Despite low tax rates for the industrialized world, many American journalists, politicians, and pundits oppose taxation and act as if capitalism and corporate power were enshrined in the US Constitution, perhaps somewhere in the First Amendment.  We are told what a burden it is to support our country and our communities with our tax dollars – and how much better everything will be when corporations profit from services government currently delivers at cost.  Before we privatize public schools or cough up “co-pays” for police and fire services, perhaps we should examine the role corporations play in American elections, government, and taxation. 

Strange legal precedents grant corporations political rights and equate "free speech" with “campaign donations” (even in the context of conflicts of interest), creating elected officials who appear to represent immortal corporate “citizens” rather than the human American Citizens they are handsomely paid to represent.  The raw political power held by the “military industrial complex” and similar corporate groups are legendary, and as corporate political power increased, tax revenue from large corporations apparently decreased. 

Tax breaks, “loopholes,” and even direct subsidies help many large corporations evade taxes and their responsibility to “support the troops” who often defend their interests overseas.  Citizen opposition to taxation has spawned a political movement.   With thousands of American soldiers enduring repeated and often deadly combat deployments, complaints about paying the taxes that fund our nation, our communities, and the armor, ammunition, food, vehicles, water, and weapons needed by our armed forces seem sad, shortsighted, and unfortunate. 

Similarly, most Americans enjoy taxpayer funded bridges, highways, schools, and streets, which directly or indirectly support countless jobs.  Those of us not directly or indirectly employed due to publicly funded infrastructure would surely face painful and expensive problems without it.  Furthermore, just as tax dollars fund the deployment of soldiers, America’s firefighters, police officers, and emergency services personnel are also asked to make personal sacrifices far above and beyond the taxes they pay. 

Here again, corporations often appear strongly opposed to supporting these services through taxation – and very interested privatizing them as a means of increasing their profit and power.  While voters can “throw the bums” if they do not like the way their representatives provide public services, corporate control of public services could threaten democratic principles such as equality and free speech, and could be very difficult to reverse. 

Despite benefits enjoyed by both human and corporate citizens, some see government as a horrible problem that must be taken “off their back.”  In contrast, countless other Americans see their government as a priceless treasure worth supporting and defending – even with their life. 

The recent “Citizens United” Supreme Court Decision grants corporations unlimited, unregulated, and conveniently anonymous “free speech.”  Many large international corporations already enjoy significant tax advantages (even direct subsidies), and can make expenditures greater the pooled resources of all of America’s unions combined.  This financial power, the anonymity granted by the Citizens United decision, and the recent disclosure of the use of funds in the 2010 election cycle apparently solicited from foreign corporations appears to threaten not only America’s source of corporate tax revenue, but also American democracy itself. 

Perhaps our problem is not with taxation or American government, but the corporations who reap America’s benefits without contributing to its support – and whose power over America’s electoral processes continues to expand.

"Taxes are the price we pay for civilized society."      Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

Published October 21. 2010