For the longest time companies didn't exist. Any business tended to be associated with a single person who paid taxes. Companies as a separate legal entity are comparably young. So the tax didn't exist because there wasn't much to tax before, not because it's wrong to have one.
Not true. The first real corporations in the modern sense (private legal entities that existed separately from their owners) were the English and Dutch East India companies, which were founded in 1600 and 1602 respectively. 1894 is closer to the present day than it is to the first corporations.
And the general legal concept of a "company" was hardly new in 1600 - in the Western world it dates back at least as far as Roman times. The Company of Merchants of the Staple of England was founded in 1319; the Company of Merchant Adventurers of London in 1407. Merchants and explorers in the 16th century and onwards used corporation-like entities to raise and organise the funding for their voyages.
> there wasn't much to tax before
Those European merchants made a hell of a lot of profit.
Yeah, but at the time (1600, 1700) there were something like 1-2-10 corporations per country, if that. 95% of the countries of the world didn't have any corporations.
England had some, the Netherlands had some, probably France and maybe a handful of countries.
They weren't really relevant to the day-to-day lives of 99% of the people living back then.
You need to also present some perspective when making a claim.
But most merchants didn't operate in separate legal entitities. There were very few companies, for the longest time just major trade, railroad and banking. Dutch East India is so famous because they're an exception, not the norm.
That is a misinterpretation. I say this because corporate tax is an addition to individual taxes. Taxes of individuals are paid anyway via P&L overhead!!! Owners of businesses pay personal income tax (which was lower 100 years ago as well) in addition to corporate income tax (plus tax on dividends).
