[Propertarian]

Actually, it is often the case that if the price of a product is higher, consumers don't buy as much of that product.

Hence, corporations make less pre-tax income because of the tax oftentimes.

Furthermore, depending on the supply-demand curve (mostly its elasticity) of the product, the company often pays part of the tax, because it is still profit maximizing to charge the same or roughly the same price for the product as one would with a slightly lower tax rate.

Example (just to illustrate- better examples of inelastic goods are gas, salt, bread and diamonds): Joe gets candy bars for 35 cents, and can sell 100 at 50 cents a piece (15 cents profit per), but only 20 for 55 cents a piece (25 cents profit per). If the tax rate raises his cost of getting candy bars to 37 cents, he would/should still keep his candy bars priced at 50 cents as opposed to raising it to 55 cents. Hence, he has paid the entire tax, and the consumer has paid for none of it. It simply cut into his profit % on each product sold.

So, the business will either sell a lower quantity of products/services because of the tax (this happens on highly elastic goods) OR they will earn less profit on each sale because of the tax. Both hurt the businesses bottom line; both cost the business $.

In reality, most of the time the company, workers and consumers all ultimately pay for some of the taxation on businesses.

And, you forget that almost all companies are consumers as well (e.g. Wal-Mart buys from a distrubitor, which buys from a manufacturer, which buys raw matierals).

All these things explain why businesses are opposed to increases in taxation as well as well as being opposed to it in general. The cost of collecting it, as you describe it here, is roughly the same at a tax rate of 30% as opposed to 35%, but they would still oppose the increase.