Corporations are people. So what if people were corporations?

[abelenkpe]

Corporations are people. So what if people were corporations?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/catherine-rampell-people-should-claim-the-same-rights-as-companies/2014/07/24/460aea0c-135b-11e4-9285-4243a40ddc97_story.html

“Checked the tax code,” wrote a friend who’s engaged to a woman from a low-tax country. “Unfortunately, marrying [my fiancee] does not entitle me to a tax inversion like the big US companies are getting. Thanks for nothing IRS.”

That got me thinking. Maybe we’ve been looking at this whole corporations-are-people-too foofaraw the wrong way. Critics complained when the Supreme Court granted companies rights to freedom of speech and religion under the legal fiction that corporations are people. But perhaps this precedent is good news for flesh-and-blood people like you and me (a.k.a. People Classic™).

(snip)

Other goodies abound. On federal tax returns, individuals can deduct either the sales taxes they paid or their state income taxes, not both; for companies, these deductions are all-you-can-eat. If people were treated like companies, we could also start deducting the first dollar we spend on health care, rather than just the medical spending that exceeds 10 percent of our adjusted gross incomes.

Home-buying would also become more attractive. Right now there are limits to how much mortgage interest humans can deduct. But if you analogize your primary residence to a “corporate headquarters” and your vacation homes to “branch offices,” you can deduct the full interest on every McMansion you ever buy.

(more at link)

[Trillo]

1. Really brings home human's second-class status.

Thanks for writing such a witty piece:

According to Martin Sullivan, the chief economist at Tax Analysts, if individuals were treated like corporations, I could set up an affiliate called “Catherine Rampell Bermuda,” have it pay my college tuition and then declare that the affiliate owns the resulting degree. I could then tell the IRS that everything I earn above the average high school grad’s wage should be recorded as income in Bermuda, since it’s all derived from a Bermuda-based asset. Until I decide to repatriate those diploma-derived earnings, I’ve built myself a tax-free IRA.

[Katashi_itto]

2. Incorporate yourself then. It gives you super status.

[NuclearDem]

3. Taking out the trash? Sorry, that's another department.