The inestimable Martin Wolf, in today’s Financial Times, reminds us that businesses do not actually pay taxes.
The publicly available part says:
Gordon Brown ?failed to ease back on growth in public
sector spending and relied instead on yet more government borrowing and
more tax on business.? That was the reaction of the UK?s CBI employers?
body to Monday?s pre-Budget report. The last bit of this response is
mistaken. The UK chancellor of the exchequer did not tax ?business?. He
is taxing the public as a whole. Worse, he taxes it badly and so
damages the economy on which everybody depends.That is what
the CBI should be saying. If it did, it would help dispose of two
dangerously widespread myths: first, that taxes on business are not burdens on the public and, second, that the interests of business are different from, or even opposed to, those of the public.