approached the years

end we were showing what would be a profit well in excess of that.

My dad who did the bookkeeping for the small tool and dye shop where he'd worked since

1957 was our business mentor and taught Terry Louise and me double entry bookkeeping.

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