That's true in principle, but many of the shareholders of US corporations never pay those taxes in practice, either because they're not US residents or because they avoid capital gains taxes through tax-advantaged accounts, trusts, non-US shell corporations and SPVs, etc.
To preempt one likely response to this: no, it's not appropriate for a non-US-resident shareholder of Amazon to not pay any US tax on their share of Amazon's pre-tax profit. Amazon is leveraging US-taxpayer-funded resources, including roads, the electrical grid, the military (which protects Amazon's buildings and shipping routes), arguably the educational system, etc. to generate profit, and anyone with a claim to a portion of that profit should have to help pay for those resources.
First of all, if you want foreigners to pay U.S. income taxes when they invest capital in the U.S., I have to ask, why do we want to discourage foreign investment in the US? Amazon pays sales/gas taxes for much of what you mentioned, and it's U.S. investors, who also pay income and property taxes for the rest.
Second of all, U.S. citizens absolutely do pay taxes on investment earnings. If you hold stocks in a tax deferred IRA, you pay your taxes when you take distributions and at full income tax rates, no capital gains or dividend tax breaks. That's true of any tax deferred account.
Anyone "shielding" taxes in a "non-US shell corporation" is committing tax fraud.
The best solution to that is to eliminate the extra layers of taxes on investing in the U.S, in one way by eliminating corporate income taxes or allowing corporations to deduct dividends as expenses. Then the benefits of hiding your investment earnings become far less, and not proportionate to the risks.
Comments
That's true in principle, but many of the shareholders of US corporations never pay those taxes in practice, either because they're not US residents or because they avoid capital gains taxes through tax-advantaged accounts, trusts, non-US shell corporations and SPVs, etc.
To preempt one likely response to this: no, it's not appropriate for a non-US-resident shareholder of Amazon to not pay any US tax on their share of Amazon's pre-tax profit. Amazon is leveraging US-taxpayer-funded resources, including roads, the electrical grid, the military (which protects Amazon's buildings and shipping routes), arguably the educational system, etc. to generate profit, and anyone with a claim to a portion of that profit should have to help pay for those resources.
First of all, if you want foreigners to pay U.S. income taxes when they invest capital in the U.S., I have to ask, why do we want to discourage foreign investment in the US? Amazon pays sales/gas taxes for much of what you mentioned, and it's U.S. investors, who also pay income and property taxes for the rest.
Second of all, U.S. citizens absolutely do pay taxes on investment earnings. If you hold stocks in a tax deferred IRA, you pay your taxes when you take distributions and at full income tax rates, no capital gains or dividend tax breaks. That's true of any tax deferred account.
Anyone "shielding" taxes in a "non-US shell corporation" is committing tax fraud.
The best solution to that is to eliminate the extra layers of taxes on investing in the U.S, in one way by eliminating corporate income taxes or allowing corporations to deduct dividends as expenses. Then the benefits of hiding your investment earnings become far less, and not proportionate to the risks.