Yes, and also the cost of producing ethanol had something to with food prices, but are they now coming down as rapidly with oil at $50? Nevertheless, you have used an extreme case; otherwise, it is difficult to pinpoint the cost of living index.   

No matter how much you think companies are willing to 'eat' taxes to be 'competitive', it doesn't matter if they are willing to or not - taxes are a cost of doing business that we pay for one way or another, either as purchasers or as investors.  Since investors will hardly be happy about a company that only breaks even, we purchasers are going to end up footing at least some of the bill.  Not to mention that we are severely hamstrung to begin with in terms of global competitiveness and have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world already.  I don't see how increasing corporate taxes is going to help the guys working for those corporations.

And as for concrete examples of corporations 'bluntly passing on the tax cost' just take a glance at your phone or cable bill.  Sure, those are 'taxes' that the companies are forced to itemize & collect on behalf of the government (private companies yet again forced to do the gov's dirty work at their own expense, the cost of which also gets factored into the price of goods or services), but if you think companies that aren't required to itemize them aren't factoring them into the cost indirectly, you're simply naive.

Depends on the type of tax - the one that would produce the result you're referring to isn't the one being proposed. That is, to be a true cost you'd need the tax to actually work like an expense, by say being a tax on each unit produced. However these taxes are on profits, so if a company is making profits before the tax, it will still make them after. Similarly if they're breaking even before, they'll be breaking even after. You won't have taxes causing a profitable company to break even (that is, a company making taxable profits, as opposed to accounting profits, since there are some differences between the two, although it's typically only slight)

Good point Daiwa. My Internet provider (Cox Cable) just raised my bill 5% (not sure if they also raised cable TV and cable phone as I don't have them). So what is the reasoning behind it? Wage increases, hardly, gas, not since it's cheaper now than 2005 prices, materials, possibly or are they just padding themselves against possible future tax increases (and worker health benefits), most likely. The area I live in is still growing (despite the economy) so is the customer base. As you pointed out, they have to keep the shareholders happy and will not let taxes as well as other costs eat into that.

First, such as what? (with regards to small business write-offs)

Second, how is it relevant? If you tax them more, they're still going to pay more so the argument remains the same.

Well said.

Moreover, companies have a lot of areas that can be cut.  I'm sure someone flying an airliner 30 years ago would have laughed at the idea that airliners would one day eliminate inflight meals, free movies and add extra rows to make flying incredibly uncomfortable. They probably would have said that it would make that airliner uncompetitive.

Every company has significant numbers of employees that they can reduce without it affecting the product they're selling. 

Now, in Stardock's case, we're profitable so raising our taxes would likely reduce the # of people we hire and probably force us to trim on some employee goodies we have (smaller bonuses). 

Even now, the existing tax burden combined with the economic downturn may force us to delay building out one of the floors we own in our building. That, in turn, will mean construction contractors not getting jobs.

Sounds like unionized featherbedding. In fact in the days of heavier taxation, businesses did hire more and paid them better; and theough profits were not as high the company soared in goodwill. Now, especially in large corporations, CEOs inflate their salariesbut screw the stockholders. 

Ans the write offs get bigger. Write offs are essential to business that are not available to the average taxpayer. I have no argumetn with that because a business should pay taxes only on net profits. In some cases the owner of a business writes off his salary and at the same time arbitrarily determines the value based on the tax code and shelters available. Furthermore, there are hundreds of items generously attributed to operating costs that can limit net taxable profits.