| It's often said that corporations don't pay taxes. They merely collect them. That's because companies pass their costs onto customers. Higher taxes result in higher prices. Consumers pay those. However, sometimes that's not possible. If customers balk at higher prices, the costs must be passed on elsewhere. Studies show that 50% to 70% of a corporate tax increase not passed on to customers is borne by workers, who receive lower wages or benefits than they would otherwise. The other 50% to 30% is borne by investors, who earn lower returns than they would otherwise. That means that if you spend money, work and invest in stocks - as most Liberty Through Wealth readers do - you are hit by an increase in corporate taxes three times. (And that's before the double taxation of corporate profits.) A recent Treasury study found that 92.6 million families - half of all U.S. households - pay more in corporate taxes than they do in individual taxes. Yet these same folks shout "heck yeah!" every time some politician promises to raise corporate tax rates. They don't know that a corporate tax is a tax on everything you buy, everything you earn, and everything you invest in equities. A corporation is a legal fiction designed to limit liability. And the corporate income tax is really a tax on the American people. I can't prove that most voters don't understand this. But I have more than just a suspicion. For example, Joe Biden has proposed a "billionaires' tax" to save Social Security. And the issue resonates with exactly the voters he needs. Bloomberg reported this week that 77% of registered voters in seven swing states favor taxing the ultra-rich to make up for the coming shortfall in Social Security. There's only one problem... but it's a significant one. The Treasury estimates that the Social Security shortfall over the next 30 years will be $20 trillion. Yet, according to Forbes, the total net worth of all 737 American billionaires combined is $5.5 trillion. That means Uncle Sam could confiscate everything the nation's billionaires own - the wolves at work again - and it wouldn't come close to funding the gap in Social Security. And Social Security is just one federal entitlement. The current unfunded liabilities for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid combined are more than $214.9 trillion. For comparison purposes, that's more than twice the GDP of the entire planet. Yet Joe Biden wants voters to believe that endless government spending is not the problem. The problem is that Americans - and their businesses, mutual funds, brokerage accounts and retirement accounts - aren't taxed thoroughly enough. The sad part? Tens of millions of voters agree with him. Good investing, Alex | 
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