system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Why corporate tax?

So with the Inflation Reduction Act, there is now a 15% minimum corporate tax. It got me thinking though, why do we even have a corporate tax at all? At the end of the day, all taxes are paid by individuals. Taxing a corporation just means taxing the shareholders, as the tax will be reflected in the share price of the company. It seems like it's objectively worse than just raising capital gains tax instead. My reasoning is this: Say there are two rich guys, Rich Guy A and Rich Guy B. Rich Guy A owns $100K worth of stock in a $1B company (0.01% share of company A). Rich Guy B owns $10M worth of stock in a $100M company (10% share of company B). Company A will be paying more corporate tax than company B, therefore Rich Guy A will be paying more tax than Rich Guy B, despite Rich Guy B being the wealthier of them. It seems like just creating higher brackets in the capital gains tax would do a better job at targeting the wealthy.
gpt
Firstly, your premise is wrong - if the companies have identical earnings profiles, then the earnings per share and therefore tax per share will be identical

 - Let’s say both companies are valued at 10x earnings before tax and the tax rate is 20%

 - Company A will have $100m of EBT and pay $20m of tax, so $80m after tax. However, Rich Guy A isn’t entitled to 100% of the company, he only own 0.01%, so his share of net income is just $8k. If you abolish corporation tax, his income doesn’t go up by $20m, it goes up by $2k, so

 - Company B will have $10m of EBT and $8m ok net income. Rick Guy B’s share is $800k, on which he effectively paid $200k of tax. 

 - Rich Guy B has 100x the assets and paid 100x in tax as Rich Guy A

Secondly, you’re assuming all the shareholders are US tax residents. If Rich Guy B is neither a US citizen and not a US resident, they will pay $0 in tax if you abolish corporation tax.