I’m 100% fine with that perspective. However, I think it means taking away other “anthropomorphic” rights from the entity.
If you say: we’ll only collect taxes from the individuals that are paid by Microsoft, instead of taxing Microsoft, that’s fine by me. But, I would then say that Microsoft also doesn’t have free speech rights as a corporation, after all each individual in the corporation has free speech rights.
If we decide that a corporation *is* entitled to some rights granted to people (such as a right to free speech), then the corporation should also be subject to taxation, separately from all the individuals that compromise it.
I’m unwilling to give one without the other. If a company want rights, it should have obligations. If it has obligations, then the company should have rights.
> Linking taxation and free speech, among all possible rights and obligations, does seem completely arbitrary though.
Well, it was completely arbitrary as it's serving as an example. I'm not saying my policy would literally be X Taxes and Citizens United, just using each as an example of the general class of things that I think should be linked.
I've seen corporate personhood used aggressively to argue that corporations should have more rights, but then when we're in a tax policy discussion, suddenly we are squeamish about anthropomorphizing corporations. My argument is that the amount that we anthropomorphize corporations should be equal whether our discussion is about rights (with free speech as one example) or about obligations (with taxation as one such example)
If you say: we’ll only collect taxes from the individuals that are paid by Microsoft, instead of taxing Microsoft, that’s fine by me. But, I would then say that Microsoft also doesn’t have free speech rights as a corporation, after all each individual in the corporation has free speech rights.
If we decide that a corporation *is* entitled to some rights granted to people (such as a right to free speech), then the corporation should also be subject to taxation, separately from all the individuals that compromise it.
I’m unwilling to give one without the other. If a company want rights, it should have obligations. If it has obligations, then the company should have rights.