Taxing Businesses Through the Individual Income Tax

Report

Since the individual income tax was instituted in 1913, the profits of most businesses have been allocated, or “passed through,” to their owners and subjected to that tax—rather than to the corporate income tax. However, most business activity (specifically, the total revenue that businesses receive as receipts from sales of goods and services) has occurred at firms subject to the corporate income tax (C corporations) because those firms tend to be larger than pass-through entities.