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It is generally accepted by financial professionals with a particular political and ideological outlook on the tax system.

You do some work, you earn income, which presumably (or hopefully) exceeds your perception of the cost of doing the work to you. You pay taxes on that. You then give the money to some third party, as a gift, for goods & services, to repay a debt, or whatever reason. Subject to the stipulations of the tax code, the recipient pays taxes on whatever they receive (e.g. for gifts there is a threshold, for debts they will pay tax only on the interest received etc. etc.). Nobody calls this double taxation.

A corporation does what it does, earns income, which hopefully exceeds the cost of doing whatever it is that it does. They pay taxes on that. They then give the money to some third party, as a dividend or bond repayment or whatever other reason. Subject to the stipulations of the tax code, the recipient pays taxes on whatever they receive. Some people try to call this double taxation.

Trying to dress this up with concepts like "the shareholders receive the profit, but taxes have already been paid on that" is just missing the point entirely: our tax system taxes money when it moves, not based on how it is labelled (at least when it works as intended).



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