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JPK

(648 posts)
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 03:39 PM Jul 2014

Corporations are people?.....

Well if corporations are people...does that lead logically to ... people can be corporations? Shouldn't our homes or domestic financials be considered small businesses? The right says the government should live within its means just like any family household. So by that description, should a household be considered a small business with all the tax advantages a business "person" has? You could write of the depreciation of your car as it ages. You could write off its maintenance and fuel. Groceries could be written off as well as any repairs to the house. What is left over at the end of the year after all the deductions, your cost of doing business to live in the good ol' corporatized US of A, would be what you pay in taxes. If you were creative, you could even be like GE and not pay any taxes at all.

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Corporations are people?..... (Original Post) JPK Jul 2014 OP
In some cases it's a tough call. Igel Jul 2014 #1

Igel

(35,191 posts)
1. In some cases it's a tough call.
Tue Jul 1, 2014, 04:40 PM
Jul 2014

I worked for a corporation. It had one owner. She was the founder and CEO.

It had one funding source--the owner's cash reserves.

It had a VP in charge of manufacturing, a sales director, a shipping manager/stock clerk, and bookkeeper. The bookkeeper worked 15 hours a week. That was me.

The owner worked from a desk in her bedroom. The VP worked from home and showed up some days. The sales director worked in a room next to the owner's laundry room and I had a desk in her office that the VP used when I wasn't around. The stockroom was the owner's converted garage and the stock clerk/shipping manager could be found there.

The corporation was, literally, the owner. It was a legal fiction to shelter her personal possessions from assets that were used by her company. Had it been a sole proprietorship, when the VP embezzled money and left the corporation in debt her other business would have been liquidated to pay creditors.

Hers was a closely held company. And the corporation reflected her views. Many were moral and ethical, and even if it was bad business the corporation took a hit. She did that often, choosing vendors based on her personal beliefs instead of practicality or even common sense. When she was told about the likelihood the VP was embezzling, she decided to take no action, a clear breach of fiduciary responsibility that led to the loss of jobs and to bankruptcy/liquidation.

It's hard to find a legal difference between that corporation and Hobby Lobby, even though there are layers of bureaucracy between the owners and low-level employees in HL.. That's how the laws are set up. It doesn't matter if the reports are that HL owners are fairly religious and that my former boss was an atheist (D) woman's right's activist who'd been on the local Democratic committee, who started the corporation to provide an outlet for poor rural village women in a 3rd world area and for single-mother craftsfolk/artisans in the US.

BTW, the personal deduction is essentially a write-off to cover the taxes that would be owed on something like average minimum living expenses. Between that and other deductions a lot of people don't pay federal income taxes. If you have a sole proprietorship then you most certainly can deduct a lot of expenses from your gross income. But your minimum living expenses are already subject to a write off, so there's a limit on the kinds of things you can deduct.

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